Caitlin Johnstone: “Should journalists be jailed for exposing US war crimes? Yes or no?”
Humanity Is Making A Very Important Decision When It Comes To Assange -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/01/humanity-is-making-a-very-important-choice-when-it-comes-to-assange/ ... “Should journalists be jailed for exposing US war crimes? Yes or no?” Debunking The Smear That Assange Recklessly Published Unredacted Documents -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02/26/debunking-the-smear-that-assange-recklessly-published-unredacted-documents/ This is a new section for my newly updated ongoing mega-article Debunking All The Assange Smears, a resource for debating 30 of the most common smears against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Use it, share it, and let me know if there’s anything you think should be changed or added. https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/debunking-all-the-assange-smears-a549fd677cac The prosecution in the Assange extradition trial has falsely alleged that WikiLeaks recklessly published unredacted files in 2011 which endangered people’s lives. In reality the Pentagon admitted that no one was harmed as a result of the leaks during the Manning trial, and the unredacted files were actually published elsewhere as the result of a Guardian journalist recklessly included a real password in a book about WikiLeaks. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-2/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/bradley-manning-sentencing-hearing-pentagon ... As Assange’s defense highlighted during the trial, the unredacted publications were the result of a password being published in a book by Guardian reporters Luke Harding and David Leigh, the latter of whom worked with Assange in the initial publications of the Manning leaks. https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/1232274807447789568 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/10/assa-a10.html WikiLeaks reported that it didn’t speak publicly about Leigh’s password publication for several months to avoid drawing attention to it, https://wikileaks.org/Guardian-journalist-negligently.html but broke its silence when they learned a German weekly called Freitag was preparing a story about it. There’s footage of Assange calling the US State Department trying to warn of an imminent security breach at the time, but they refused to escalate the call. https://youtu.be/57Hqfq0rwXI It wasn’t long after that that the full unredacted archive was published on a website called Cryptome, where it still exists in its unredacted form today, completely free from prosecution. It wasn’t until the leaks were forced into the public, at the initiation of Leigh’s password shenanigans, that WikiLeaks published them in their unredacted form. https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/1232277804546482183 Assange’s US criminal defense lawyer Barry Pollack said in a press conference after the second day of the extradition trial being held at Belmarsh Prison: “What was laid out in great detail in court today was that the United States government making this extradition request claimed that Julian Assange intentionally published names of sources without redaction. We learned today that the United States government knew all along that that wasn’t true. That when others were about to publish those names without redaction, Julian Assange called the State Department to warn the State Department that others were about to publish, and pleaded with the State Department to take whatever action was necessary to protect those sources. The idea that the United States government is seeking extradition of Julian Assange when it, the United States government, failed to take any action is really unfathomable. I think we will learn more as this trial goes on that the United States government simply has not disclosed, in the extradition request, the underlying facts.” https://twitter.com/DEAcampaign/status/1232306677162049536?s=20 ...
