The last few weeks concerning WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, the London arrest, the interpol red alerts for arrest, and the 250,000 pages of the diplomatic document dump have been interesting to say the least. Adding to the intrique has been Prosecutor Ny’s changing proclamations, no official charges but yet an arrest by appointment with no bail (until recently), cyber attacks on WikiLeak’s enemies by Anonymous, and the flight of one of Assange’s sex crimes accusers, Anna Ardin, to the Palestinian territories along with some reports she may be linked to the CIA. Could the most creative of screen writers come up with more twists for a plot line for a movie than this? Its so convoluted that it has led some to suggest it may be a psy ops operation to shut down or control information available on the internet. But what is not intriguing is the onerous and dangerous suggestions from Obama’s DOJ and elected officials in Washington of invoking some of the darkness of America’s past abuses of power such as the 1917 Espionage Act in going after Julian Assange.
Senators Lieberman and Feinstein have voiced such an approach of using the 1917 Espionage Act to go after and/or prosecute Julian Assange. While such a call might fly with a propaganized mind with no comprehension of the past, this is very much a direct assault on freedom and a free press. In a piece by author Naomi Wolf at the Huffington Post, she explains this dubious historical abuse of power which is titled, “Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Agression Against the People of the United States“. It was a period whereby even prominent Americans such as E.E. Cummings served jail time and many Americans were rounded up. It was used to treat journalism that told the truth and also to frame dissent both as treasonous. This runs counter to a free society. And Senator Lieberman has also added that the New York Times should be investigated. Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice have also weighed in quite dubiously by saying “significant” actions are being taken in the “criminal investigation” of WikiLeaks though what crimes WikiLeaks has committed seem to be uncertain under the constitution, domestic law, and international law. WikiLeaks is supposed to be a news organization, and Assange is neither a spy or leaker, engaged in espionage, or even an American citizen. In fact, the leaker of much of this, Pfc. Bradley Manning is in jail. And concerning The Espionage Act, Holder said,
That is not the only tool we have to use in the investigation of this matter. People would be misimpressioned if they think the only thing we are looking at is the Espionage Act
And then Holder added,
“National security of the United States has been put at risk. The lives of people who work for the American people have been put at risk. The American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions that I believe are arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way. We are doing everything that we can.”
One would say hypocrite is thy name, Eric Holder. Along with interpol’s red alert arrest warrant for Assange also came one for former Vice President Dick Cheney relating to bribery charges in Nigeria (of which Halliburton is currently negotiating a $250 million settlement). Where was the quick arrest and extradition in that? And isn’t that the same Dick Cheney who’s office was involved in leaking classified information to the press? Did that not put the “national security of the United States at risk”? Also in quoting you, “the lives of people who work for the American people have been put at risk”, wasn’t the leaking of a covert agent in the employ of the C.I.A. thus putting all operations past and present she was involved in and the lives of all operatives and contacts in those operations put at risk? Were “significant” actions undertaken in the criminal investigation of that? Was the 1917 Espionage Act called upon to investigate the New York Times or Bob Novak? How about the Office of Vice President? Or did the Department of Justice under the administration that leaked the information engage in a much narrower defined investigation under a prosecutor? And if the Office of the Vice President had the authority to declassify her name, did it also declassify those C.I.A. operations or the identities of those involved when our nation’s enemies began their own investigations concerning her contacts in their countries? And all for what? Because former Ambassador Joe Wilson felt compelled to tell the truth in a newspaper op-ed that he did not find evidence that Iraq had sought a deal for yellow cake uranium in Niger? To cover the 16 words in the Bush state of the union address Bush knew came from a forged document? The Obama DOJ finds no threat to US security in that lie, nor the lies from the Office of Special Plans created solely to lie a nation into an illegal war of aggression? No call for the Obama DOJ to reopen the AIPAC spy scandal and invoke the Espionage Act, a real case of espionage? No, but Eric Holder, the administration, members of Congress want to invoke the Espionage Act on journalists for publishing these cables. Yale Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Bruce Ackerman claims prosecuting Assange under this act would be unconstitutional. So just how “secret” are these cables and what matters of national security do they reveal? Are they really revealing secrets or just embarrassing information the administration doesn’t want the American people to know? Let’s take a look.
It seems that in a report by France 24 that these cables were not “top secret” so that alone should stop any notion of invoking The Espionage Act. In fact, it indicates that SPIRNet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) by which these cables were transmitted is accessed by some 2.5 million Americans in the U.S. government’s employ and that “top secret” cables are transmitted on a more restricted network. And if someone wants to use the diplomatic cables as a guide to determine whether this is true or not, they may find they bear that out. Around the year before the events of September 11th, 2001 through the launch of the Afghan war and the attack and invasion of Iraq and with all the reported “chatter” of terror networks, one would expect quite a bit of activity concerning diplomatic cables. So let’s take a look at the time distribution and nation distribution of what has been released so far, particularly from the years of 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003.
2002.
349 cables Rome Italy, 2 cables Jerusalem, 326 cables Abuja Nigeria, 419 Harare Zimbabwe, 1 Pretoria South Africa, 1 Maputo Mozambique, 102 cables Hanoi Vietnam, 24 cables Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam, 4 Jakarta Indonesia.
2003.
290 cables Ottawa Ontario, 19 Montreal Quebec, 15 cables State Department, 23 cables Nova Scotia, 243 cables Guatemala City Guatamala, 282 cables Teguigalpa Honduras, 5 Bogota Colombia, 45 Brasilia Brazil, 1 Santiago Chile, 52 Frankfurt Germany, 188 Zagreb Croatia, 1 Sofia Turkey, 80 Istanbul, 1173 Ankara, 747 Amman Jordan, 460 Kuwait, 542 Abu Dhabi, 273 Sanaa Yemen, 344 Abuja Nigeria, 122 Lagos Nigeria, 5 Kinshasa Congo, 504 Harare Zimbabwe, 17 Kabul Afghanistan, 288 Katmandu, 560 Colombo Sri Lanka, 199 Rangoon Myanmar, 183 Hanoi Vietnam, and 73 Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam.
Hardly a treasure trove of secrets that would define the events that have shaped the U.S. since the year 2000 through 2003 when its character changed. No cables to the Taliban government regarding the negotiations over the TAPI pipeline, the breakdown of those negotiations and the demand for Bin Laden before the events of September 11th, 2001. No cables to Pakistan or the involvement of the Pakistani ISI. No cables from Saudi Arabia, home of the 9/11 hijackers, the Bin Laden family and its oil partnership with the U.S. No cables from Downing Street and Bush’s poodle and co-conspirator over Iraq. Not very much in cable traffic from countries deeply involved in deep state matters during this period over the U.S.’s Middle East and Central Asia foreign policy, Israel and Turkey, except 2 from Jerusalem in 2002 and several cities in Turkey, but not until 2003. In the overall release of the 251,287 cables, probably the countries with most concern would be the US (8,017), Turkey (7,918) from US diplomats in Ankara, Iraq, and possibly Japan, but a concern from more of a political nature rather than a direct security threat nature. Instead of releasing these cables directly itself , WikiLeaks decided to release them through the mainstream media sources Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and The New York Times. They will be researched, analyzed, and vetted by editorial boards and names of people who may be endangered by any revelation protected before publishing. This shows a deeper concern for security and lives than the U.S. government officials showed when they leaked the name of a covert agent. And one of The New York Times point persons in covering the WikiLeaks documents is David E. Sanger who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group. Could the US government with its neoconservatives and neoliberals have hand picked anyone safer from their point of view? And Julian Assange himself says he does not question the US government accounts surrounding the events of September 11th, 2001 and immediate aftermath which one would suppose includes the 9/11 Commission Report. That was a hand picked commission of neoconservatives and neoliberals that were for the invasion of Iraq and headed by the Bush administration’s point man Thomas Kean, keeper of the flame, and whose report repeated the Bush Administration’s lie that Wilson’s wife sent him to Niger.
It appears what we have going on is a case of the emperor having no clothes. Let’s not end freedom of the press and freedom of speech by invoking The Espionage Act because some want to put those clothes back on.
Following up the horrible ruling that established corporations as persons and their money as free speech further cementing the power of the corporate state in the Citizens United v FEC case, the Roberts court further weakened the rights of living breathing citizens in their relationship to state power in a 5 to 4 paradoxial court ruling. In the ruling, the citizen must talk to the police declaring his or her right to remain silent instead of being informed of their right to remain silent by the police. The Baltimore Sun editorializing in a piece titled, “Eroding Miranda“, explained
The Supreme Court this week took another step back from its 1969 Miranda ruling, which requires police to notify criminal suspects of their right to remain silent when questioned. In a bizarre opinion by the court’s conservative majority, the justices ruled 5-4 that unless a suspect explicitly invokes his right not to talk — that is, unless he talks to the police — he’s not entitled to remain silent, and any statement he makes can be used against him in court.
This paradoxical interpretation of the law, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her first major dissent since joining the court, “turns Miranda upside down” and “bodes poorly for the fundamental principles that Miranda protects.” In effect, it says to a suspect: You have the right to remain silent, but if you want to use it you’d better start talking.
The case involved a Michigan man, Van Chester Thompkins, whom police suspected of shooting another man to death outside a mall in 2000. When Mr. Thompkins was arrested a year later, police read him his Miranda rights, but he refused to sign a form acknowledging he understood them. He then remained silent through three hours of questioning until he was asked by an officer whether he thought God would forgive him “for shooting that boy down.”
This should please the Obama DOJ since it will take the pressure off of creating or using law to circumvent the rule of law as it tries to hold on to unconstitutional power of executive branch practices given it by the Bush Administration and a complicit Congress. In a piece titled, “Eric Holder: Miranda Rights Should Be Modified For Terrorism Suspects” by Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post,
Attorney General Eric Holder said for the first time today on ABC’s “This Week” that the Obama administration is open to modifying Miranda protections to deal with the “threats that we now face.”
“The [Miranda] system we have in place has proven to be effective,” Holder told host Jake Tapper. “I think we also want to look and determine whether we have the necessary flexibility — whether we have a system that deals with situations that agents now confront. … We’re now dealing with international terrorism. … I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public-safety exception [to the Miranda protections]. And that’s one of the things that I think we’re going to be reaching out to Congress, to come up with a proposal that is both constitutional, but that is also relevant to our times and the threats that we now face.”
He is off the hook now. The Roberts Court gave him his wish.
American Commentary Blog 
The 16 Words, WikiLeaks, And Rank Hypocrisy
The last few weeks concerning WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, the London arrest, the interpol red alerts for arrest, and the 250,000 pages of the diplomatic document dump have been interesting to say the least. Adding to the intrique has been Prosecutor Ny’s changing proclamations, no official charges but yet an arrest by appointment with no bail (until recently), cyber attacks on WikiLeak’s enemies by Anonymous, and the flight of one of Assange’s sex crimes accusers, Anna Ardin, to the Palestinian territories along with some reports she may be linked to the CIA. Could the most creative of screen writers come up with more twists for a plot line for a movie than this? Its so convoluted that it has led some to suggest it may be a psy ops operation to shut down or control information available on the internet. But what is not intriguing is the onerous and dangerous suggestions from Obama’s DOJ and elected officials in Washington of invoking some of the darkness of America’s past abuses of power such as the 1917 Espionage Act in going after Julian Assange.
Senators Lieberman and Feinstein have voiced such an approach of using the 1917 Espionage Act to go after and/or prosecute Julian Assange. While such a call might fly with a propaganized mind with no comprehension of the past, this is very much a direct assault on freedom and a free press. In a piece by author Naomi Wolf at the Huffington Post, she explains this dubious historical abuse of power which is titled, “Espionage Act: How the Government Can Engage in Serious Agression Against the People of the United States“. It was a period whereby even prominent Americans such as E.E. Cummings served jail time and many Americans were rounded up. It was used to treat journalism that told the truth and also to frame dissent both as treasonous. This runs counter to a free society. And Senator Lieberman has also added that the New York Times should be investigated. Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice have also weighed in quite dubiously by saying “significant” actions are being taken in the “criminal investigation” of WikiLeaks though what crimes WikiLeaks has committed seem to be uncertain under the constitution, domestic law, and international law. WikiLeaks is supposed to be a news organization, and Assange is neither a spy or leaker, engaged in espionage, or even an American citizen. In fact, the leaker of much of this, Pfc. Bradley Manning is in jail. And concerning The Espionage Act, Holder said,
And then Holder added,
One would say hypocrite is thy name, Eric Holder. Along with interpol’s red alert arrest warrant for Assange also came one for former Vice President Dick Cheney relating to bribery charges in Nigeria (of which Halliburton is currently negotiating a $250 million settlement). Where was the quick arrest and extradition in that? And isn’t that the same Dick Cheney who’s office was involved in leaking classified information to the press? Did that not put the “national security of the United States at risk”? Also in quoting you, “the lives of people who work for the American people have been put at risk”, wasn’t the leaking of a covert agent in the employ of the C.I.A. thus putting all operations past and present she was involved in and the lives of all operatives and contacts in those operations put at risk? Were “significant” actions undertaken in the criminal investigation of that? Was the 1917 Espionage Act called upon to investigate the New York Times or Bob Novak? How about the Office of Vice President? Or did the Department of Justice under the administration that leaked the information engage in a much narrower defined investigation under a prosecutor? And if the Office of the Vice President had the authority to declassify her name, did it also declassify those C.I.A. operations or the identities of those involved when our nation’s enemies began their own investigations concerning her contacts in their countries? And all for what? Because former Ambassador Joe Wilson felt compelled to tell the truth in a newspaper op-ed that he did not find evidence that Iraq had sought a deal for yellow cake uranium in Niger? To cover the 16 words in the Bush state of the union address Bush knew came from a forged document? The Obama DOJ finds no threat to US security in that lie, nor the lies from the Office of Special Plans created solely to lie a nation into an illegal war of aggression? No call for the Obama DOJ to reopen the AIPAC spy scandal and invoke the Espionage Act, a real case of espionage? No, but Eric Holder, the administration, members of Congress want to invoke the Espionage Act on journalists for publishing these cables. Yale Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Bruce Ackerman claims prosecuting Assange under this act would be unconstitutional. So just how “secret” are these cables and what matters of national security do they reveal? Are they really revealing secrets or just embarrassing information the administration doesn’t want the American people to know? Let’s take a look.
It seems that in a report by France 24 that these cables were not “top secret” so that alone should stop any notion of invoking The Espionage Act. In fact, it indicates that SPIRNet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) by which these cables were transmitted is accessed by some 2.5 million Americans in the U.S. government’s employ and that “top secret” cables are transmitted on a more restricted network. And if someone wants to use the diplomatic cables as a guide to determine whether this is true or not, they may find they bear that out. Around the year before the events of September 11th, 2001 through the launch of the Afghan war and the attack and invasion of Iraq and with all the reported “chatter” of terror networks, one would expect quite a bit of activity concerning diplomatic cables. So let’s take a look at the time distribution and nation distribution of what has been released so far, particularly from the years of 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003.
2000.
No diplomatic cables.
2001.
1 cable Caracas Venezuela, 7 cables Bogota Colombia, 12 cables Kinshara Congo, 307 cables Harare Zimbabwe, 4 cables Pretoria South Africa, 86 cables Hanoi Vietnam.
2002.
349 cables Rome Italy, 2 cables Jerusalem, 326 cables Abuja Nigeria, 419 Harare Zimbabwe, 1 Pretoria South Africa, 1 Maputo Mozambique, 102 cables Hanoi Vietnam, 24 cables Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam, 4 Jakarta Indonesia.
2003.
290 cables Ottawa Ontario, 19 Montreal Quebec, 15 cables State Department, 23 cables Nova Scotia, 243 cables Guatemala City Guatamala, 282 cables Teguigalpa Honduras, 5 Bogota Colombia, 45 Brasilia Brazil, 1 Santiago Chile, 52 Frankfurt Germany, 188 Zagreb Croatia, 1 Sofia Turkey, 80 Istanbul, 1173 Ankara, 747 Amman Jordan, 460 Kuwait, 542 Abu Dhabi, 273 Sanaa Yemen, 344 Abuja Nigeria, 122 Lagos Nigeria, 5 Kinshasa Congo, 504 Harare Zimbabwe, 17 Kabul Afghanistan, 288 Katmandu, 560 Colombo Sri Lanka, 199 Rangoon Myanmar, 183 Hanoi Vietnam, and 73 Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam.
Hardly a treasure trove of secrets that would define the events that have shaped the U.S. since the year 2000 through 2003 when its character changed. No cables to the Taliban government regarding the negotiations over the TAPI pipeline, the breakdown of those negotiations and the demand for Bin Laden before the events of September 11th, 2001. No cables to Pakistan or the involvement of the Pakistani ISI. No cables from Saudi Arabia, home of the 9/11 hijackers, the Bin Laden family and its oil partnership with the U.S. No cables from Downing Street and Bush’s poodle and co-conspirator over Iraq. Not very much in cable traffic from countries deeply involved in deep state matters during this period over the U.S.’s Middle East and Central Asia foreign policy, Israel and Turkey, except 2 from Jerusalem in 2002 and several cities in Turkey, but not until 2003. In the overall release of the 251,287 cables, probably the countries with most concern would be the US (8,017), Turkey (7,918) from US diplomats in Ankara, Iraq, and possibly Japan, but a concern from more of a political nature rather than a direct security threat nature. Instead of releasing these cables directly itself , WikiLeaks decided to release them through the mainstream media sources Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and The New York Times. They will be researched, analyzed, and vetted by editorial boards and names of people who may be endangered by any revelation protected before publishing. This shows a deeper concern for security and lives than the U.S. government officials showed when they leaked the name of a covert agent. And one of The New York Times point persons in covering the WikiLeaks documents is David E. Sanger who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group. Could the US government with its neoconservatives and neoliberals have hand picked anyone safer from their point of view? And Julian Assange himself says he does not question the US government accounts surrounding the events of September 11th, 2001 and immediate aftermath which one would suppose includes the 9/11 Commission Report. That was a hand picked commission of neoconservatives and neoliberals that were for the invasion of Iraq and headed by the Bush administration’s point man Thomas Kean, keeper of the flame, and whose report repeated the Bush Administration’s lie that Wilson’s wife sent him to Niger.
It appears what we have going on is a case of the emperor having no clothes. Let’s not end freedom of the press and freedom of speech by invoking The Espionage Act because some want to put those clothes back on.
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