1. The Undeclared War against Wikileaks
By Larry M. Elkin
The U.S. government appears to be waging an undeclared war against Wikileaks and its
founder, Julian Assange, while media and other business interests either cheer the effort on or
run for cover.
This clash is setting some precedents that we may all live to regret.
The government is infuriated at Wikileaks' release of about a quarter-million secret messages
purloined from the State Department, following earlier disclosures of military material from
Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the leaks, particularly from the war zones, clearly jeopardized
individuals' personal safety or American security interests. Most of the recent disclosures,
however, merely confirm and add detail to things we already knew. We did not need Wikileaks
to tell us that the Arab states in the Persian Gulf were alarmed at the prospect of Iran obtaining
nuclear weapons.
Still, the officials responsible for safeguarding American secrets find it outrageous that a self-
appointed defender of the public's right to know has usurped their power to decide what
information should be released. Nobody in public office likes to have his or her authority
challenged.
But this is not merely about protecting official privilege. Assange probably would not lose any
sleep if one of his disclosures got an American intelligence source fired or killed. He is not
responsible for stopping weapons proliferation or terrorist attacks, and his conscience may not
be affected if a lot of people die after such efforts fail. From the viewpoint of officialdom, what
Wikileaks is doing actually is outrageous.
At moments like this, when emotions run high, we do well to remember
that there are also other principles and other points of view. The Wall
Street Journal's editorial page lost sight of this when it essentially called
for Assange to be assassinated.(1)
"If he were exposing Chinese or Russian secrets, he would already have
died at the hands of some unknown assailant," the newspaper wrote.
"As a foreigner (Australian citizen) engaged in hostile acts against the
U.S., Mr. Assange is certainly not protected from U.S. reprisal under
the laws of war."
The Journal lost an excellent, dedicated journalist named Daniel Pearl when he was beheaded
in 2002 after trying to interview jihadist leaders in Pakistan. Julian Assange is no Daniel Pearl,
but he, too, exposes himself to powerful and hostile interests to bring information to the
2. public. So did most of the 39 journalists that a compilation by the Committee to Protect
Journalists lists as killed this year.
The Wall Street Journal, more than any other entity I can think of, ought to abhor extra-judicial
killings of people who disseminate information, no matter what title appears on their business
cards.
Meanwhile, Wikileaks' technical and financial infrastructure has been under relentless attack,
since just before it released the first batch of State Department documents on the night of Nov.
28.
The organization's Swedish servers were targeted in a "distributed denial of service" attack,
typically used by hackers or extortionists who command legions of hijacked "zombie"
computers to overwhelm a targeted website. Wikileaks, however, is not a typical commercial
target; the attack made sense only for political reasons. Similar assaults have been mounted by
Russian operatives against former Soviet satellites that ran afoul of the Kremlin.
In this case, the party with the obvious motive is Uncle Sam. But, so far, no American or allied
fingerprints have been found. It is also conceivable that another government that wanted to
avoid inconvenient disclosures might have staged the attack.
Nevertheless, Wikileaks was forced to migrate its servers to a more robust platform offered by
Amazon.com. That only lasted a few days, however, before Amazon buckled to political
pressure in the form of congressional inquiries, notably from Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.
Amazon's decision "should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute
its illegally seized material," Lieberman said in a statement.(2)
Suppose someone assembles the State Department documents in book form. Should Amazon,
or other vendors, be pressured or prohibited from selling the book if the U.S. government
argues that the material was "illegally seized?" The First Amendment would prevent the
government from outlawing the book, but Amazon's reaction shows that pressure may suffice
to get results that the law itself cannot produce.
Days after Amazon evicted Wikileaks from its physical home, the organization lost its
cyberspace address when another U.S. firm canceled the Wikileaks.org domain name. That
firm, Everydns, also came under pressure from Lieberman. Wikileaks became temporarily
inaccessible until it secured a Swiss address, Wikileaks.ch.
There have also been concerted efforts to cut off the Wikileaks money supply. PayPal became
the third U.S. company to run from the organization when it suspended Wikileaks' account. The
company said in a blog post that Wikileaks violated a PayPal policy that prohibits use of the
money-transfer service to "encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal
activity." Mastercad and Visa followed suit by cutting off processing for Wikileaks.
3. Wikileaks has not been found to have broken any law. Of course, the person who leaked the
documents - suspected to be U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning - may have done so, but if
Wikileaks is responsible for its sources' disclosures, then so is any news organization. Would
PayPal, Mastercard or Visa cut off The New York Times for reporting on leaked secrets?
Not this time. But we have been down this road before, and in other situations, the traditional
press has had the role that Wikileaks is playing today.
"Quit making national heroes out of those who steal secrets and publish them in the
newspaper," President Richard Nixon said at the height of the Pentagon Papers controversy. His
administration went to court to block The New York Times from publishing the secret Vietnam
history leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called Ellsberg "the most
dangerous man in America," which became the title of a documentary about the case last year.
After warning The Washington Post's management that there would be financial repercussions
for joining The Times in publishing the papers, the Nixon administration orchestrated a
challenge to the Post's licenses for five television stations. (The challenge ultimately failed.)
The Obama administration is likewise rattling every saber it can get its hands on, for reasons
that are not entirely clear. The Wikileaks documents have been disseminated electronically to
every corner of the globe. What sense is there in warning Columbia University students not to
link to the documents or comment on them, for fear of not getting hired by the State
Department after college? Or instructing federal workers and contractors not to read the
Wikileaks documents online, because they are still classified? The Pentagon Papers, which are
available in their entirety, are still classified, also. Are government workers who read the history
of the Vietnam War also subject to punishment?
Still, Attorney General Eric Holder regularly intones that the publication
of the Wikileaks papers was illegal, though he cites no particular law on
the subject. There has been some speculation that Wikileaks could be
prosecuted for possessing stolen government documents. If Wikileaks
can be prosecuted on those grounds, so could everyone involved in
publishing the material Ellsberg leaked.
Assange himself is likewise the target of an apparently coordinated
campaign to bring him to heel. Assange was arrested and held without
bail in the United Kingdom on a Swedish warrant that, according to
Assange's attorneys, relates to sexual relations Assange had with two
women who purportedly asked him to stop when his condoms failed. While Assange may need
to get better at his bedroom skills, it is fair to ask whether these alleged sexual assaults would
get international attention if Assange had not made so many enemies in high places.
A useful principle could come out of all this. If I make something a secret, it is my responsibility
to keep it secret. I don't get to tell it to hundreds of thousands of people, including low-level
Army personnel who have no need to know any of this, and still make it a crime when the
4. secrets get out - and especially not a crime for which people that merely learn the secrets,
rather than actively take them, can be held responsible.
This is the approach that makes journalism possible. Anything else reduces the press to a mere
conduit for government statements. This would suit many government officials, but would not
suit any society that calls itself democratic and self-governing.
The war against Wikileaks is a war against the press. The press just hasn't realized it yet.
