From James Goodale:
The Wall Street Journal
Letters to the Editor
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
*We Should Support Julian Assange *
Floyd Abrams speculates as to the damage caused by publication of
classified information by WikiLeaks. He concludes such publication may
have already cost lives ("Don't Cry for Julian Assange," op-ed, Dec. 8.
See article below).
Mr. Abrams's article reminds me of Justice Byron White's speculation
about the leaked Pentagon Papers: "Revelation of these documents will do
substantial damage to public interests. Indeed, I am confident that
their disclosures will have that result."
It is now 40 years later, and no one has offered any proof that
publication of anything in the Pentagon Papers damaged national
security. Claims of damage to national security are routinely made when
classified information is leaked and published. Yet, to the best of my
knowledge, no such claims have ever been substantiated.
Mr. Abrams particularly excoriates WikiLeaks for publication of cables
covering Zimbabwe, Mexico and Ecuador. In fact, these cables were first
brought to light in El País and The Guardian. These newspapers and
WikiLeaks are entitled to the same protection under the First Amendment
because they have published the same information.
It is important for the First Amendment community to support Mr.
Assange. If Mr. Assange can be successfully prosecuted, other publishers
can be too.
*James C. Goodale*
/New York/
/Mr. Goodale was counsel to the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers
case. /
___________________________________
Floyd Abrams' Op-Ed
OPINION
<http://online.wsj.com/public/search?article-doc-type=%7BCommentary+%28U.S.%29%7D&HEADER_TEXT=commentary+%28u.s.>
DECEMBER 8, 2011
Don't Cry for Julian Assange
Julian Assange put many people at risk, which may have already cost lives.
By FLOYD ABRAMS
<http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=FLOYD+ABRAMS&bylinesearch=true>
The fall of WikiLeaks has come with startling swiftness. A year ago
millions viewed it as a vibrant, swashbuckling, hi-tech,
anti-establishment revealer of secrets. Now WikiLeaks has suspended
publication, and its founder and publisher, Julian Assange, has been
ordered extradited from England to Sweden to respond to questions about
alleged sexual assaults on two Swedish women.
The five newspapers to which WikiLeaks furnished hundreds of thousands
of confidential State Department and U.S. military documents jointly
announced they "deplored" its conduct in releasing the names of
vulnerable confidential sources of information.
There has been much to deplore.
Earlier this year the American ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, was
obliged to resign under Mexican pressure because his candid and quite
correct cables to Washington released by WikiLeaks had observed that the
Mexican army had been "risk averse" in pursuing drug traffickers.
Ecuador expelled U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges for her candid
assessment of the political situation there in cables released by
WikiLeaks. In Zimbabwe, the attorney general of Robert Mugabe's despotic
regime has stated that those leaders of his nation who spoke with the
U.S. embassy, as revealed by WikiLeaks, could face prosecution for
"treason."
In 2010, WikiLeaks released more than 77,000 confidential U.S. military
reports from Afghanistan, which included the names of over 100 Afghan
sources of information, placing them at risk of retaliation by the
Taliban. This was followed, just a few months ago, by WikiLeaks' release
of the full texts of over 251,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables,
many containing the names of individuals who had sought and been
promised confidentiality.
As summarized in London's Guardian newspaper, "several thousand
[documents were] labeled with a tag used by the U.S. to mark sources it
believes could be placed in danger, and more than 150 specifically
mentioned whistleblowers." References were, as well, made to "people
persecuted by their governments, victims of sex offenses and locations
of sensitive government installations and infrastructure."
This was the conduct that caused the five publications (Der Spiegel, El
Pais, Le Monde, the Guardian and the New York Times) that had published
WikiLeaks documents—but which had redacted them to avoid reference to
individuals who could be harmed by revealing their identities—to
denounce WikiLeaks. Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee
to Protect Journalists, warned that even a reference to a journalist "in
one of these cables can easily provide repressive governments with the
perfect opportunity to persecute or punish journalists and activists."
There is, of course, another side to WikiLeaks. It released the cables
of American diplomats in Tunisia commenting on the high level of
corruption there that is often credited with igniting the "Arab Spring."
It exposed a string of extrajudicial killings in Kenya, and much more.
But no amount of such revelations can justify or excuse WikLeaks'
persistent recklessness.
There was no justification for WikiLeaks' release of a four-page,
single-spaced cable, classified as secret, listing facilities around the
world, ranging from specified undersea communication lines to a
laboratory that makes smallpox vaccine, that the U.S. considers vital to
its national security. The same may be said of WikiLeaks' release of a
classified report describing the radio-frequency jammers used in Iraq by
American soldiers to cut off signals to remotely detonated explosives.
None of this means that if WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange were brought to
trial in this country that they would have no basis for claiming First
Amendment protection. They would and should. Whatever the legal result,
it would not absolve Mr. Assange of conduct that has put many people at
great risk, or indeed, may already have cost some of them their lives.
"When delicate information is at stake, great prudence is demanded so
that the information doesn't fall into the wrong hands and so that
people are not hurt," the German newspaper Die Welt commented upon
WikiLeaks' bulk release of unredacted State Department cables. That such
self-evident language seems alien to Julian Assange and to WikiLeaks
says it all.
Mr. Abrams is the author of "Speaking Freely: Trials of the First
Amendment" (Viking Penguin, 2005) and a senior partner in the firm of
Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP.
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