Biden Says U.S. Is Considering Dropping Its Case Against Assange | New York Times

[Scott]

Finally some apparently good news in relation to the Julian Assange case:

**
The WikiLeaks founder has been held in London as he has battled extradition to the United States on charges related to his publication of classified documents.

April 10, 2024

President Biden said on Wednesday that the United States was considering dropping its prosecution of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has been jailed in London for years while fighting extradition to face U.S. charges related to his publication of classified documents.

Mr. Biden made the comment on the case of the embattled publisher, who is being detained in a high-security prison, in response to a question about a request from Mr. Assange’s home country of Australia that he be allowed to return there.

“We’re considering it,” Mr. Biden said at the White House, where he was hosting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan.

Mr. Assange has been jailed for nearly five years after being indicted by the United States with 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act for publishing thousands of documents detailing secret military operations and diplomatic intelligence, as well as revelations about the civilian death tolls in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His case has sustained international attention and condemnation from First Amendment rights groups.

Mr. Assange has fought off U.S. efforts to extradite him. The charges could amount to a sentence of up to 175 years in prison, although U.S. lawyers have said that he was more likely to be sentenced to four to six years.

In February, Australia’s parliament passed a motion calling for Mr. Assange’s release, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had discussed the matter in a meeting last fall with Mr. Biden.

In backing the motion, Mr. Albanese told the Australian parliament “it is appropriate for us to put our very strong view that those countries need to take into account the need for this to be concluded.”
**

Full article:
Biden Says U.S. Is Considering Dropping Its Case Against Assange | New York Times

 

[NiftyNiblick]

Not that I put Assange forward as an example of virtue--I do not--

but publishing leaked information is what publishers do.

Leaking the information is the real offense, no?

There's no virtue in revealing confidential sources, either.

 

[zymurgy]

his crime is making politicians look bad

 

[Damocles]

Not that I put Assange forward as an example of virtue--I do not--

but publishing leaked information is what publishers do.

Leaking the information is the real offense, no?

There's no virtue in revealing confidential sources, either.

I agree.

 

[Nordberg]

I remember Wikileaks showing American soldiers shooting people from helicopters claiming they were enemy soldiers. There was another one that showed American soldiers using Mosques for target practice and laughing about it. Another showed them shooting random Iraqi cars for fun.
I see why the military did not want them shown.

 

[Walt]

Not that I put Assange forward as an example of virtue--I do not--

but publishing leaked information is what publishers do.

Leaking the information is the real offense, no?

There's no virtue in revealing confidential sources, either.

They could argue that a publisher has a responsibility to edit out names of spies that could be killed due to release of their names. Assange promised that his army of readers would delete out all the names... But his army of readers did not exist. He just released their names, and had them flee as best they could.

That is questionable, but even there we run into the point Assange is not American. He has no obligation to keep our secrets.

Assange probably started out with great intentions, he did some terrible things, but it probably is not illegal.

 

[Walt]

his crime is making politicians look bad

If spies cannot spy for the USA without having their names released, then no one will warn us of the next terrorist attack.

 

[Scott]

Not that I put Assange forward as an example of virtue--I do not--

but publishing leaked information is what publishers do.

Leaking the information is the real offense, no?

There's no virtue in revealing confidential sources, either.

They could argue that a publisher has a responsibility to edit out names of spies that could be killed due to release of their names. Assange promised that his army of readers would delete out all the names... But his army of readers did not exist. He just released their names, and had them flee as best they could.

Where on earth are you getting your information from? I've never heard of this "army of readers" story. The BBC brings up U.S. government charges in article they published:
**
Mr Lewis said Mr Assange has been involved in a "conspiracy to steal from and hack into" the department of defence computer system along with former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

[snip]

Mr Lewis said the dissemination of specific classified documents unredacted put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at "risk of serious harm, torture or even death".

The US identified hundreds of "at risk and potentially at risk people" around the world, he said, and made efforts to warn them.

"The US is aware of sources, whose redacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by Wikileaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can't prove at this point that their disappearance was the result of being outed by Wikileaks."
**

Assange's team denies the charge that he assisted Manning in accessing documents and points out that he only published unredacted material after others had done it. From the same BBC article as above
**
Mr Fitzgerald also told the court that Mr Assange had not assisted whistleblower Chelsea Manning in accessing the documents, as had been claimed.

He added: "It's completely misleading to suggest it was Julian Assange and Wikileaks to blame for the disclosure of unredacted names.

"Wikileaks only published the unredacted material after they had been published by others who have never faced prosecution."
**

As to who Assange's legal team is referring to, I'm guessing it may be the UK news outlget The Guardian reporters. From a more recent article from Reuters:
**
A lawyer for the United States told the court last week that it was requesting Assange's extradition over the publication of informants' names, and not for handling leaked documents.

John Goetz, an investigative reporter who worked for Germany's Spiegel magazine on the first publication of the documents, said the U.S. State Department had been involved in a conference call suggesting redactions, and WikiLeaks had agreed to hold back about 15,000 documents for publication.

"There was sensitivity and it was one of the things that was talked about all the time," Goetz told the court. Assange was concerned that the media should take measures "so no one would be harmed", he said.

Goetz said WikiLeaks was later frustrated when a password that allowed access to the full, unredacted material was published in a book by Guardian reporters in February 2011.
**

Source:
WikiLeaks' Assange was careful to protect informants, court hears | Reuters

That is questionable, but even there we run into the point Assange is not American. He has no obligation to keep our secrets.

The U.S. seems to be arguing that he does. But it really takes the cake if the truth is that it was The Guardian that actually leaked a password to see all the unredacted material and the U.S. completly ignored this because their motivation was never about protecting informants names but going rather it was about going after Assange for helping to expose the terrible things that the U.S. did in Iraq and elsewhere.

Assange probably started out with great intentions, he did some terrible things, but it probably is not illegal.

What terrible things are you referring to? It seems his biggest mistake was trusting a mainstream publication to not leak a password to see the unredacted information.

 

[Scott]

his crime is making politicians look bad

If spies cannot spy for the USA without having their names released, then no one will warn us of the next terrorist attack.

As I mentioned in my last post, it wasn't Assange who leaked the password to sensitive information. And as to warnings of terrorist attacks, there's plenty of evidence that elements of the U.S. government is directly complicit in sabotaging the work of intelligence professionals when it comes to -actual- terrorist attacks, and intimidating intelligence professionals when they publicly state that this has happened. Able Danger comes to mind. From Wikipedia's page on Able Danger:
**
Assertion that Able Danger identified 9/11 hijackers

The existence of Able Danger, and its purported early identification of the 9/11 terrorists, was first disclosed publicly on June 19, 2005, in an article[11] by Keith Phucas, a reporter for The Times Herald, a Norristown, Pennsylvania, daily newspaper. Eight days later, on June 27, 2005, Representative Curt Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services and House Homeland Security committees and the principal source for the Phucas article, gave a special orders speech on the House floor detailing Able Danger:

Mr. Speaker, I rise because information has come to my attention over the past several months that is very disturbing. I have learned that, in fact, one of our Federal agencies had, in fact, identified the major New York cell of Mohamed Atta prior to 9/11; and I have learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September 2000, that Federal agency actually was prepared to bring the FBI in and prepared to work with the FBI to take down the cell that Mohamed Atta was involved in in New York City, along with two of the other terrorists. I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that when that recommendation was discussed within that Federal agency, the lawyers in the administration at that time said, you cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card, and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident. So we did not allow that Federal agency to proceed.[12]​

[snip]

Alleged evidence of IG cover-up

Five witnesses who had worked on Able Danger and had been questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General later told investigative journalists that their statements to the IG were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report, or the report omitted essential information that they had provided. The alleged distortions of the IG report centered around excluding any evidence that Able Danger had identified and tracked Atta years before 9/11. The witnesses reported to the journalists that the IG investigators got increasingly hostile in an effort to intimidate the witnesses into changing their testimony to drop any assertion that they had identified and tracked Atta, and this suggests a cover-up by the IG of Able Danger's findings. Witnesses reported telling Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, that Able Danger had identified Atta well before the 9/11 attacks, but Zelikow showed no interest in their testimony. Lt. Col Tony Shaffer also reported that the DOD has retaliated against him for speaking out publicly about the IG report's distortions.[4]
**

 

[Walt]

I've never heard of this "army of readers" story.

WikiLeaks supposedly had a volunteer staff of hundreds of people who could check and double check they had redact names that would be dangerous. As it turns out it was just Assange, Domscheit-Berg. And they had no time.
The other news sources all redacted names, but could only release very limited amounts of the documents. WikiLeaks released everything. If Assange had the volunteers he claimed he had, he could have redacted the names. Had he redacted the names, there is not much the USA could have done.

It is central to the story. You should try watching the Fifth Estate to get you up to speed on what is going on.

Mr Lewis said the dissemination of specific classified documents unredacted put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at "risk of serious harm, torture or even death". The US identified hundreds of "at risk and potentially at risk people" around the world, he said, and made efforts to warn them.

There were people around the world who warned the USA of terrorist plans against the USA. Their names were leaked to the terrorists who they gave up. It is not a good thing to be them.

"The US is aware of sources, whose redacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by Wikileaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can't prove at this point that their disappearance was the result of being outed by Wikileaks."

Which just means that some of the people willing to turn in terrorists were killed probably because their names were given out by Assange, but it cannot be proven for each one beyond a doubt. It is like leaking radiation, and watching the cancer deaths go from 100 to 200. There is no way of proving which deaths were caused by the radiation leak, but it was probably about 100 deaths.

 

[Scott]

I've never heard of this "army of readers" story.

WikiLeaks supposedly had a volunteer staff of hundreds of people who could check and double check they had redact names that would be dangerous. As it turns out it was just Assange, Domscheit-Berg. And they had no time.

I hadn't heard of this claim of an "army of readers" volunteering for Wikipedia. I still can't find this claim online. What's your source for this information?

The other news sources all redacted names, but could only release very limited amounts of the documents. WikiLeaks released everything.

Do you have any evidence that Wikileaks released everything they've received?

If Assange had the volunteers he claimed he had, he could have redacted the names. Had he redacted the names, there is not much the USA could have done.

After looking on Wikipedia, I found one case where all documents were released, but this wasn't all Wikileaks documents, but rather Wikileaks documents from the cablegate affair. Quoting from Wikipedia's article on Daniel Domscheit-Berg:
**
In September 2011, several news organizations cited Domscheit-Berg's split from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as one of a series of events that led to the release that month of all 251,287 United States diplomatic cables in the Cablegate affair.[10][11][12]
**

It is central to the story. You should try watching the Fifth Estate to get you up to speed on what is going on.

I imagine you're talking about the film titled the Fifth Estate, which is about Julian Assange and Wikileaks? If so, here's something that Julian Assange said on said film:
**
On September 21, 2013, a version of the script, allegedly the film's screenplay, was released by WikiLeaks, along with commentary labeling the film as "fiction masquerading as fact".[39] Both Assange and WikiLeaks have stated that neither DreamWorks nor Disney approached them for any consultation on the film.[30][39][40] Assange elaborated on the matter, "I don't think we are in a situation anymore where an organization like DreamWorks or Disney can succinctly decide that it is going to produce a movie about living people, and living political refugees, and people who are embroiled in a grand jury proceeding in the United States, and just smear, without the cost."[41]
**

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Estate_(film)

I've never heard of this "army of readers" story. The BBC brings up U.S. government charges in article they published:
**
Mr Lewis said Mr Assange has been involved in a "conspiracy to steal from and hack into" the department of defence computer system along with former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

[snip]

Mr Lewis said the dissemination of specific classified documents unredacted put dissidents in Afghanistan and Iraq at "risk of serious harm, torture or even death".

The US identified hundreds of "at risk and potentially at risk people" around the world, he said, and made efforts to warn them.

There were people around the world who warned the USA of terrorist plans against the USA. Their names were leaked to the terrorists who they gave up. It is not a good thing to be them.

That sounds like a pretty distorted version of what happened. I've certainly never seen any evidence that The Guardian reporters or anyone at Wikileaks was passing information to terrorists.

"The US is aware of sources, whose redacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by Wikileaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can't prove at this point that their disappearance was the result of being outed by Wikileaks."
**

Which just means that some of the people willing to turn in terrorists were killed probably because their names were given out by Assange, but it cannot be proven for each one beyond a doubt.

It can't be proven for -any- of these alleged people who the Lewis alleges disappeared. At this point, we don't even know how many people allegedly disappeared. Perhaps more importantly, we don't know if The Guardian reporters let the cat out of the bag first and Wikileaks just followed suit because they trusted that The Guardian reporters knew what they were doing.

It is like leaking radiation, and watching the cancer deaths go from 100 to 200. There is no way of proving which deaths were caused by the radiation leak, but it was probably about 100 deaths.

This is a lot different than leaking radiation. Everyone knows that leaking radiation is a bad thing and can kill people. Leaking documents and videos showing the dark side of the U.S. military industrial complex can have very positive effects, such as holding those responsible for these atrocities responsible. Surely you don't think it's a good thing that the U.S. military killed reporters and civilians because of sloppy work in identifying proper targets? Surely you don't think it's fine for U.S. military personnel to be using mosques for target practice?

 

[zymurgy]

If spies cannot spy for the USA without having their names released, then no one will warn us of the next terrorist attack.

if free people are not allowed to report accurately on what the government does in secrecy without treat of arrest the consequences are more dire than any terror by a terrorist

 

[Scott]

If spies cannot spy for the USA without having their names released, then no one will warn us of the next terrorist attack.

if free people are not allowed to report accurately on what the government does in secrecy without treat of arrest the consequences are more dire than any terror by a terrorist

Particularly when one looks at the evidence that governments have participated in some of the worst terrorist events.

 

[Walt]

if free people are not allowed to report accurately on what the government does in secrecy without treat of arrest the consequences are more dire than any terror by a terrorist

Are a free people served by having the bank account information of all veterans announced to the world? No, that just helps criminals steal from veterans. The government definitely has that information for direct deposits, but it is information best kept private.