Assange Verdict a ‘Severe Blow to Press Freedom’: An Interview with Noam Chomsky

Though WikiLeaks’ founder will not be extradited to the U.S, the America-led war on the press goes on. In an exclusive interview with Brazilian journalist Edu Montesanti, Chomsky strongly opposes Washington’s accusation that the Australian journalist poses a threat to American security, stating: “The persecution of Assange is politically motivated.”

British Judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked Julian Assange’s extradition from the U.K to the U.S., last January the 4th. She found that because U.S. prison conditions are so deleterious, it would be unjust and oppressive to extradite the WikiLeaks founder. The Australian journalist’s defense claims that U.S. prison conditions, including solitary confinement, Special Administrative Measures, and extreme restrictions at ADX Florence, would drive Assange to suicide.

Assange, who remains in custody at Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh in south-east London, is facing up to 175 years in prison for publishing, in 2010, U.S. government documents that exposed war crimes and human rights abuses.

Through some 251,287 diplomatic cables, more than 400,000 classified U.S. army reports from the Iraq War, and 90,000 from the War in Afghanistan – with extracts first published by The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El País -, WikiLeaks revealed uncounted civilian casualties by the U.S. military; rampant U.S. corruption all over the world; spying on and boycotting democratic governments; and the dirty politics inside several countries. A list of WikiLeaks’ most important revelations is provided at the end of this report.

Defense lawyer Ed Fitzgerald said the “natural consequences” of the judge’s ruling, which ordered Assange’s discharge, “must be that he regains his liberty, at least conditionally.” Assange’s lawyer argued, too, that since October 2019, WikiLeaks founder is detained solely on the basis of the U.S. extradition request. “Now that the judge has ruled against extradition, there is no more reason to keep him in prison,” the lawyer pointed out.

Two days after having blocked the Australian journalist’s extradition, the Londoner judge denied Assange’s bail application, keeping him under arrest at Belmarsh.

According to American dissident, linguist, philosopher, and author Noam Chomsky the court decision was a disgrace, and because of the precedents, it gets dangerous. “The decision makes it possible to regard Assange as mentally ill, so what he released to the public can be dismissed as the productions of a sick mind,” says Chomsky.

“Ray of Light for Julian”

“Personal victory for Julian, which is great. Another severe blow to freedom of the press because of the nature of the verdict,” adds Chomsky, who co-chairs the Assange Defense Committee.

By condemning Assange’s WikiLeaks, all other journalists across the globe are at risk, too, setting a too very dangerous precedent allowing the U.S. government to decide what gets published, and who should be prosecuted in an American court by simply practicing journalism. This is already happening elsewhere, to a certain degree, at YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

As Irish journalist Patrick Cockburn once observed: a “monopoly control of sensitive state information” is at stake.

“There was one ray of light: Assange will not be sent to rot for the rest of his life in a U.S. prison,” rejoices Chomsky, despite everything.

Journalism as a Crime

The British judge summarized, too, her lengthy opinion and the arguments at WikiLeaks, strongly condemning Assange’s job. “The rest of Baraitser’s decision was a complete capitulation to the U.S.  Every U.S. government charge is accepted without comment, however absurd. The detailed refutations in defense testimony are totally ignored,” regrets Chomsky to this report.

Undermining the U.S. First Amendment protections of a free press, Judge Baraitser exposed her view on WikiLeaks’ job this way, considered highly dangerous by experts like Chomsky himself, and several lawyers in the U.S. and abroad. Some of Judge Baraitser’s points:

• Assange’s conduct “went beyond that of a journalist” in agreeing to help Chelsea Manning crack a password and in telling her that “curious eyes never run dry,” encouraging her to leak more files;
• The release of unredacted cables was “indiscriminate”;
• Defense arguments about Assange’s political opinions were “extraneous”;
• There was insufficient evidence that the charges were “pressurized” by the Trump Administration and instead showed healthy internal debate;
• Though the intelligence community has harshly criticized WikiLeaks, it doesn’t speak for the administration;
• It isn’t the U.K. court’s place to comment on the case of UC Global spying on Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, as it doesn’t have access to court documents in the case against UC Global in Spain;
• On whether it would be oppressive to extradite: I accepted Professor Kopelman opinion that Mr. Assange suffers from a recurrent depressive disorder, that Assange has suicidal ideation, and would be ‘single-minded’ in an attempt to end his life;
• Potential conditions in a U.S. prison: C.I.A. views Assange as hostile, still a security risk; Assange likely to be sent to ADX Florence, would be held in serious isolation;
• The purpose of Special Administrative Measures is to minimize communications, and prisoners have extreme limitations. These conditions were considered by all experts to have a deleterious impact on Assange’s mental health;
• Assange has the intellect and determination to follow through with suicidal ideation;
• Therefore I rule it would be unjust to extradite Mr. Assange. The U.S. has the right to appeal.

Noam Chomsky says he would not be surprised if we learn someday that Judge Baraitser made the decision not to extradite Assange as a favor to President Biden, who will be spared the embarrassment of an international scandal over a life sentence for the Australian journalist.

“We may perhaps attribute these judicial proceedings to the ‘special relationship, the euphemism for Britain’s decline from the leading global power to a vassal of its successor in this ugly role,” Chomsky points out.

According to Cockburn, “WikiLeaks did what all journalists should do, which is to make important information available to the public, enabling them to make evidence-based judgments on the world around them, their governments and state crimes.”

Former C.I.A. agent and whistleblower John Kiriakou said in an interview with this journalist, in December of 2018: “Assange did not steal the information. He was simply provided the information, which he then made public.”

Shortly after the London hearing last January, Washington stated, however, the American regime would appeal Judge Beraitser’s decision. The U.S. Justice Department said it was “extremely disappointed” by the British judge’s ruling, adding: “We will continue to seek Mr. Assange’s extradition.”

“My guess is that, secretly, the Justice Department was quite pleased with the ruling, and may find some pretext to let it rest – perhaps concurring in the judgment that Assange suffers from psychiatric problems,” Noam Chomsky observes. He states that “Assange’s crime is to have performed the work of a serious journalist: to provide the public with critical information that the US government does not want them to have.”

“Julian Assange is a journalist. He should never have been charged with a crime,” told Kiriakou, also a member at Assange Defense, in his interview with this author.

“By demonizing the messenger, governments seek to poison the message,”  wrote Chomsky to The Independent.

State Enemy

Former State Secretary Mike Pompeo slammed WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” adding that “we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.”

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, in April of 2017, that prosecuting Assange is a “priority” for him.

Former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and then-Vice President Joe Biden called Assange a “terrorist.”

Despite having declined to prosecute Assange, the Obama administration was the one that most pursued whistleblowers in U.S. history.

Espionage Act: U.S. War on Journalism

“The declaration of war came today. This is a historic day, and a very challenging one for American democracy.”

Prosecutors in northern Virginia charged Julian Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917, with conspiring to commit unlawful computer intrusion, based on his alleged agreement to try to help Chelsea Manning break an encoded portion of passcode that would have permitted her to log on to a classified military network under another user’s identity.    

Manning took complete responsibility for her actions and said that Assange had not pushed her to take them. “No one associated with W.L.O. [the WikiLeaks organization] pressured me into sending any more information,” she said at the time. “I take full responsibility,” the former U.S. military member said in a court in 2013.

The Assange case is the first time the Espionage Act has been used against a journalist for not only publishing classified information posing a serious threat to U.S. security but also, according to the accusation, for putting at risk WikiLeaks’s sources.

“Obama’s record in this regard was shameful. The Espionage Act was enacted during World War I to punish spies. It has not been tested in court, and might well be ruled unconstitutional if it were,” points out Chomsky.

According to U.S. lawyer and civil liberties advocate, Ben Wizner at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), any prosecution of Assange for WikiLeaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional. “It would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations,” Wizner fears.

“Obama broke new ground by using it more than all previous administrations combined, not against spies but against ‘leakers’ who were releasing classified material to the public,” remembers Chomsky.

U.S. human rights lawyer Carey Shenkman observed, during his testimony last September in the London Court: “What is now concluded, by journalists and publishers generally, is that any journalist in any country on earth – in fact, any person – who conveys secrets that do not conform to the policy positions of the U.S. administration can be shown now to be liable to be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917.”

State against Citizens

The U.S.’s main allegation is that WikiLeaks poses a threat to the country’s national security.

Chomsky refutes this thesis, arguing: “In theory, the material is classified for ‘security reasons.’ But inspection of the rich record of declassified material shows that the ‘security’ in question is very commonly security of state power from its domestic enemy, the domestic population.” He adds, “These annoying creatures have to be kept in the dark about what is being done in their name, though not in their interest.”

Chomsky’s exposition above makes us remember Pentagon spokesman, Geoff Morrell, who instead of commenting on U.S. military tortures at Guantanamo Bay detention then revealed by WikiLeaks, blamed Assange-led association for the revelations. “It is unfortunate that several news organizations have made the decision to publish numerous documents obtained illegally by WikiLeaks concerning the Guantanamo detention facility,” said Morrell.

Yet according to Noam Chomsky, the basic facts have not escaped scholarship. “Forty years ago,” the scholar points, “the distinguished political scientist and government adviser Samuel Huntington, Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard, wrote that ‘The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.'”

For Chomsky, it is clear that Obama understood that principle well. “Perhaps he learned it in his days as a student at Harvard,” regrets the American professor of Linguistic.

The security Julian Assange is accused of having threatened, “undermining” its so-called democratic processes, is the very system WikiLeaks founder himself, in a bitter irony, has proven to be a total lie.

Media against Journalism

The world media (including so-called alternative media to a large extent) from which the public should expect the strongest voice of support for Julian Assange, seems to have forgotten in its reports and editorials the cruel truths brought to light by WikiLeaks and has maintained silence.

“The American media,” observes Chomsky, “like those in other countries was happy to use materials provided by WikiLeaks, but turned their backs on Assange and joined – often led – the attacks designed to discredit him.”

According to the Assange Defense movement’s leader, the British media, on balance, has been even more cowardly and sometimes descended to mere vulgarity. “That includes media tolerance of the torture of Assange over the years, which I need not review. His brutal persecution is an international scandal.”

“No less shameful is the fact that many of those who eagerly use his revelations are not rising to defend him,” Chomsky says, noting that the basic integrity of a free and independent press is under attack in this disgraceful performance.

The King Is Naked

Interestingly, the mainstream international media has not only turned its back on Assange but has also perpetuated an old, well-known line that goes against WikiLeaks’s very publications, in favor of the establishment in several cases.

In the case of the so-called alternative media, very selective in reverberating WikiLeaks while from the beginning it rejoiced in the endless revelations about the too very rogue American Empire, and the global right-wing politics, it never considered the “pranks” of its pet politicians, the so-boasted progressives in several countries – including Brazil under the Workers’ Party government, considered the supreme of the Latin American Left – behind the scenes regarding its policies, both domestic and foreign affairs (list at the end of the report).

Assange laid bare the backstage of global politics, without any political-party distinction. The King, suddenly, was exposed naked in the most diverse corners of the planet. Yet the media, in general, has just revealed its true face, opting to completely undress with local power owners and, parading naked, embrace its old kings instead of, in the name of the truth, crowning the good practice of Assange’s independent and combative journalism that turned the world upside down.

“At best, public debate over the real issues will be derailed; at worst, public opinion will be manipulated in favor of the establishment,” wrote Chomsky in The Independent in September of 2020.

World media has been surely cooperating for the worst scenario considered by Noam Chomsky in this interview.

Inverted Roles

Detention for U.S. criminals due to their war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracies to overthrow legitimate governments across the globe all are impossible to deny since Assange took action.

“The first duty of the press,” Robert Lowe wrote in 1852, “is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation.”

Nothing could be more relevant than Lowe’s observations almost two centuries ago – and the whole world is aware of it thanks to Julian Assange, who states: “The statesman collects his information secretly and by secret means; he keeps back even the current intelligence of the day with ludicrous precautions.”

Free Press Means Free Assange

“Julian Assange shouldn’t be the subject of a grand jury hearing; he should be given a medal. He’s contributing to democracy,” Chomsky is used to saying. Chomsky, a humanitarian in the deepest sense of the term, points out that the only national security issue that arises is the protection of state power from exposure to the citizenry.

“The persecution of Assange for this ‘security violation’ is politically motivated, virtually by definition,” the expert remarks.

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson immediately reacted to Judge Beraitser’s comments before the testimony began, asking the defense how the outcome of the U.S. presidential election would affect the Assange case, and indicating that she had hoped to issue a ruling before the election day:

“Judge Baraitser has acknowledged what has been clear since even before the first indictment against Julian Assange was unsealed: this is a politically motivated prosecution.”

“If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth,” Assange is used to saying.

Julian Assange must be freed and has to publish again in order continue to shed the light of the truth on the fakeness of American democracy, U.S. war crimes, and what really happens behind the scenes in world politics.

Journalism is not a crime. Free Assange, free press for truth and democracy.

A Compilation of Highlighted Facts Exposed by WikiLeaks

U.S. war crimes. Collateral Murder: Classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff;

Baghdad War Diary (Iraq War Logs): The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 ‘civilians’; 23,984 ‘enemy’ (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 ‘host nation’ (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 ‘friendly’ (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) are civilian deaths. That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six-year period (January of 2004-December of 2010);

Afghan War Diary: Reports written by soldiers and intelligence officers, primarily describing lethal military actions involving the United States military; it also includes intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related details.

U.S. military tortures at Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. espionage. Vault 7: CIA hacking tools revealed. 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley. “Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal, and dozens of “zero-day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

U.S.’s secret invasion of Syria in the years previous to the so-called “Syrian Spring.” The Washington regime funded President Bashar al-Assad’s political opponents, part of the local media and cultural activities: From 2005 to 2010, US$ 12 billion.

U.S. secretly backed rebel leaders behind the 2011 uprising in Egypt. 

U.S. meddling in Haiti affairs. Washington secretly worked against raising Haiti’s minimal wage to five dollars in 2008/2009, due to U.S. interest in Haitian free zones for textiles; cables mysteriously removed.

U.S. interference in Brazil’s politics. Judge Sergio Moro, his colleagues/Public Ministry’s subordinated officials who persecuted and jailed former President Lula, and other members of the corrupted Brazilian Justice system, trained by the Washington regime, on the U.S. territory;

Then-Vice President Michel Temer, who succeeded Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, was a C.I.A. informant on the eve of the coup that overthrew President Rousseff;

Allied to Brazilian opposition, U.S. Embassy in Brasilia sought information about Brazil’s Workers’ Party’s government members, and Washington alliance with Workers’ Party’s opposition, revealing, too, how especially Brazilian Social-Democratic Party (PSDB) would favor Washington’s interests once in power. Evidence: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here;

U.S. Embassy in Brasilia surveilled Brazil’s largest social movement for agrarian reform, Landless Workers Movement, here and here.

U.S. interference in Brazil’s mainstream media. “Large media outlets such as O Estado de S. Paulo, the O Globo media outlets, and Veja magazine, were they to focus on this issue, could raise the public concern, particularly among the elite. [This diplomatic] Mission has had significant success in placing interviews and op-eds by senior USG officials and respected academics. Visits by experts or senior USG officials would be excellent opportunities to address this question with the press.”

“Mass spying by governments“. Revelation of a world system of mass espionage carried out by governments of different countries on cell phones, computers, and also on the social media profiles of their citizens. The practice, says the document, is adopted by at least 25 nations through 160 intelligence companies.

So-called progressive Latin American governments begging U.S. blessings. Workers’ Party’s Brazil, especially then-President Lula’s “strongman”, then-Minister Jose Dirceu, secretly accounting before U.S. “diplomats” (contradicting, in some cases, what he and then-President Lula used to public say): secret cables here, here, and here. The following secret cable is a particular case, as Jose Dirceu supports the creation of FTTA, something the Workers’ Party publicly, strongly opposed: “Dirceu took the opportunity to state his desire that the FTAA talks move forward, repeatedly declaring that Brazil should export at least four times more to the U.S. than it currently does. (…)  Dirceu said that next month both he and Palocci would seek to talk to President Lula about this.”

Then-President Lula’s secretly praising, and protecting the Brazilian bloodshed military dictatorship (1964-1985) from being investigated for their crimes against civilians and political opponents. “Praise recalls comments by then-candidate Lula da Silva in 2002, who credited the same military government that jailed him with pursuing strategic planning that benefited the country” (here); “President Lula, mindful of the need for smooth relations with the military and the importance of moving forward with his policy agenda, is in no hurry to open the dictatorship’s files” (here); “President Lula gave his support to Jobim’s view [then-Defense Minister, a former military advocating for not investigating the military dictatorship] and declared that the matter [investigation of the military dicatroship] was “closed” (here).

Argentina’s then-President Cristina Kirchner worked with the United States to moderate Evo Morales, here.

‘Progressive’ Latin American governments stuck in corruption. Lula got bribes to purchase the French fighter aircraft Rafale, and suspected of having got bribes to purchase French submarines, too. In a secret cable, U.S. Ambassador in Brazil commented on it: “Brazil is an astonishingly corrupt country. (…) We can’t do any real business because of it in a corrupt place like Brazil. (…) It is our assessment that this is purely about bribes and the French using strategies they have applied in the past here in Brazil. (…) I mean is it a coincidence that they are buying so much French stuff? The French know how to bribe”;

“Widespread corruption in Cuba.” Here and here;

Current Pope Francis (then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio) secretly supported the Kirchners’ opponents in Argentina and was a close partner of the too bloodshed military dictatorship (1976-1983), several Wikileaks cables mysteriously removed.

Spy Files Russia. This release includes 209 documents (34 base documents in different versions) dated between 2007 and 2015. Russia’s laws – especially the new Yarovaya Law – make literally no distinction between Lawful Interception and mass surveillance by state intelligence authorities (SIAs) without court orders. Russian communication providers are required by Russian law to install the so-called SORM ( Система Оперативно-Розыскных Мероприятий) components for surveillance provided by the FSB at their own expense. The SORM infrastructure is developed and deployed in Russia with close cooperation between the FSB, the Interior Ministry of Russia and Russian surveillance contractors.