Assange prosecution seen as attack on press freedom

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Abrams opinion piece
https://www.cahill.com/professionals/floyd-abrams

Former diplomat rebuts CNN 'smears' of Assange
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/20/cnn-media-smears-julian-assange-fidel-narvaez/

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Despite Julian Assange's "odious" and "dangerous" revelations, trying him under the Espionage Act poses a grave threat to the liberty of all Americans, argues Floyd Abrams, a celebrated media lawyer, in an opinion piece for The Dallas News.


Floyd Abrams

Abrams writes:

Some of the documents made public by Assange and identified in the Assange indictment have been literally life-threatening. They identify Afghans and Iraqis who provided confidential information of military value to the U.S. and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan that, if attributed to them, could have imperiled them.

Others identified individuals, including human-rights workers, named in classified State Department cables, who provided confidential information to the U.S. in circumstances in which their identification could also have been life-threatening.

So outrageous was Assange's conduct in making information of this sort available to enemies of the U.S. that responsible newspapers throughout the democratic world that had previously worked with WikiLeaks — The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde — issued a joint statement "deploring" and "condemning" the misconduct of Assange and WikiLeaks.

Abrams also claims that WikiLeaks tried to get Russians to release any Hillary Clinton emails to it -- though this would not be a surprising move if done by a "real" news organization. Reporters will try all sorts of appeals in order to pry loose information from confidential sources. (Also, see the "rebuttals" of CNN by a former Ecuadoran diplomat, above.) But, the problem is, says Abrams, it is a dangerous move to use the Espionage Act to punish Assange.

That law, adopted a century ago, is phrased, as former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan put it, in 'singularly opaque' language.

"If it can be used against Assange for publishing classified information that is potentially harmful to the country, it might just as easily be used against responsible publications such as those that criticized Assange when they receive and publish classified information that benefits the nation by revealing government misconduct.

In fact, if any publication of such material risked Espionage Act prosecutions, there is good reason to fear that a serious blow would have been struck at many journalists who cover national security issues, defense issues and intelligence issues.