Superseding Indictment of Julian Assange 6/24/2020 [Jim Bell's comment: For nearly 20 years, I've wondered why "superseding" isn't spelled "superceding". ] https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1289641/download
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-charged-superseding-indictment "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEWednesday, June 24, 2020 WikiLeaks Founder Charged in Superseding Indictment New Allegations Assert Assange Conspired With “Anonymous” Affiliated Hackers, Among Others A federal grand jury returned a second superseding indictment today charging Julian P. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that relate to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States. The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019. It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged. According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks." [end of partial quote] Jim Bell's comments follow:Somehow, I suspect that many the government attorneys handling this case hadn't even been born when the Supreme Court issued its opinion in the "Pentagon Papers" case in 1971. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers "The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study; they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971.[1][2] A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress."[3] "More specifically, the papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with the bombings of nearby Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, as well as Marine Corps attacks, none of which were reported in the mainstream media.[4] For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were later dismissed after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.[5][6]"[end of quote from Wikipedia] Here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States the Supreme Court ruled that it would not 'enjoin' the New York Times from publishing its articles. >From later in this wikipedia article: Concurring opinions[edit] Justice Hugo Black wrote an opinion that elaborated on his view of the absolute superiority of the First Amendment: [T]he injunction against The New York Times should have been vacated without oral argument when the cases were first presented... . [E]very moment's continuance of the injunctions ... amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment. ... The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. ... [W]e are asked to hold that ... the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws ... abridging freedom of the press in the name of 'national security.' ... To find that the President has 'inherent power' to halt the publication of news ... would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make 'secure.' ... The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security... . The Framers of the First Amendment, fully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonial governments, sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged.[13]
