The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

So, now we’re finding out about how many thousands of documents, e-mails, diplomatic cables, and items of gossip about foreign pooh-bahs have been officially classified and labeled “Secret.” WikiLeaks has given 250,000 such missives to The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El Pais, and posted those that would not compromise anyone’s security on the WikiLeaks internet site, thus returning them to their original owner, “We the People.”

Some folks at the Pentagon said that the leaked documents were nothing new or sensitive and we needn’t bother reading them. Ah so, the purloined papers should have been stamped “Embarrassing” rather than ”Secret.”

Various politicians in both Congress and the White House, however, have screamed terrorist and traitor. Some in the media have publicly called for the head of Julian Assange, the leader of WikiLeaks. Literally! Senator Dianne Feinstein of CA. is asking for prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917, originally enacted to suppress dissent against US entry into WWI. The Air Force has blocked all its computers from accessing the WikiLeaks website and advised all personnel not to look at it on their home computers. Lucky for WikiLeaks that the Pentagon employs no one with an advanced degree in witchcraft to place a curse on the website.

The School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University was contacted by the State Department to warn students to avoid linking to WikiLeaks’ website and, certainly, to post no comments. The students and faculty raised enough furor about academic independence that the State Department backed down. Assange, made 250,000 documents available to the media of five countries, and so, acted an investigative reporter/editor in the tradition of Daniel Ellsberg who blew the whistle on The Pentagon Papers. In fact, Ellsberg supports the work of Assange and says that in 1971 he encountered the same lynch mob frenzy. You may recall that at the time, Henry Kissinger called Ellsberg “The most dangerous man in America.”

The Department of Justice, at this very moment, is asking a Grand Jury in [reactionary] Alexandria, VA. to indict Julian Assange for espionage so they can ask Interpol to put out a warrant for his arrest. Watch out Attorney General Holder, you may then have to indict the NY Times as a co-conspirator for  providing material aid to a terrorist. Second, if you ask the help of Interpol, you will be recognizing their authority to go after Dick Cheney who stands accused of corruption and bribery in Nigeria. Well, you could always hide the former vice president at Guantanamo where even the Red Cross has no access.

With all the spin, distortions, and calls to kill the messenger, no one is suggesting we go after those guilty of torture, assassination, collusion, corruption, cover-ups or claiming that Sarah Palin can’t really see Russia from her front porch. Nor have any of our 16 different intelligence services been able to show that any of the 250,000 released documents are untrue or less than authentic. Lots of embarrassment to go around.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange has been detained in Britain at the request of Sweden and is under house arrest on 240£ (pound-sterling) bail(less than 1£ for each document leaked?). Actually he wasn’t detained; he turned himself over to the authorities. He is not even charged by Swedish authorities who say they only want to question him. So, why doesn’t Sweden just send an interrogator to Britain — someone who is fluent in Australian-accented English?

Is the US the wizard behind the curtains? The Establishment in Washington, DC would love to detain Assange indefinitely in a dark prison cell with no access to a computer. But it knows that in Britain, The Guardian was given access to the first 250,000 leaked documents and surely wants to publish the juiciest of the next 250,000. Great Britain would not likely extradite Assange to the Colonies. Nor does the new government in the UK want to face protests outside of Ten Downing Street. The Gadfly Revelry & Research team has heard from reliable sources that the White House is attempting an end run around the British antipathy to the US that dates back to 1776. They are leaning on Sweden to charge Assange with rape of two women [who invited his sexual attentions]. Assange, the serial rapist, surely is a terrorist who could then be extradited to the US from Sweden. Never mind that he has been accused of unprotected sex, not rape.

If the US had Assange in hand, there might be a quibble from the ACLU about First Amendment rights, but the endless War on Terror and our need for national security would be enough reason for First Amendment reform. The nerve of that shameless Aussie, treating embarrassing diplomatic cables like secrets that are either not worth keeping or too good to keep. As to holding anyone responsible for war crimes and for grand larceny of government funds, let us go forward and not look back.