For the past two days, Chris Hedges has been watching the extradition hearing for Julian Assange via video link from London. The United States is appealing a lower court ruling that denied the US’ request to extradite Assange not, unfortunately, because in the eyes of the court he is innocent of a crime, but because, as Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January concluded, Assange’s precarious psychological state would deteriorate given the “harsh conditions” of the inhumane US prison system, “causing him to commit suicide.” The United States has charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of trying to hack into a government computer, charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years.
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people …
The General Assembly,
Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples …
— preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
A few days back, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was angered by ambassadors from ten western countries — US, Germany, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden — who called for the release of Osman Kavala. Originally, Erdogan declared, “These 10 ambassadors must be declared persona non grata at once.” Eventually, Erdoğan would backtrack.
Kavala, often described as a philanthropist in western media, was arrested on 1 November 2017 and charged with “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” and “attempting to overthrow the government” in connection with the Gezi Park protests. Afterwards, Kavala was imprisoned in the maximum-security facility Silivri near Istanbul.
He was acquitted in February 2020, but soon after charged with involvement in the 15 June 2016 coup attempt. Kavala was also cleared of this accusation, but he was kept in jail on the charge of “political or military espionage.”
The incarceration of Kavala bears similarities with that of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. However, a glaring difference stands out.
No western governments have spoken out for the human rights of Assange, including his native country, Australia.
However, the United Nations Human Rights Commission did have something to say. Its expert on torture, Nils Melzer, said,
The evidence is overwhelming and clear, Mr. Assange has been deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture.
But western governments have been unmoved by such damning news. One might well surmise a tacit condonation among them for torture when carried out by western countries.
Assange is a philanthropist! His sacrifice through WikiLeaks, to inform people of the machinations of their governments (and without error), has thoroughly demonstrated this. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was revealing the CIA hacking tools and extremely notoriously, for the United States and its military, the video Collateral Murder.
If you don’t understand German turn on the subtitles.
The British court, though, blocked his extradition to the US over concerns for Assange’s mental health and his risk of suicide. Nonetheless, the US appealed. Britain, for some inexplicable reason that defines logic and morality, returned a man who their judge deemed was at mental risk back to — what the UN torture expert said were conditions of “psychological torture” — the high-security Belmarsh Prison.
*****
Of course, justice and human rights must be for all. Kavala must receive justice. Assange must receive justice.
Currently, the US is awaiting a decision from Britain’s High Court on its appeal against the denial of Assange’s extradition by a lower court. The US is pressing ahead with the appeal despite the revelation subsequent to the lower court’s decision that the CIA informer, Sigurdur Thordarson, is a clinically diagnosed sociopath with a history of criminal activity who admitted to lying against Assange.
Human rights are for everyone. It is not just an obligation of governments to abide by their signature on the UNHDR; it is the duty of people of conscience to hold their governments to account, to do what they can to protect Julian Assange and any other wrongfully imprisoned or oppressed people.
On 27 and 28 October, the UK High Court was scheduled to hear further submissions regarding the US’s attempt to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The US department of justice charged Assange with 18 offences, 17 of which come under the Espionage Act. In January 2021, judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that the charges were valid. However, she also ruled that Assange shouldn’t be extradited for health reasons and because there was a risk he could end his life.
The prosecution appealed against the latter ruling and Assange’s defence subsequently offered a rebuttal to their objections. Journalists Kevin Gosztola and Mohamed Elmaazi summarised the prosecution’s five objections as follows:
the district judge improperly applied the United Kingdom’s extradition law; the district judge should have sought assurances from the U.S. government after she decided to deny the request; the district judge ought to have disqualified a key psychiatric expert; the district judge erred when considering evidence of suicide risk; and the U.K. government was issued a package of assurances that address the problems the district judge detailed in her decision.
Detention facilities
The prosecution listed a number of ‘assurances’ regarding the kind of prison regime Assange would face if extradited.
One such assurance was that Assange would not be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and a human rights centre at Yale Law School published a report on SAMs in 2017. CCR explains that:
SAMs are the darkest corner of the U.S. federal prison system, combining the brutality and isolation of maximum-security units with additional restrictions that deny individuals almost any connection to the human world. Those restrictions include gag orders on prisoners, their family members, and their attorneys, effectively shielding this extreme use of government power from public view.
Another assurance was that Assange wouldn’t be detained in the super-max prison ADX Florence. In September 2020, Gosztola commented:
if Assange was convicted and wound up in what is known as the H Block at ADX Florence, he would be housed in what has been described as the “only known black site on American soil,” or as Alan Prendergast put it for Westword, “A black hole, a void where men are slowly buried alive in layers of isolation until they vanish entirely.”
Even harsher
Instead, prosecution lawyer James Lewis claimed Assange would likely be detained in a Communications Management Unit (CMU). The prosecution maintains that this is a less harsh form of detention. And he added that Assange could even serve out his sentence, if found guilty, in an Australian prison.
Edward Fitzgerald QC for the defence accused the prosecution of trying to “minimise the severity of Mr Assange’s mental disorder and suicide risk”. As for the Australian option, it’s reported that has not been agreed, and if it was it could take a ‘decade’ to organise.
Gosztola and Elmaazi explain that if Assange was detained in a CMU:
he would likely be limited to two scheduled 15-minute phone calls per week. Those calls could be restricted to immediate family, and the prison could deny him a call if an FBI agent was not available to monitor his conversation.
The visitation policy for a prisoner in a CMU is harsher than the policy for SAMs. Contact visits are not allowed, meaning Moris and his children, Gabriel and Max, would not be able to hug or kiss him.
Speedy trial?
Gosztola and Elmaazi also addressed the issue of a “speedy trial” raised by the prosecution:
Lewis put forward a rosy but unrealistic scenario, where Assange’s legal team could apply for a “speedy trial,” challenge the prosecution on First Amendment grounds, and then Assange would prevail and go free.
They add:
The only way Assange would have his “speedy trial” rights respected is if he pleaded guilty to the charges or accepted some kind of a plea deal that would include prison time, but avoid a trial. That presumes the prosecutors would bargain with him.
All down to trust
In a video, Gosztola commented that the defence asked how the US can be trusted to abide by their assurances, given that the CIA, with encouragement from Mike Pompeo, wanted Assange killed. The Canary previously reported on death threats by US political figures, as well as the recent revelations concerning a CIA plot to kill or kidnap Assange.
Gosztola and Elmaazi comment on how the US government:
“retains the power” to designate Assange for either SAMs or ADX Florence if he commits “any future act” that meets the “test for such designation”; for example, if officials deem they must prevent a “breach of national security.”
Moreover, Assange could still end up under SAMs on the CIA’s recommendation. According to the defence:
One agency with power to recommend SAMs to the attorney general (on the basis of some unspecified ‘act’ they perceive Mr. Assange to have committed) is the CIA—the very same agency whose criminal acts Mr Assange has sought to expose, and who are under active investigation in Spain for plotting to kill him.
There are great grounds for fearing what will be done to [Assange] given the revelations of surveillance in the embassy and plots to kill him.
Condemnation by journalists’ bodies
Meanwhile, media organisations representing 600,000 journalists worldwide have condemned Assange’s prosecution and are calling for his immediate release:
Veteran BBC reporter John Simpson says that the attempt to extradite Assange is a threat to media freedom:
The latest court hearing about extraditing Julian Assange to the US is scheduled to begin today. Every major human rights & free speech group has said this is a major threat to media freedom worldwide.
Indeed, Rebecca Vincent, director of international campaigns at Reporters Without Borders, commented:
if the US is successful in securing his [Assange’s] extradition, then the precedent it could set for any media organisation cannot be overstated.
More support
More support for Assange has come from a number of high profile figures. They include Labour MP John McDonnell, saying “if Assange is silenced, they can silence anyone”:
Assange’s fiancé Stella Moris has warned that the High Court could take several weeks to reach a decision on what happens next:
69/. “This US extradition case against Julian #Assange has been falling apart from the moment it started because it was born rotten.”#JulianAssange’s fiancée, @StellaMoris1, speaking at conclusion of the High Court hearing.
The Biden administration asked two United Kingdom High Court judges to overturn the British district judge’s denial of extradition of journalist Julian Assange this week during an October 26-27 appeals hearing in London. If extradited to the United States, the WikiLeaks founder would face 175 years in prison for exposing evidence of U.S. war crimes. Determined to bring Assange to trial in the U.S. on the indictment filed by former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is raising spurious issues on appeal.
On January 6, U.K. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition because of the strong likelihood Assange would commit suicide if extradited to the U.S., where he would be held under onerous prison conditions. She relied largely on expert testimony by defense expert Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at Kings College London. Kopelman testified, “I am as confident as a psychiatrist ever can be that, if extradition to the United States were to become imminent, Mr. Assange will find a way of suiciding.”
The U.K. 2003 Extradition Act forbids extradition if “the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him.” Baraitser found the risk of suicide to be “substantial” or “very high,” and that it would thus be oppressive to extradite Assange to the U.S.
In its appeal, the DOJ claims that Baraitser should have disregarded Kopelman’s testimony because, in his preliminary report, he misled the court by not mentioning that Stella Moris was Assange’s partner, and they had two young children together. The DOJ is asking the High Court to reweigh the evidence that Baraitser assessed during the four-week evidentiary hearing in September 2020.
For the first time on appeal, the DOJ is providing conditional “assurances” that if imprisoned in the U.S., Assange 1.) would not be sent to the maximum-security prison ADX Florence in Colorado; 2.) would not be subject to onerous Special Administrative Measures that would keep him in virtual isolation; and 3.) could serve any custodial sentence he may receive in Australia. In order to excuse its tardy offer of these so-called assurances, the DOJ erroneously argues that the burden was on Baraitser to request such “assurances” from the U.S. before denying extradition.
All of the DOJ’s appellate arguments are disingenuous. Moreover, the DOJ should have raised these issues at the September 2020 evidentiary hearing, when they could have been tested by cross-examination.
Psychiatric Expert Kopelman’s Evidence
Baraitser accepted Kopelman’s testimony that Assange “suffers from a recurrent depressive disorder … sometimes accompanied by psychotic features, often with ruminative suicidal ideas.” Kopelman said that the “imminence of extradition or extradition itself would trigger a suicide attempt, but it was Mr. Assange’s mental disorder that would lead to an inability to control his wish to commit suicide.”
In citing her reasons for adopting Kopelman’s assessment, Baraitser wrote:
[Kopelman] assessed Mr. Assange during the period May to December 2019 and was best placed to consider at first-hand his symptoms. He has taken great care to provide an informed account of Mr. Assange’s background and psychiatric history. He has given close attention to the prison medical notes and provided a detailed summary annexed to his December report. He is an experienced clinician and he was well aware of the possibility of exaggeration and malingering. I had no reason to doubt his clinical opinion.
The DOJ is now arguing on appeal that Baraitser should have excluded Kopelman’s evidence (or afforded it less weight) because he omitted from his preliminary report that Assange has a partner, Moris, and they have two children. Kopelman was concerned about Moris’s anxiety about the privacy of her children. Both Kopelman’s subsequent report and his testimony at the extradition hearing did refer to Morris and their children.
There were concrete dangers that Kopelman was worried about when he made the decision to withhold the information about Moris and the children from his preliminary report. “They arose from real concerns about a risk to Stella Moris’ safety and privacy, and that of her children,” Assange’s lawyers wrote in their brief to the High Court. They included “the extreme measures of surveillance employed against Mr. Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, the targeting of Stella Moris and the children; and the discussions they participated in about kidnapping or poisoning him.”
Baraitser considered Kopelman’s two reports as well as his testimony before denying extradition. She acknowledged his initial concealment but excused it, writing:
I did not accept that Professor Kopelman failed in his duty to the court when he did not disclose Ms. Morris’s relationship with Mr. Assange…. In my judgment, Professor Kopelman’s decision to conceal their relationship was misleading and inappropriate in the context of his obligations to the court, but an understandable human response to Ms. Morris’s predicament…. In short, I found Professor Kopelman’s opinion to be impartial and dispassionate; I was given no reason to doubt his motives or the reliability of his evidence.
The defense brief cited the report of Professor Keith Rix, the U.K.’s acknowledged expert on the ethical duties of psychiatric experts. Rix opined that Kopelman acted “professionally,” “responsibly,” and “exercised appropriate and reasonable caution” in not disclosing the relationship with Moris and the children in his first report.
Kopelman’s testimony was corroborated by the evidence of defense expert Dr. Quinton Deeley, an experienced developmental psychiatrist. Deeley stated that Assange’s Asperger’s syndrome increased the risk that he would commit suicide if faced with the prospect of extradition to the U.S.
The DOJ is seeking to relitigate the issue of Kopelman’s credibility and is asking the High Court to reassess the weight to be given the evidence of the defense experts versus the prosecution’s experts. As Assange’s lawyers wrote in their appellate brief, it is a “well-established principle that the appellate court should respect the competence of the [district judge] to determine for herself the issues of the reliability and weight of the expert witnesses she herself heard.”
The DOJ also maintained that the extradition decision must be based only on Assange’s present mental state and cannot make a prediction about what it will be if he is extradited. But Fitzgerald cited the case of activist and computer scientist Lauri Love, in which the High Court used the same approach that Baraitser did in the Assange case. Love also has been diagnosed with depression and has Asperger’s, which is correlated with a reduced capacity to resist suicide. And there was psychiatric testimony in both cases that onerous conditions in U.S. prisons would exacerbate their suicide risk.
The High Court judges who presided at the appeals hearing in Assange’s case were Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett and Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde. Burnett, the most senior judge in England and Wales, ruled with another judge to reject the U.S. request for extradition in the Love case, also because of high risk of suicide. Holroyde was one of two judges who ruled on August 11 to allow the U.S. to expand its grounds for appeal in the Assange case.
U.S. “Assurances”
The defense presented considerable testimony at the evidentiary hearing that if Assange was extradited to the United States, he would be subject to Special Administrative Measures — which are onerous conditions that would keep him in virtual isolation — and he would be held at ADX Florence.
“Throughout the 1½ years of these proceedings below, (a) the defence evidence squarely raised the impact of either [Special Administrative Measures] or ADX (among other regimes of isolation) as one of the factors contributing to the risk of suicide, and (b) the US chose to challenge the substance of that evidence, rather than remove the risk with assurances,” notwithstanding repeated comments by defense witnesses on the “notable absence of assurances or guarantees,” Assange’s defense lawyers wrote in their appellate brief.
Now the United States is providing the court with “assurances” that if Assange is extradited to the U.S. and imprisoned, Special Administrative Measures will not be imposed on him, and he will not be held at ADX. The U.S., however, is reserving the right to impose Special Administrative Measures or hold Assange at ADX if Assange’s future behavior warrants it. Whether his future behavior warrants it will be decided by the CIA and the attorney general (who is head of DOJ). It was the CIA that planned how to kidnap or kill Assange, and it is the DOJ that is prosecuting Biden’s appeal against Assange. Chief Justice Burnett stated during defense counsel’s argument, “It’s not contested that the CIA is intensely interested in Mr. Assange.”
When one of the judges asked James Lewis, who represented the United States, why they didn’t make these assurances before Baraitser issued her ruling, he replied disingenuously, “It was our position that it was highly unlikely he would ever be put in [Special Administrative Measures] so opportunity never arose” during the evidentiary hearing.
Even if Assange is not subject to Special Administrative Measures or held at ADX, he will nevertheless be placed in pretrial administrative segregation, which bears “strong similarities with respect to isolation and sensory deprivation” to Special Administrative Measures and, once they are imposed, there is no reasonable likelihood of challenge, according to testimony at the evidentiary hearing. Whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who provided the documents that WikiLeaks published, was being held under administrative segregation when she attempted suicide.
Post-conviction, Assange would be held “under substantially similar conditions of isolation at whichever unknown high security prison (if not ADX),” the evidence showed. That could be a Special Housing Unit, High Security Unit, Special Management Unit or Communication Management Unit. “All of these regimes, especially in combination, constitute long-term and extreme isolation,” according to the testimony, and they carry the same “well known risks which solitary confinement poses to the mental health of those subjected to it for prolonged periods.”
During his argument for the defense, Mark Summers stated, “The evidence is overwhelming that regardless of [Special Administrative Measures], and regardless of the ADX, if extradited, Julian Assange is surely headed for extreme isolation, pre- and post-trial.”
The United States also says it will not object to Assange serving any custodial sentence he may receive in Australia. Summers cited a case in which the U.S. reneged on its assurances that Spanish drug trafficker David Mendoza Herrarte could serve his prison sentence in Spain if he was first extradited to the U.S. for trial. The U.S. retorted that the prosecutor had just assured that Mendoza could apply for a transfer to Spain and the DOJ denied the application. Moreover, the U.S. cannot guarantee that Australia would consent to host Assange’s incarceration.
It will be several weeks before the High Court issues its ruling on Biden’s appeal. The losing party can ask the U.K. Supreme Court to review the case.
More than two dozen press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights groups, and people around the world, are protesting the persecution of Assange. This case is a bellwether for the future of investigative journalism and the survival of the First Amendment right to freedom of the press.
Washington, DC – For the past two days, I have been watching the extradition hearing for Julian Assange via video link from London. The United States is appealing a lower court ruling that denied the US request to extradite Assange not, unfortunately, because in the eyes of the court he is innocent of a crime, but because, as Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January concluded, Assange’s precarious psychological state would deteriorate given the “harsh conditions” of the inhumane US prison system, “causing him to commit suicide.” The United States has charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of trying to hack into a government computer, charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years.
The US appeal of a British court ruling on the Assange extradition case has concluded, and the judges will probably not have a decision ready until at least January—a full year after the extradition was denied by a lower court. Assange, despite being convicted of no crime, will have remained in Belmarsh Prison the entire time.
During that time the judges will be weighing arguments they’d heard about the cruel nature of the US prison system, which formed a major part of the reasoning behind Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s rejection of the US extradition request. They’ll be considering the draconian policy of Special Administrative Measures, whose victims are cut off from human contact and from the outside world. They’ll be considering the brutality of the supermax ADX facility in Florence, Colorado whose inmates are kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, and where Assange could easily wind up imprisoned despite the prosecution’s flimsy assurances.
Assange probably never set out on this journey with the goal of calling attention to the abuses of the US prison system as his foremost priority, but, as is so often the case with anything his journey touches, those abuses keep getting pulled into the light of public awareness anyway. His case is now no longer just about press freedom, US war crimes, corrupt governments collaborating to stomp out inconvenient truth tellers, and the malfeasance of US alphabet agencies, but about the abusive nature of the US prison system as well.
Chris Hedges: The Most Important Battle for Press Freedom in Our Time https://t.co/VD82NOdOLf
And this is a big part of what I find so endlessly captivating about the life of this extraordinary individual. No matter what he’s doing, no matter where he is, no matter how beaten down and silenced and immobilized they may appear to have him, his life keeps exposing things. Keeps bringing things into the light.
It’s been a constant throughout his life as near as I can tell, from when he was a young man using his technical prowess to help Australian police bring down distributors of online child pornography in the mid-nineties. This curious impulse to bring what is hidden in the dark out into the light where it can be seen is what gave birth to WikiLeaks and all the major revelations about the criminality and corruption of the powerful which resulted from its publications.
And as paradigm-shattering as those many bombshell revelations were, they were arguably small potatoes compared to the criminality Assange exposed by simply standing his ground until the most powerful institutions in the world conspired to drag him from the Ecuadorian embassy and lock him in Belmarsh Prison for telling the truth.
Assange created an innovative publishing platform which allowed whistleblowers to upload files anonymously on the premise that corrupt power needs to be able to communicate secretly in order to operate efficiently. Corrupt power responded by silencing, immobilizing, isolating, imprisoning and torturing him. In so doing, corrupt power exposed itself and its true nature far more than any WikiLeaks drop ever could.
Since Assange’s imprisonment there’s been a jaw-dropping deluge of revelations about the malfeasance of the power structures which rule over us which could not have been exposed to such an extent in any other way.
It was revealed that the US power alliance will openly jail journalists for telling the truth with as much brazenness and despotism as any other tyrannical regime, giving US-targeted nations the ability to rightly call out the hypocrisy of Washington’s concern trolling about human rights.
If the #US truly defends freedom, why won't they allow others to tell the truth when they are making up lies? Why has Mr. #Assange been thrown in prison after being forced to shelter in the #Ecuadorian Embassy in London for 7 years? pic.twitter.com/TR698pdpXX
— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) May 10, 2021
It was revealed that because he inconvenienced the most powerful government in the world, Assange has been subjected to abuses which amount to psychological torture according to a UN special rapporteur on torture.
It was revealed that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate Assange, an earth-shaking discovery we wouldn’t have been able to confirm for decades under normal circumstances, but due to a miraculous combination of partisan feuding and their frantic compulsion to silence him it was confirmed just a few short years after the fact.
It was revealed that the western news media are so propagandistic and morally bankrupt that they will viciously smear a dissident journalist for years to manufacture consent for his arrest and imprisonment, and then act completely guiltless when the most powerful government on earth works to extradite him into its dungeons.
And now we’re seeing the same US government which has been plotting this man’s destruction and even death for many years humiliating itself by hilariously trying to argue that he would be safe under their care, just so they can get their claws into him. Like Count Olaf in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events taking on whatever disguise might allow him to nab the Baudelaire orphans.
The Assange Persecution Is Western Savagery At Its Most Transparent
"So the prosecution's legal argument here is essentially 'We promise we won't treat Assange as cruelly as we treat our other prisoners, unless we decide we really want to.'"https://t.co/L4Udz6xru9
The more they come after him, the more damage they do to themselves. It’s like Assange is standing in a beam of sunlight surrounded by vampires, and every time they reach in to grab him they wind up disintegrating their own limbs.
Their old tactics never seem to have the intended effect. The harder they struggle to keep him from being able to expose their crimes, the more of their own criminality they reveal.
It always reminds me of the lyrics to that Johnny Cash song: “Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand, workin’ in the dark against your fellow man/ But as sure as God made black and white, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light.”
And the struggles of our world today really do seem to come down to a battle between light and darkness. I say this not in any kind of mystical or metaphysical sense, but in the sense that there are on all levels forces which wish to bring the unseen out of hiddenness and forces which have a vested interest in keeping things hidden.
On the global level there are vast power structures which have a vested interest in keeping their misdeeds out of public attention and making sure we all remain confused and misinformed about what’s really going on in the world. On a sociological level there are individuals who have a vested interest in keeping their personal actions out of the light and preventing anyone from clearly seeing what they’re really up to. On an internal level we’ve all got subconscious forces at play within ourselves whose existence depends on avoiding the light of conscious perception.
And on every level there’s a struggle to bring those things into the light. On a global level there are forces working to expose the corruption and tyranny of ruling power structures. On a sociological level there are forces working to expose liars, manipulators, abusers, crooks and psychopaths. On an internal level there are always forces working to bring the endarkened aspects of ourselves into consciousness.
It’s a struggle that’s happening on every level of our species, and Julian Assange seems to be one of the very brightest points in that struggle.
It appears to be a very reliable principle of the human condition that if you firmly and sincerely resolve deep within yourself to desire truth above all else and to seek it at all cost, it causes everything your life touches to move into the light: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Hidden psychological tendencies become seen, understood and resolved. Abusive family dynamics, manipulative behavior patterns and everything untruthful around you and in you all starts to move into the spotlight. Some relationships end, others deepen. It upends your world while grounding you in something far more meaningful than the sources in which you’d formerly sought stability.
This movement into truth can be devastating, humbling, humiliating or downright terrifying, and sometimes all of them at once, because it’s a relinquishing of control and a surrendering to whatever’s true, no matter what that turns out to be, no matter how insecure or embarrassed or inadequate it might make you feel at first. But looking back there’s an immediate understanding that you wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I don’t know Julian Assange personally, but I suspect he may have signed an internal contract like this at some point in his life. The desire for truth, come what may, whatever the cost, whatever the consequences. Whether he did or did not, that has been the result of the luminescent path his journey has blazed through humanity during his time on this planet. And the world is a much better place for it.
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The dilemma facing whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances — the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.
This week, on October 27-28, Julian Assange appeared before a United Kingdom court defending himself against an appeal that, if successful, would see him extradited to the United States to face a raft of indictments that ultimately could see him spend the rest of his life in prison.
The US lawyers argued largely that human rights reasons that caused the UK courts to reject extradition to the US could be mitigated. That Julian Assange’s case could be heard in Australia and if found guilty serve out jail time in his home country rather than the US.
Assange’s defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC argued: “In short there is a large and cogent body of extraordinary and unprecedented evidence… that the CIA has declared Mr Assange as a ‘hostile’ ‘enemy’ of the USA, one which poses ‘very real threats to our country’, and seeks to ‘revenge’ him with significant harm.” The lawyers said the United States assurances were “meaningless”.
“It is perfectly reasonable to find it oppressive to extradite a mentally disordered person because his extradition is likely to result in his death.” Fitzgerald QC added that a court must have the power to “protect people from extradition to a foreign state where we have no control over what will be done to them”.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, said: “You’ve given us much to think about and we will take our time to make our decision.”
The judges then reserved their decision. It is expected Assange’s fate will be revealed within weeks.
In this Special Report, we examine why the US wants this man. And we detail the space between whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances: the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.
Should Julian Assange be extradited from the UK to face indictments in the United States? Or should he be set free and offered a safe haven in a country such as Russia or even New Zealand?
It was always going to come down to this: Is Julian Assange captured by the assumptions people have of him, or a blurred line between a public’s right and a state’s wrong.
‘Manhunt Timeline’ The United States effort to capture or kill Assange goes back to 2010. But his inclusion in what’s called the “Manhunt Timeline” soon lost its sting when, under US President Barack Obama, it was believed if charges against Assange were brought before the US courts for his publishing activity, then he would be found not guilty due to the US First Amendment “freedom of the press” constitutional protections.
But everything changed with a new president, and a massive leak to Wikileaks of CIA secret information on 7 March 2017.
That leak of what was called Vault 7 information “detailed hacking tools the US government employs to break into users’ computers, mobile phones and even smart TVs.”
CBS News reported at the time: “The documents describe clandestine methods for bypassing or defeating encryption, antivirus tools and other protective security features intended to keep the private information of citizens and corporations safe from prying eyes.” (CBS News)
The Vault 7 leak (and earlier leaks going back to 2010) also revealed information that the US security apparatus argued compromised the safety of its personnel around the world. This aspect is vital to the US Justice Department’s case against Julian Assange.
Among a complex web of indictments and superseding indictments, the US alleges Wikileaks and Assange conspired with whistleblowers (significant among them Chelsea Manning) in what it argues was a conspiracy against the US interest. It also argues that Wikileaks and Julian Assange failed to satisfactorily redact leaked documents before dissemination or publication of the same — including details that put US personnel and agents at risk.
Prominent New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager had knowledge of Wikileaks’ processes, and, going back to 2010, spent time working with Wikileaks on redacting documents.
Hager testified at The Old Bailey in London in September 2020 before a hearing of the Assange case and, according to The Australian, said: “My main memory was people working hour after hour in total silence, very concentrated on their work and I was very impressed with efforts that they were taking (to redact names).” Hager added that he himself had redacted “a few hundred” Australian and New Zealand names.
On cross examination, The Australian reported: “Hager referred in his testimony to the global impact of the publication of the collateral murder video, which shows civilians being gunned down in Iraq from an Apache helicopter, which led to changes in US military policies. He claimed it had a ‘similar galvanising impact as the video of the death of George Floyd’.” (The Australian)
But it was the Vault 7 leak that triggered the then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo to act. After that leak, Pompeo set out to destroy Wikileaks and its publisher Julian Assange.
Pompeo vs Assange
Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Image: ER
Mike Pompeo was appointed as CIA director in January 2017. The Vault 7 leak occurred on his watch. It was personal, and in April 2017 he defined Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”.
That definition triggered a shift of approach. The US intelligence apparatus and its Justice Department counterpart then re-asserted that Wikileaks and its publisher and editor-in-chief Julian Assange were enemies of the United States.
Pompeo’s definition paved the way for a more targeted operation against Assange. But, for the time being, the US public modus operandi was to ensure extradition proceedings, through numerous hearings and appeals, were dragged out while stacking an increasing number of complex indictments on the charge-sheet.
The definitions ensured the UK’s corrections system regarded Assange as a high risk and dangerous prisoner hostile to the UK’s special-relationship partner, the USA.
The tactic is well used by governments and states around the world. But in this case it appears beyond cold and calculated. As the US applied a figurative legal-ligature around the neck of Julian Assange it knew his circumstances — that he was imprisoned, isolated, in solitary confinement, on a suicide watch, handled by prison guards under a repetitive high security risk protocol. It knew the psychological impact was compounding, causing legal observers, his lawyers, his supporters — even the judge overseeing the extradition proceedings — to fear that the wall before Assange of ongoing litigation, compounded with the potential for extradition and possible life imprisonment, would overwhelm him.
Let’s detail reality here. In real terms, being on suicide-watch as a high security risk prisoner, meant every time Assange left his cell for any reason (including when meeting his lawyers), on return he would be stripped, cavity searched (which includes being forced to squat while his rectum is digitally searched, and a mouth and throat search).
This was a similar security search protocol that was used against Ahmed Zaoui while he was held at New Zealand’s Paremoremo maximum security prison. At that time Zaoui was regarded as a security risk to New Zealand. He was of course later found to be a man of peace and given his liberty. Sometimes things are not what they initially seem.
In the UK, for Assange the monotonous grind of total solitude and indignity ticked on. In the US in March 2018, Mike Pompeo was set to be promoted. He received the then US President Donald Trump’s nomination to replace Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State. The US Senate confirmed Pompeo’s nomination and he was sworn in on 26 April 2018.
Pompeo quickly became one of Trump’s most trusted and powerful White House insiders. As Secretary of State, Pompeo toured the globe’s foreign affairs circuit asserting the Trump Administration’s position on governments throughout the world. As such, Pompeo was regarded as one of the world’s most powerful men.
Looking back, Pompeo wasn’t the first high ranking US official to regard Assange as an enemy of the state. The Edward Snowden leaks of 2014 revealed that the US government had in 2010 added Assange to its “Manhunting Timeline” — which is an annual list of individuals with a “capture or kill” designation.
This designation came during the early stages of the Obama Administration years. However, US investigations into Wikileaks then suggested Assange had not acted in a way that excluded him from being defined as a journalist and therefore it was likely Assange, if tried under US law, would be provided protections under the First Amendment constitutional clauses.
But when Pompeo advanced toward prominence, Obama was gone. And under Donald Trump, the US appeared to ignore such constitutional rocks in the road. Trump had his own beef with the US Fourth Estate, and the conditions for respecting First Amendment privilege had deteriorated.
Did Trump stop the CIA kidnap or kill plan?
Former US President Donald Trump speaking to NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Image: ER
Perhaps we understand the Trump Administration’s mindset more now in the wake of the 6 January 2021 insurrection where supporters of Trump stormed the US House of Representatives seeking to overturn the election result and reinstate Trump as President. Throughout much of that destructive day, Trump reportedly remained at the White House while the mob erected a gallows and sought out Vice-President Mike Pence. The mob’s reason? Because Pence had begun the process of certifying electoral college writs, an essential step toward swearing in as President the newly elected Joe Biden.
It may reasonably be argued that Trump and some members of his Administration displayed a disregard for elements of the US Constitution. But, it must also be said, that Trump had at times displayed an empathy for Julian Assange’s situation.
This week The Hill reported on Trump’s view of Assange through an interview with the former president’s national security advisor, Keith Kellogg (who is also a retired US Army Lieutenant General.
Kellogg told The Hill: “He (Trump) looked at him (Assange) as someone who had been treated unfairly. And he kind of related him to himself … He said there’s an unfairness there and I want to address that.”
Kellogg added that Trump saw similarities between Assange and himself in that Trump would not back down in the face of media attacks: “I think he kind of saw that with Julian in the same way, like ‘ok, this guy’s not backing down’.” (The Hill)
Kellogg’s account seems incongruous to what we now know. On 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.
But more on the detail of that below. First, let’s look at a confusing picture of how former President Trump’s words do not meet his Administration’s actions.
We know that “someone” in the Trump Administration put a halt to the CIA’s kill or capture plan. We just do not know whether Trump commanded its cessation, or whether Pompeo or Trump’s attorney-general/s operated outside the former president’s orbit. But we do know the US Justice Department pursued Assange through an intensifying relentless application of indictments of increasing severity and complexity. If it is an MO, then it is reasonable to suggest the legal wall of indictments and the CIA’s plan to kill or capture were potentially one of the same.
Which segues back to the details of the US case against Assange.
The US Justice Department vs Assange In March 2019, The Washington Post reported that US Whistleblower Chelsea Manning had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in the investigation of Julian Assange. The Post correctly suggested that the US Justice Department appeared interested in pursuing Wikileaks before a statute of limitations ran out.
Washington Post reported: “Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said the Justice Department likely indicted Assange last year to stay within the 10-year statute of limitations on unlawful possession or publication of national defense information, and is now working to add charges.” (Washington Post)
Then, On April 11 2019, after high-level bilateral meetings between the US and Ecuador, the Ecuadorian Government revoked Assange’s asylum. The UK’s Metropolitan Police were invited into Ecuador’s London embassy and Assange was arrested.
Once Assange was in custody (pending the outcome of a court ruling of what eventually became a 50 week sentence for breaching bail) the United States made its move. On 11 April 2019 (the same day Ecuador evicted him) US prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Assange referring back to information that Wikileaks had released in stages from 18 February 2010 onwards. (US Justice Department)
Collateral Murder, the video that Wikileaks published that turned public opinion against the US-led occupation of Iraq.
This video, known as the collateral murder video, was among the Wikileaks release. The video is of US military personnel killing what they initially thought were Iraqi insurgents. It also displays an apparent indifference by US personnel when, shortly after, it was revealed by ground troops that there were civilians killed, including women and children (and also what were later found to be journalists). The leaked video exposed the United States to potential allegations of war crimes.
The video, and the accompanying dossier of US classified documents, shocked the world and revealed what had been covered up by US secrecy. The information that was leaked by then US Military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, and published by Wikileaks and provided to a select group of the world’s most prominent media, was arguably a tipping point for public sentiment regarding the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was, in the <2010 decade, on a par with revelations of abuses of detainees by US personnel at Abu Ghraib prison.
In a release to the US press, the Justice Department’s office of international affairs stated: “According to court documents unsealed today, the charge relates to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
It connected to how Wikileaks had acquired documents from US whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The leak contained 750,000 documents defined as “classified, or unclassified but sensitive” military and diplomatic documents. The documents included video. The sum of the leaks detailed what were regarded generally as atrocities committed by American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The leaked material was also published by The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. In May 2010, Manning was identified then charged with espionage and sentenced to 35 years in a US military prison. Later, in January 2017, just three days before leaving office, US President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence.
On 23 May 2019, the US Justice Department issued a statement confirming Assange had been further charged in an 18-count superseding indictment that alleged violation of the Espionage Act 1917. It specifically alleged (among other charges) that Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning in late 2009 and that: “… Assange and WikiLeaks actively solicited United States classified information, including by publishing a list of ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ that sought, among other things, classified documents. Manning responded to Assange’s solicitations by using access granted to her as an intelligence analyst to search for United States classified documents, and provided to Assange and WikiLeaks databases containing approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 US Department of State cables.” (US Justice Department)
The superseding indictment added: “Many of these documents were classified at the Secret level.”
It’s also important to note, a superseding indictment, in this context carries heavy weight. It isn’t merely a charge lodged by an investigative wing of government, but issued by a US grand jury.
The Washington Post, The New York Times, and media freedom organisations criticised the US government’s decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act. Image: ER screenshot
The May 2019 superseding indictments ignited a stern rebuttal from powerful media institutions.
The Washington Postand The New York Times, as well as press freedom organisations, criticised the government’s decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, characterising it as an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press. On 4 January 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the US request to extradite him and stated that doing so would be “oppressive” given his mental health. On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States. (Wikipedia.org)
In normal times an assault on the US First Amendment through a clever legal move would destroy a presidency. But these were not normal times.
Ultimately, the powerful US Fourth Estate fraternity failed to ward off the Trump Administration’s men. Trump himself was by this time already hurling attacks on the credibility and purpose of the United States media. And, he tapped in to a constituency that distrusted what it heard from journalists.
Then on 24 June 2020, the US Justice Department delivered more charges against Assange, this time with an additional superseding indictment that included allegations he conspired with “Anonymous” affiliated hackers: “In 2010, Assange gained unauthorised access to a government computer system of a NATO country. In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack.” (US Justice Department)
As the Trump presidency ran out of steam, and arguably created its own attacks on the US national interest, Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden won the election and became the 46th President of the United States.
Why Assange was imprisoned in the UK
Julian Assange on the first day of extradition proceedings in 2020. Image: Indymedia Ireland.
Julian Assange was tried before the UK courts and convicted for breaching the Bail Act. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. He was expected to have been released after five to six months, but due to the US extradition proceedings and appeal he was held indefinitely.
The initial bail conditions (of which Assange was found to have breached) were set resulting from an alleged sexual violence allegation made in Sweden in 2010. Assange had denied the allegations, and feared the case was designed to relocate him to Sweden and then onto the US via a legal extradition manoeuvre — hence this is why he sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange was never actually charged by Swedish authorities nor their UK counterparts, but rather the initial bail breach related to a move to extradite him to Sweden.
Also, as a side-note: in November 2019, Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation into allegations of sexual violence crime. The BBC reported that Swedish authorities dropped the case as it had: “Weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.”
Meanwhile, Assange was imprisoned at London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he was incarcerated indefinitely pending the outcome of US extradition proceedings.
There is an irony that in January 2021, the week Assange was denied bail pending the outcome of the US-lodged appeal, back in the US a mob loyal to Trump attempted a coup d’etat against the US constitution.
Out with Trump, in with Biden On 20 January 2021, Joe Biden was sworn in as US President. Around the world a palpable mood of change was anticipated. It’s fair to say those involved or observing the Assange case were hopeful the United States under Joe Biden’s presidency would withdraw the initial charges and superseding indictments.
But, that was not to be.
Then on 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.
The investigation’s timeline revealed a plan was developed in 2017 during Pompeo’s tenure at the CIA and considered numerous scenarios where Assange could be liquidated while he resided at the Ecuadorian Embassy. The investigation was backed by “more than 30 US official sources”. (Yahoo News)
The media investigation stated: “… the CIA was enraged by WikiLeaks’ publication in 2017 of thousands of documents detailing the agency’s hacking and covert surveillance techniques, known as the Vault 7 leak.”
It added that Pompeo: “was determined to take revenge on Assange after the (Vault 7) leak.”
Apparently, the CIA believed Russian agents were planning to remove Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy and “smuggle” him to Russia: “Among the possible scenarios to prevent a getaway were engaging in a gun battle with Russian agents on the streets of London and ramming the car that Assange would be smuggled in.”
It appears a wise-head in the Trump Administration ordered a halt to the CIA plan due to legal concerns. Officials cited in the investigation suggested there were: “Concerns that a kidnapping would derail US attempts to prosecute Assange.”
It would also be reasonable to suggest that a prosecution would be difficult should Assange be dead.
As the US extradition appeal loomed, Julian Assange’s US-based lawyer Barry Pollack reportedly said: “My hope and expectation is that the UK courts will consider this information (the CIA plot) and it will further bolster its decision not to extradite to the US.”
Assange’s partner Stella Morris, on the eve of the US extradition appeal proceedings also said reports of the CIA’s plan “was a game-changer” in his fight against extradition from Britain to the United States. (Reuters)
Greg Barnes, special council and Australian human rights lawyer and advocate spoke this week to a New Zealand panel (A4A via the internet): “Now we know that the CIA intended effectively to murder Assange. For an Australian citizen to be put in that position by Australia’s number one ally is intolerable. And I think in the minds of most Australians the view is that the Australian Government ought to intervene in this particular case and ensure the safety of one of its citizens.”
Barnes added that the Assange case is now a human rights case: “I can tell you that the rigours of the Anglo-American prison complex which we have here in Australia and in which Julian is facing at Belmarsh (prison in London) are such that very few people survive that system without having severe mental and physical pain and suffering for the rest of their lives.
“This should not be happening to an Australian citizen, whose only crime, and I put quotes around the word crime, has been to reveal the war crimes of the United States and its allies.” (A4A YouTube)
The respected journalist advocacy organisation Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF), this week called for the US case against Assange to be closed and for Assange to be “immediately released”. (Reporters Without Borders)
RSF added: “During the two-day hearing, the US government will argue against the 4 January decision issued by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, ruling against Assange’s extradition to the US on mental health grounds. The US will be permitted to argue on five specific grounds, following the High Court’s decision to widen the scope of the appeal during the 11 August preliminary hearing. An immediate decision is not expected at the conclusion of the 27-28 October hearing, but will likely follow in writing several weeks later.”
RSF concluded: “If Assange is extradited to the US, he could face up to 175 years in prison on the 18 counts outlined in the superseding indictment… (If convicted) Assange would be the first publisher pursued under the US Espionage Act, which lacks a public interest defence.”
RSF recently joined a coalition of 25 press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights organisations in calling again on the US Department of Justice to drop the charges against Assange.
Beyond Belmarsh Prison – human rights and asylum options
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg speaking to an online panel organised by New Zealand’s A4A group. Image: ER
There remains a logical and considered question as to what will become of Julian Assange should his legal team successfully defend moves of extradition to the United States.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden has found relative safety living inside the Russian Federation. But beyond Russia there are few safe-haven options available to Julian Assange.
This week a group called A4A (Aotearoa for Assange) coordinated an online panel of human rights advocates and whistleblowers to consider whether New Zealand should become involved.
It was a serious move. The panel included the United States’ highly respected Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. (Pentagon Papers, Wikipedia)
Daniel Ellsberg told the panel: “A trial under (the Espionage Act) cannot be a fair trial as there is ‘no appeal to motives, impact or purposes’.”
“A trial under the Espionage Act could not permit that person to tell the jury why they did what they did,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “It is shameful that President Biden has gone in the footsteps of President Trump. It is shameful for President Biden to have continued that appeal.
“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call the National Defence or National Security…”
It’s a valid point for those that work within the sphere of Fourth Estate public interest journalism. While in New Zealand, there are rudimentary whistleblower protections, they fail to protect or ensure anonymity. For journalists, if a judge orders a journalist to reveal her or his source(s), then the journalist must consider breaching the code of ethics required from the profession, or acting in contempt of court.
In the latter case, a judge can, in New Zealand, order the journalist to be held in custody for contempt, and it should be pointed out there is no time limit of incarceration. Defamation law is equally as draconian. In New Zealand (unlike the United States) a journalist accused of defamation shoulders the burden of proof — to prove a defamation was not committed.
The chill factor (a reference to pressures that cause journalists to abandon deep and meaningful reportage) is real.
Daniel Ellsberg knows what this means. And he fears, that if the US wins its appeal against Assange, it will erode the Fourth Estate from reporting on what goes on behind the scenes with governments: “… there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression… A great deal rides (on this case) on the possibility of freedom.”
Former NZ Prime Minister and Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme Helen Clark. Image: ER
His comments connect remarkably with those of former New Zealand prime minister, and former administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark.
In a previous online discussion, Clark was asked what she thought of Julian Assange’s case. In a considered reply she said: “You do wonder when the hatchet can be buried with Assange, and not buried in his head by the way.
“I do think that information that’s been disclosed by whistleblowers down the ages has been very important in broader publics getting to know what is really going on behind the scenes.
“And, should people pay this kind of price for that? I don’t think so. I felt that Chelsea Manning for example was really unduly repressed.
“The real issue is: the activities they were exposing and not the actions of their exposure,” Helen Clark said.
The US appeals case this week is not litigating the merits of its indictments. But rather it has attempted to mitigate the reasons Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition in January 2021. The US legal team has suggested to the UK court that Assange’s human rights issues could be minimised should he face trial in his native Australia, that if found guilty that he could serve out his sentence there. It gave, however, no assurances that this would occur.
On the eve of the appeal, and appearing before the A4A online panel was Dr Deepa Govindarajan Driver.
Dr Driver is an academic with the University of Reading (UK) and a legal observer very familiar with the Assange case. The degree of human rights abuses against Assange disturb her.
Dr Driver detailed what she had observed: “Julian Assange was served the second superseding indictment on the first day of trial. When he took his papers with him, back to the prison, his privileged papers were taken from him. He was handcuffed, cavity searched, stripped naked on a daily basis. [This is] a highly intelligent human being who we already know is on the Autism Spectrum. To be put through the indignities and arbitrariness of the process which is consistently working in a way that doesn’t stand with normal process…
“For somebody who has gone through all of this for a number of years, it has its psychological impact. But it is not just psychological, the physical effects of torture are pretty severe including the internal damage that he has.”
She added: “We expect the high court will recognise the kind of serious gross breaches of Julian’s basic rights and the inability for him to have a fair trial in the UK or in the US and that this case will be dismissed immediately.”
On the merits of whistleblowers, Dr Driver said: “You can see through the Vault 7 leaks how much the state knows about what is going on in your daily lives… As an observer in court I see how he (Julian Assange) is being tortured on a day to day basis. His privileged conversations with his lawyers were spied on.”
Dr Driver said the Swedish allegations were never backed up with charges. In fact the allegations were dropped due to time and insufficient evidence.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, concluded after his investigation of the Swedish allegations that Assange was never given the opportunity to put his side of the case.
Dr Driver said: “In any situation where there is violence against women, and I say this as a survivor myself, people are meant to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. And, this new trend which is accusation-equal-to-guilt is a bad trend because it undermines the cause of women, and it prevents women from getting justice — just as it happened in Sweden because indeed nobody will ever know what happened between Julian and those women other than the two parties there.”
A crime left undefended or a case of weaponising violence against women? Dr Deepa Driver said: “If cases like this are not brought to court, then neither the women nor those accused like Julian get justice. And it is Lisa Longstaff at Women Against Rape who has said time and again, ‘this is the state weaponising women in order to achieve its own ends and hide its own war crimes’. And this is what Britain and America have done in weaponising the case in Sweden, because Sweden was always about extraditing Julian (Assange) to America.”
She suggested Assange’s situation was a human rights case where he was the victim. The view has validity.
United Nations Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer. Image: ER
The United Nations’ special rapporteur Nils Melzer issued a statement on 5 January 2021 welcoming the UK judge’s ruling that blocked his extradition to the United States (a ruling that this week was under appeal).
Melzer went on: “This ruling confirms my own assessment that, in the United States, Mr. Assange would be exposed to conditions of detention, which are widely recognised to amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Melzer said the judgement set an “alarming precedent effectively denying investigative journalists the protection of press freedom and paving the way for their prosecution under charges of espionage”.
“I am gravely concerned that the judgement confirms the entire, very dangerous rationale underlying the US indictment, which effectively amounts to criminalizing national security journalism,” Melzer said.
In summary Melzer said: “The judgement fails to recognise that Mr Assange’s deplorable state of health is the direct consequence of a decade of deliberate and systematic violation of his most fundamental human rights by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ecuador.”
He added: “The failure of the judgment to denounce and redress the persecution and torture of Mr Assange, leaves fully intact the intended intimidating effect on journalists and whistleblowers worldwide who may be tempted to publish secret evidence for war crimes, corruption and other government misconduct”. (UNCHR)
A call for New Zealand to provide asylum This week, US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg applauded New Zealand’s independent global identity. And, he called for New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to provide an asylum solution should Julian Assange be released.
Dr Ellsberg’s call was supported by Matt Robson, a former cabinet minister in Helen Clark’s Labour-Alliance government and whom currently practices immigration law in Auckland.
Matt Robson said: “We can support this brave publisher and journalist who has committed the same crime, in inverted commas, as Daniel Ellsberg — to tell the truth as a good honest journalist should do. Our letter to our (New Zealand) government is a plea to do the right thing. To say directly on the line that is available, to (US) President Biden, to free Julian Assange.”
Australian-based lawyer Greg Barnes said: “New Zealand plays a prominent and important role in the Asia-Pacific region and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the New Zealand government could offer Julian Assange what Australia appears incapable of doing, and that is safety for himself and his family.”
So why New Zealand?
Daniel Ellsberg said: “There are many countries that would have been supportive of Assange, none of whom wanted to get into trouble with the United States of America. Of all the countries in the world I think you can pick out New Zealand that has dared to do that in the past. I remember the issue over whether they would allow American warships into New Zealand harbours.
“Julian Assange should not be on trial,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “And given he is indicted, he should not be extradited. It is extremely important, especially to journalists.
“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target, a bull’s eye, on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call national security. It’s to assure every journalist that he or she as well as your sources can be put in prison, kidnapped if necessary to the US.
“That is going to chill (journalists) to a degree that there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression such as we have just seen. The world cannot afford that. A great deal rides on the policy matters on the possibility of freedom,” so said Daniel Ellsberg — the US whistleblower who blew the lid off atrocities that were committed in Vietnam.
Conclusion Of course there are always complications, such as executive government leaders involving themselves in judicial matters. But sometimes a leader does the right thing, simply because it is the right thing to do — as Helen Clark did early on in her prime ministership when she extended an olive branch to people fleeing tyranny onboard a ship called the Tampa, which was under-threat of sinking off the coast of Australia. Helen Clark brought the Tampa refugees home to a new place called Aotearoa New Zealand, and we have been better off as a nation because of it.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The second day of appellate proceedings by the United States against Julian Assange saw the defence make their case against the overturning of District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s January ruling. Any extradition to the US, she concluded, would be so oppressive to the publisher as to render it unjust under UK extradition law. Before the UK High Court, both Edward Fitzgerald QC and Mark Summers QC sought to preserve the status quo.
The morning session was focused on defending the action of the defence witness Michael Kopelman, whose initial psychiatric assessment of Assange’s wellbeing omitted reference to Stella Moris and the existence of their two children. The prosecution had contended that this impaired Kopelman’s partiality before the court, notwithstanding his correction to the account in the final court submission. The omission, Fitzgerald contended, was justified given fears of the surveillance operation in the Ecuadorian embassy mounted by the Central Intelligence Agency, and concerns about potential abduction and assassination. This point had been confirmed in the now famous Yahoo! News report.
A day prior to the submission of the initial report, Kopelman had sought legal advice from the head of the solicitor’s firm acting for Assange, Gareth Peirce. But as Peirce was facing an avalanche of documents to be served at the time – surveillance, allegations of kidnapping and poisoning, among other things – she was unable to furnish him with timely advice. Baraitser duly found that Kopelman’s conduct, while misleading, was not that of a dishonest individual but “a very human response”. The judge also knew about the identity of Moris prior to reading the initial report.
To bolster Kopelman before the attacks of the prosecution, the defence adduced the opinion of consultant forensic psychiatrist Keith Rix, a noted authority on the ethical duties of psychiatric experts. Kopelman had, in Rix’s view “acted ‘professionally’; responsibly’ and he ‘exercised appropriate and reasonable caution’” in omitting reference to Moris and the children in his initial report.
The defence also suggested that the US government could not have been surprised by the relationship between Moris and Assange and their children. Nigel Blackwood, one of prosecution’s doctors of choice, was informed of the children’s existence in March 2020.
Fitzgerald, mindful of addressing Lord Chief Justice Ian Burnett, reminded him about the parallels between the Assange case and the hacktivist Lauri Love, whose extradition was overturned in 2018. Love’s extradition to the US was initially approved by the Westminster Magistrate’s Court but was overturned in the High Court with Burnett presiding. Love had also been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a contributing factor to his suicide risk in a US prison facility. The court there had accepted a “predictive function” so frowned upon by James Lewis QC, whose submission the previous day insisted that current medical valuations – and notably those of the prosecution – were the only ones that counted.
Burnett took issue with the characterisation. “It’s a completely different case,” he interjected, citing the fact that the district judge in Love’s case had found that preventive measures were adequate and would prevent suicide. District Judge Baraitser had found the opposite with regards to Assange. Fitzgerald contended the mental disorders in question were the same in both cases and that these would have a role in depriving intelligent individuals of volition in being at risk of suicide.
The defence submission to the High Court also makes the point that District Judge Baraitser “found that the cause of both the urge to commit suicide and the determined circumvention of suicide measures would be Mr Assange’s mental disorder itself.” This was based on the evidence from consultant neuropsychiatrist Quinton Deeley about the effects of Assange’s Autism Spectrum Disorder and Kopelman’s submission on the effects of Assange’s depression.
After lunch, Summers took aim at the prosecution’s package of “assurances” regarding Assange’s fate in the pre-trial and post-trial phase. These included an undertaking that Assange would not be subject to oppressive Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), face solitary confinement or even end up in the ADX Florence supermax prison facility if convicted. They also include a promise that Assange would receive appropriate “clinical and psychological treatment” as “recommended” by the relevant prison clinician. If convicted, the US government would permit him to apply for a prisoner transfer to serve his sentence in Australia subject, of course, to Australian approval.
In the view of the defence, the entire package was unreliable. Even assuming they would be acted upon, they would be inadequate. They were also oddly timed and untestable, being given only after Baraitser’s ruling. They only addressed two of the seven grounds for finding that Assange faced a substantial risk of suicide, and even then, inadequately addressed those limited issues. And how could you trust such pledges from a power whose officials had considered abducting and killing Assange?
The previous day, Lewis had argued that the onus was on the judge to seek those assurances on how Assange would be treated in the first place. This rather odd interpretation was given a deserved shredding by Summers. Through the extradition hearing, the discussion about SAMs, ADX Florence and solitary confinement was frequent. The prosecution might well have taken these conditions off the table but as Baraitser herself observed, “Mr Kromberg acknowledged that their imposition is possible.”
Furthermore, these new “conditional assurances do not in fact remove the real risk of detention on SAMs or on ADX. They certainly do not remove the very real risk of detention or administrative segregation.” The US authorities still reserved, according to the filed submission, “the power to impose SAMs on Mr Assange ‘in the event that, after entry of this assurance, he was to commit any future act that met the test for the imposition of a SAM’.” Even leaving the matter of SAMs and ADX Florence, Assange would still risk facing “other severely isolating prison regimes or other notorious prisons in the US about which the [District Judge] heard copious evidence.”
Lewis, for the prosecution, suggested that such regimes as Administrative Segregation (AdSeg) could not be equated to solitary confinement. But the US prison system is replete with terminology designed to conceal what amounts to the same thing. “Prisons often hide behind these rhetorical labels [the hole, AdSeg, protective custody, SMU, SHU] to avoid scrutiny under legal sanctions that prohibit indefinite placement in solitary confinement and require due process for those who are sentenced,” claims the US-based human rights body, the National Immigrant Justice Center.
The defence’s High Court submission also notes the crude reality that, “One agency with power to recommend SAMs to the attorney general (on the basis of some unspecified ‘act’ they perceive Mr Assange to have committed) is the CIA – the very same agency whose criminal acts Mr Assange has sought to expose and who are under active investigation in Spain for plotting to kill him.”
Continuing the focus on the role of the CIA, Summers reminded the judges that this was the “first time the US had sought the assistance of a UK court in obtaining jurisdiction” over an individual a US government entity had considered poisoning or assassinating. “That is worthy of an investigation in relation to the assurances.” The CIA had shown an “obsession for vengeance”; there was “credible evidence of US government plans at some length to do serious harm to Mr Assange”.
Drawing from the Yahoo! News report, Summers noted “discussions in the Oval Office about killing [Assange]” and “sketches drawn in the summer of 2017 as matters escalated to render him back to America from the UK. But the UK refused to go along with this.” The then CIA director Mike Pompeo was “on the record that some things are true and it’s under Congressional investigation.”
The assurance that Assange could be transferred to an Australian prison also deserved some measure of scorn. “Mr Assange will most likely be dead before [this assurance] can have any purchase, if it ever could.” Precedent also showed that the US could not be trusted to keep the undertaking.
The case of Spanish drug trafficker David Mendoza Herrarte was cited by Summers. In that instance, a Spanish court was given an assurance that Mendoza, if extradited to the US to face trial, could serve any prison sentence in Spain. The US Department of Justice had something else in mind, initially refusing the transfer application when it was made. The pledge, it was subsequently claimed, had been to secure Mendoza the liberty to apply for a transfer; the DOJ retained the right to reject it. It took six years of diplomatic tussling between Madrid and Washington, with the encouragement of the Spanish Supreme Court, to eventually secure the prisoner release.
In his rebuttal, Lewis, who omitted any reference to the role of the CIA, having previously dismissed such claims as “palpable nonsense”, made light of the tardiness of the US offer of assurances. “It is proper to deal with assurances at any stage. This is not a sea change. Assurances are not evidence. The fact is it is common sense that an assurance will be reactive in nature.” Conditions might change. Even if a person was released, Lewis proposed, citing precedent, the extradition process might well be restarted on the basis of assurances given by the requesting state. “We could start again with Assange.” A promise of perennial legal purgatory.
This second and concluding day was illuminating in casting light on the barbarously defective nature of the entire effort against Assange. The fact that it had reached the appeal stage is itself a grotesque reflection on British justice. The fact that these proceedings could even assume that Assange might either get a fair trial or be treated fairly in a US prison after officials had chewed over the possibility of abducting or killing him can only be described as disturbed lunacy. The US government, Fitzgerald remarked at one point, was happy to submit such declarations as those of Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg, but not “subject themselves to cross-examination. They cross-examine till the cows come home the defence experts.”
The High Court justices will now consider whether to continue this lamentable, sadistic enterprise. The defence team are considering cross-appealing parts of the original decision on the grounds that it constitutes a grave threat to press liberties. Whatever the outcome, an appeal to the Supreme Court is likely. In the meantime, the torture of Assange by process will continue.
The first day of the US appeal of the Julian Assange extradition case saw grown adults arguing in a court of law that the US government could guarantee that it would not treat the WikiLeaks founder as cruelly as it treats its other prisoners.
I wish I was kidding.
In their write-up on Wednesday’s proceedings, The Dissenter’s Kevin Gosztola and Mohamed Elmaazi report that the prosecution argued that “the High Court should accept the appeal on the basis that the U.S. government offered ‘assurances’ that Assange won’t be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) or incarcerated in ADX Florence, a super-maximum prison in Colorado.”
What this means is that in order to overturn the January extradition ruling which judge Vanessa Baraitser denied on the basis that the notoriously draconian US prison system is too cruel to guarantee Assange’s health and safety, the prosecution has established as one of their grounds for appeal the claim that they can offer “assurances” that they would not inflict some of their most brutal measures upon him. These would include the aforementioned Special Administrative Measures, wherein prisoners are so isolated that they effectively disappear off the face of the earth, or sending him to ADX Florence, where all prisoners are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.
Prosecution bashes judge for blocking Julian Assange’s extradition
What’s ridiculous about these “assurances”, apart from the obvious, is that within its own legal argument the US government reserves the right to reverse those assurances at any time and impose SAMs or maximum security imprisonment upon Assange if it deems them necessary. As Amnesty International explains:
“They say: we guarantee that he won’t be held in a maximum security facility and he will not be subjected to Special Administrative Measures and he will get healthcare. But if he does something that we don’t like, we reserve the right to not guarantee him, we reserve the right to put him in a maximum security facility, we reserve the right to offer him Special Administrative Measures. Those are not assurances at all. It is not that difficult to look at those assurances and say: these are inherently unreliable, it promises to do something and then reserves the right to break the promise.”
So the prosecution’s legal argument here is essentially “We promise we won’t treat Assange as cruelly as we treat our other prisoners, unless we decide we really want to.”
This is not just a reflection on the weakness of the extradition appeal, it’s a reflection on the savagery of all the so-called free democracies that have involved themselves in this case.
This argument made minutes after Assange had to excuse himself from his own hearing due to ill health. https://t.co/V4Z9z19n9b
This same prosecution argued that Assange should not be denied US extradition from the UK on humanitarian grounds as in the case of activist Lauri Love because Love suffered from both physical and psychological ailments while Assange’s ailments are only psychological. They stood before the court and made this argument even as Assange was visibly pained and unwell in his video appearance from Belmarsh, which he was only able to attend intermittently due to his frail condition.
“For my newspaper, I have worked as media partner of WikiLeaks since 2009,” tweeted journalist Stefania Maurizi who attended the hearing via video link. “I have seen Julian Assange in all sorts of situations, but I have never ever seen him so unwell and so dangerously thin.”
The worst atrocities in history have all been legal. All the worst examples of genocide, slavery, tyranny and bloodshed have been allowed or actively facilitated by the state. The persecution of Assange is geared toward entering the imprisonment of journalists into this category.
The goal is to set a legal precedent which allows journalists who expose the crimes of the powerful to be persecuted not covertly as is normally done in “free democracies”, but right out in the open. To tell journalists “We’ll just throw you in prison if you cross us.”
What makes this precedent uniquely dangerous is that it is not just threatening to imprison American journalists who expose US crimes, but any journalist anywhere in the world. This is an Australian journalist in the process of being extradited from the UK for publishing facts about US war crimes in the nations it has invaded. The aim is to set up a system where anyone in the US-aligned world can be funneled into its prison system for publishing inconvenient facts.
This is the savagery of the western world at its most transparent. It’s not the greatest evil the US-centralized empire has perpetrated; that distinction would certainly be reserved for its acts of mass military slaughter that it has been inflicting upon our species with impunity for generations. But it’s the most brazen. The most overt. It’s the most powerful part of the most depraved power structure on earth looking us all right in the eyes and telling us exactly what it is.
And if we can really look at this beast and what it is doing right now, really see it with eyes wide open, it reveals far more about those who rule over us than anything any journalist has ever exposed.
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For Julian Assange and those closest to him, the journey to the Royal Courts of Justice this week has been arduous and fraught with nail-biting intrigue and danger. Scheduled to appear on October 27 and 28, Assange will be subjected to a US appeal against an earlier judgement by a lower Court that found in his favor. While the US attempt to strike down the previous finding again places Assange in grave peril, this time the passing months have played in his favor, as growing support for the WikiLeaks publisher has invigorated and swelled the numbers of various grassroots campaigns demanding his freedom.
Assange’s lawyers will arrive armed with statements in support by 25 leading press freedom and human rights organizations, calling in unison for an immediate end to the more than decade-long multi-jurisdictional lawfare waged against the Australian journalist.
In an exclusive clip from an interview with The Canary’s Pablo Navarrete, Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger speaks about how he first became aware of the work of Wikileaks‘ Julian Assange.
On October 27th and 28th 2021, at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, the US government of Joe Biden will appeal the January 2021 UK court judgement that Assange shouldn’t be extradited to the USA, where he faces a possible prison sentence of 175 years.
Pablo Navarrete: I think few things for me exemplify the darkness in the political class in Britain, as the Julian Assange case. I know it’s a case that’s very close to your heart. Tell me a little bit about how you came to this case?
John Pilger: I think you’re right to mention the Assange case, as almost a microcosm of the impact of the extremism that has swept across societies that hold up a facade saying “democracy”. And they’re not – they’re not accountable. Yes, greed is an element in this but it’s about very hard-nosed ideology. And it’s an ideology that believes that at best in two-thirds-societies: with the middle-third, struggling as best they can; and the bottom-third, abandoned; and the top-third, in charge. Theword “class” is almost never used. And certainly class has changed a great deal – certainly in my lifetime. But this is the issue that we’re talking about and with that, of course, has come a state of almost permanent warfare.
And the great majority of this permanent – almost permanent state of war – is an increasingly extremist West led by an increasingly extremist United States.So when you consider that background, along comes an organisation called Wikileaks,whose founder – Julian Assange – has invented a way for us to find out what these extremists are thinking: what they’re planning, what they’re doing, why they start wars. It’s a window into their cynicism. And Wikileaks got going really about 2006. But it came to international prominence with, as you’ll remember, the distribution of the Collateral Murder video which showed an American Apache helicopter gunning down civilians, including journalists, including children, in the middle of Baghdad, and the crew mocking their victims. It had a searing effect. Anyone watching it unless their humanity had departed them completely, would be absolutely shocked as they could be by it. And that brought to prominence Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, an Australian. Now, I’d been following the rise, if you like, or the development of Assange and WikiLeaks for a couple of years. I hadn’t met him. I found it very interesting.
When Julian arrived here in London, in 2009, I believe, and WikiLeaks really set up their headquarters as part of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, which was then run by a mutual friend, Gavin MacFadyen, the late Gavin MacFadyen. And it was through Gavin that I met Julian. I was then making a film, coincidentally, called The War You Don’t See and it was about the role that the media play in the starting of wars: the way they play the role of beating war drums and preparing us for unnecessary wars and invasions.
It was a history as much as concentrating on the most notorious recent example, that is the invasion of Iraq based on lies and the invasion of Afghanistan.
I mean what you’re saying is that money and money making are at the centre of modern war and it’s almost self perpetuating.
Julian Assange: Yes, and it’s becoming worse.
John Pilger: That’s when I first met him. I found him, almost a self effacing character.
The first Wikileaks releases had happened and had had such an enormous impact. He was clearly feeling the impact of that. But then we sat down and we had an interview that must have run for an hour anda half,in which he produced this almost encyclopaedic knowledge of what Wikileaks had, but also a dry sense of humour. His ability to communicate was extraordinary. And I wished I’d been able to use more.
The United States prosecution of Julian Assange is about to enter the next phase in what can only be described as torture via procedure, reports Binoy Kampmark.
Is the imperium showing suspicions about its intended quarry? It is hard to believe it, but the US House Intelligence Committee is on a mission of discovery. Its subject: a Yahoo News report disclosing much material that was already in the public domain on the plot to kidnap or, failing that, poison Julian Assange. Given that such ideas were aired by officials within the Central Intelligence Agency, this struck home. On the Yahoo News “Skulduggery” podcast, Committee chairman and Democratic Representative Adam Schiff said, “We are seeking information about it now.”
Making sure to put himself in the clear of having any knowledge of plans against Assange, Schiff claimed that the committee had sought a response from “the agencies” (the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) after the publication of the Yahoo News piece. As to whether the agencies had responded, Schiff was not forthcoming. “I can’t comment on what we’ve heard back yet.”
This modest effort might show that Schiff is growing a conscience regarding the US case against the founder of WikiLeaks, centred on charges relating to espionage and computer intrusion. If so, it is a bit late coming, given ample evidence that US intelligence services not only conducted surveillance on Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London but contemplated his potential abduction and assassination.
Had the dozing Schiff cast an eye on last year’s extradition hearings mounted by the US Justice Department in the UK, he would have been privy to the efforts of the Spanish private security firm UC Global, hired by US intelligence operatives, to conduct operations against Assange. But such humble representatives should not be expected to keep abreast of the news, even as members of a House Intelligence Committee.
For the rest of us who do, one of the former employees of the Spanish company gave testimony at the Old Bailey claiming that he had been asked to pilfer “a nappy of a baby which according to the company’s security personnel deployed at the embassy, regularly visited Mr Assange”. As UC Global’s CEO David Morales, currently the subject of a criminal investigation in Spain, explained, “the Americans wanted to establish paternity”. In December 2017, Assange’s lengthy stay at the embassy was proving so irritating that the “Americans … had even suggested that more extreme measures should be deployed against the ‘guest’ to put an end to the situation”. One way of doing so would be staging an “accident” that “would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee”. Very School of the Americas, that.
Congress has shown some gurgling interest in dropping the case against Assange. House Resolution 1175, sponsored by then Democrat House Representative Tulsi Gabbard, expressed “the sense of the House of Representatives that newsgathering activities are protected under the First Amendment, and that the United States should drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.” On the Republican side, former US Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has also become a convert. “I made a mistake some years ago, not supporting Julian Assange – thinking that he was a bad guy.” Since then, she had “learned a lot”. “He deserves a pardon.”
The phalanx of civil society groups is also urging US Attorney General Merrick Garland to stop the prosecution. On October 15, Garland received a letter signed by 25 organisations including the ACLU, PEN America and Human Rights Watch, raising the US intelligence efforts against Assange as imperilling the case. “The Yahoo News story only heightens our concerns about the motivations behind this prosecution and about the dangerous precedent that is being set.” As the joint signatories had stated in a previous letter in February, “News organizations frequently and necessarily publish classified information in order to inform the public of matters of profound significance.”
Unfortunately, a good number of the US political classes remain vengefully eager. Many Democrats will never forgive Assange for releasing the Podesta emails and compromising Hillary Clinton’s shoddy electoral campaign in 2016. The former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo holds up the Republican line, having designated WikiLeaks “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”.
And no one should forget that the current US President Joe Biden sought the head of WikiLeaks in a manner that was almost childishly enthusiastic while he was Vice President in the Obama administration. “We are looking at that right now,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press in December 2010. “The Justice department is taking a look at that.” Assange exposed and therefore, we depose. It took some of the more sober individuals in the Obama administration to throw cold water on the effort, arguing that any prosecution of WikiLeaks raised thorny First Amendment issues. You go for this Australian’s scalp, then where do we stop? The editorial staff of the New York Times? The news foragers at the Washington Post? The opportunities were endlessly dangerous.
The US prosecution of Assange, centred on that First World War relic of suppression called the Espionage Act, is about to enter its next phase in what can only be described as torture via procedure. (To date, Assange has been refused bail and left to languish in Belmarsh Prison.) In the UK High Court, prosecutors are hoping to overturn the findings made by Judge Vanessa Baraitser in her January 4 ruling against extradition, impugning expert evidence on Assange’s mental health and the court’s assessment of it. These grounds are almost criminally flimsy, but then again, so is this entire effort against this daring, revolutionary publisher. Assange’s defence team will have much to work with, though Schiff and his colleagues may be asleep as matters unfold.
Why is Joe Biden’s Department of Justice continuing Donald Trump’s persecution of WikiLeaks founder, publisher and journalist Julian Assange?
Barack Obama, concerned about threats to the First Amendment freedom of the press, decided against indicting Assange for exposing U.S. war crimes. Trump did indict Assange, under Espionage Act charges that could garner him 175 years in prison. A district judge denied Trump’s request for Assange’s extradition from the U.K. to the United States because of the extremely high likelihood that it would lead Assange to commit suicide. Trump appealed the denial of extradition.
Instead of dropping Trump’s extradition request, Biden is vigorously pursuing his predecessor’s appeal against Assange, which the U.K. High Court will hear on October 27 and 28. At that hearing, the High Court should determine what effect the CIA’s recently revealed plan to kidnap and assassinate Assange will have on his fragile mental state in the event he is extradited to the United States.
Judge Baraitser’s Denial of Extradition
On January 6, U.K. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser issued a 132-page decision denying extradition. “Faced with conditions of near total isolation and without the protective factors which moderate his risk at HMP Belmarsh [where Assange is currently imprisoned],” she wrote, “I am satisfied that the procedures described by Dr. [Leukefeld] will not prevent Mr. Assange from finding a way to commit suicide.”
Baraitser relied heavily, though not exclusively, on the testimony of Professor Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at Kings College London. Kopelman diagnosed Assange with post-traumatic stress disorder and recurrent depression and concluded, “I am as confident as a psychiatrist ever can be that, if extradition to the United States were to become imminent, Mr. Assange will find a way of suiciding.”
“I am satisfied that the risk that Mr. Assange will commit suicide is a substantial one,” Baraitser determined. “I find that the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.”
The Biden administration is arguing that Baraitser should have disregarded Kopelman’s evidence or accorded it less weight because he didn’t write in his first report that Assange had a partner, Stella Moris, and they had two young children together. Although Kopelman knew about them, he was mindful of Moris’s anxiety about her children’s privacy. Both Kopelman’s subsequent report and his testimony at the extradition hearing referred to Moris and their children. By then, it was public knowledge.
Baraitser, who considered both of Kopelman’s reports as well as his testimony before ruling, wrote:
[Kopelman] assessed Mr. Assange during the period May to December 2019 and was best placed to consider at first-hand his symptoms. He has taken great care to provide an informed account of Mr. Assange’s background and psychiatric history. He has given close attention to the prison medical notes and provided a detailed summary annexed to his December report. He is an experienced clinician and he was well aware of the possibility of exaggeration and malingering. I had no reason to doubt his clinical opinion.
The United States will be allowed to present “assurances” that if Assange is extradited, tried, convicted and imprisoned, he will not be subject to special administrative measures (SAMs) — onerous conditions that would keep him in virtual isolation — or be held at the ADX maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. The U.S. intends to provide an additional assurance that it would not object to Assange serving any custodial sentence he may receive in Australia. These so-called assurances, however, are conditional. The U.S. reserves the right to impose SAMs or hold Assange at ADX if his future behavior warrants it. Moreover, the U.S. cannot guarantee that Australia would consent to hosting Assange’s incarceration.
The High Court should give considerable weight to the way in which explosive new revelations of the Trump administration’s plot to kidnap and assassinate Assange will affect his mental health if he is extradited.
High Court Should Consider U.S. Plans to Kidnap and Assassinate Assange
The indictment against Assange stems from WikiLeaks’ 2010-2011 revelations of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. They included 400,000 field reports about the Iraq War, 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, and evidence of systematic torture, rape and murder after U.S. forces “handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad,” the documents reveal. They included the Afghan War Logs, 90,000 reports revealing more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported. And the Guantánamo Files contained 779 secret reports revealing that 150 innocent people had been imprisoned there for years and documenting the torture and abuse of 800 men and boys, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Perhaps the most notable release by WikiLeaks was the 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, in which a U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunship in Baghdad targets and fires on unarmed civilians. At least 18 civilians were killed, including two Reuters journalists and a man trying to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. A U.S. Army tank then drives over one of the bodies, cutting it in half. The video depicts three separate war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.
It was WikiLeaks’ publication of CIA hacking tools known as “Vault 7,” which the agency called “the largest data loss in CIA history,” that incurred the wrath of Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Vault 7 materials revealed electronic surveillance and cyber-warfare by the CIA.
In 2017, Pompeo called WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” and CIA and government officials hatched “secret war plans” to abduct and kill Assange, according to a stunning Yahoo! Newsreport. Some senior CIA and Trump administration officials requested “sketches” or “options” for ways to assassinate Assange. Trump “asked whether the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide him ‘options’ for how to do so,” according to the report.
Pompeo advocated “extraordinary rendition,” which the CIA used in the “war on terror” to illegally seize suspects and send them to its “black sites” where they were tortured. The scenario was that the CIA would break into the Ecuadorian Embassy in which Assange was staying under a grant of asylum and clandestinely fly him to the United States to stand trial. Others in the agency wanted to assassinate Assange outright by poisoning or shooting him to avoid the hassle of kidnapping him.
The CIA spied on WikiLeaks, and it aimed to sow discord among the group’s members and steal their electronic devices, according to the Yahoo! News report. The CIA also conducted illegal surveillance inside the Ecuadorian Embassy and spied on privileged attorney-client communications between Assange and his lawyers.
Concerned that the CIA might kidnap or kill Assange, which could jeopardize a potential criminal prosecution, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a secret indictment against him in 2018. To bolster the DOJ’s case for extradition, the FBI collaborated with informant Siggi Thordarson to paint Assange as a hacker instead of a journalist. Thordarson later admitted to the Icelandic newspaper Stundin that he lied about Assange being a hacker in return for immunity from prosecution by the FBI.
In 2019, after a new pro-U.S. president came to power in Ecuador, in order to facilitate the U.S.’s attempted extradition, London police dragged Assange from the embassy and arrested him for violating bail conditions. Assange remains in custody in London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison pending Biden’s appeal of the extradition denial.
The High Court should give great weight to the U.S. plans to kidnap and assassinate Assange. The knowledge of those revelations will put even more mental stress on Assange, whom former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer described as having suffered “prolonged exposure to psychological torture” during his confinement. The High Court should affirm the district court’s denial of extradition.
A Window Into U.S. War Crimes and Threats to Investigative Journalism
“When Assange published hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the public was given an unprecedented window into the lack of justification and the futility of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Assange Defense co-chairs Daniel Ellsberg, Alice Walker and Noam Chomsky wrote at Newsweek. “The truth was hidden by a generation of governmental lies. Assange’s efforts helped show the American public what their government was doing in their name.”
Recent revelations of Pompeo’s threats against Assange that appeared in Yahoo! News have shed light on the dangers the national security state poses to investigative journalism and the public’s right to know. In light of these new disclosures, a coalition of 25 press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights organizations have intensified their call for dismissal of the DOJ’s charges against Assange.
Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said his committee has asked the CIA for information about plans to kidnap or assassinate Assange.
The High Court will decide whether to affirm or overturn district judge Baraitser’s decision denying extradition. If they affirm Baraitser’s ruling, the Biden administration could ask the U.K. Supreme Court to review the case. If the High Court overturns Baraitser’s decision, Assange could appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court and then to the European Court of Human Rights if the Supreme Court ruling goes against him.
Biden’s appeal of the denial of extradition should be dismissed. Julian Assange should be released and celebrated for his courage.
Chris Hedges talks to documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist John Pilger about the upcoming appeals hearing in London for the Julian Assange case.
On Sept. 26, Yahoo! News published “Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA’s secret war plans against WikiLeaks.” The article detailed discussions within the CIA to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange. The revelations came a month before a hearing in Britain’s High Court that will see the U.S. government appeal a decision that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be sent to the United States to face espionage charges. These revelations also coincided with the arrest of an Icelandic man who played a major role in the FBI’s case against Assange and who has now admitted he lied in his testimony about Assange to U.S. federal investigators. The most recent revelations, coupled with the numerous legal anomalies of the Assange case, including leaks that show that the Spanish security firm at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London where Assange sought refuge for seven years, turned over recordings of his meetings with his lawyers to the CIA, amply illustrate that the judicial pantomime carried out against Assange is a political persecution led by the U.S. government and the CIA because of embarrassing and damaging revelations about the inner workings of the US military, intelligence agencies and the political class repeatedly exposed by Assange and WikiLeaks. The goal of the U.S. government is to shut down WikiLeaks, and organizations like WikiLeaks, and to make an example of Assange, who if he is extradited to the United States faces 175 years in prison, to dissuade others who might consider replicating his courageous reporting. The upcoming appeals hearing is on October 27 and 28 at Britain’s High Court, London.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is facing another extradition hearing on 27-28 October. The US authorities are appealing an earlier ruling that Assange should not be extradited to the US on health and safety grounds.
Now the US and its allies are to be put on ‘trial’ by a tribunal. They are accused of committing atrocities, for example in Iraq, and of torture at Guantánamo Bay. While the tribunal possesses no legal powers, it’s intention is to set the record straight and demonstrate that Assange is not the criminal here.
The tribunal – referred to as the Belmarsh Tribunal, after the prison where Assange continues to be held – will commence proceedings on 22 October. There are 20 members of the tribunal, including:
Historian Tariq Ali
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
Former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
Former MI5 intelligence officer Annie Machon
Award-winning film maker Ken Loach
Hellenic parliament member Yanis Varoufakis.
What it’s all about
Via a press release, Tariq Ali explains the tribunal’s origins:
The Tribunal takes inspiration from the Sartre-Russell Tribunal, of which I was also a member. In 1966, Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre issued a call for a War Crimes Tribunal to try the United States for crimes against humanity in their conduct of the war in Vietnam. A number of us were sent to North Vietnam to observe and record the attacks on civilians. I spent six weeks under the bombs, an experience that shaped the rest of my life.
“The tribunal convened in Stockholm in 1967. The jury members included Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Isaac Deutscher, Vladimir Dedijer, Mahmud Ali Kasuri, and David Dellinger, among others. The aim was not legal but moral: to bring the crimes to the notice of the public.
“In London on 22 October 2021, we will do the same. Assange must be freed and the many crimes of the War on Terror placed centre stage.”
Jeremy Corbyn says it’s all about accountability:
Wikileaks exposed crimes of US empire in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond. At the Belmarsh Tribunal, we will turn the world the right way up, placing crimes of war, torture, kidnapping and a litany of other gross human rights abuses on trial.
The perpetrators of these crimes walk free, often still prominent public figures in the US, U.K. and elsewhere. They should be held accountable for the lives they destroyed and the futures they stole.
To understand why the imprisonment of Assange is a travesty of justice, it’s important to appreciate some of the many crimes, including war crimes, exposed by WikiLeaks.
War crimes
As reported on by The Canary, during one of Assange’s extradition hearings Reprieve human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith provided details of some of the war crimes committed by the US.
In a March 2019 article, the Canary’s John McEvoy reported that “according to a highly sensitive 2006 UK military report into Iraq, UK and US war planning “ran counter to potential Geneva Convention obligations””. He added how a “US cable from April 2009 [published by WikiLeaks] shows UK business secretary Peter Mandelson “pushing British oil and other corporate interests in Iraq””. A “2009 cable also reveals that the government of former PM Gordon Brown “put measures in place to protect [US] interests” during the Chilcot inquiry into the invasion of Iraq”. Another “US cable also shows how the US and UK governments “rigged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to stop it being able to hold [Tony] Blair and [George W.] Bush accountable for the crime of aggression over Iraq””.
In 2018, journalist Mark Curtis reported that a WikiLeaks published cable revealed that former foreign secretary David Miliband helped “the US to sidestep a ban on cluster bombs and keep the weapons at US bases on UK soil, despite Britain signing the international treaty banning the weapons the previous year”.
More allegations
In 2016, The Canaryreported on several allegations of US war crimes based on testimony given by whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Another article in The Canaryreferred to a cable published by WikiLeaks that “suggested that the US had intended to convince Spanish officials to interfere with the National Court’s judicial independence”. This was in connection with an allegation “that the [six US officials] accused conspired with criminal intent to construct a legal framework to permit interrogation techniques and detentions in violation of international law”. The cable shows that the US secretly pressurised the Spanish government to ensure no prosecutions took place.
The Canary also reported on allegations of a cover-up relating to hundreds of UK war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. These included UK involvement in the use of torture centres in both countries. One such centre was Camp Nama where it’s alleged:
British soldiers and airmen helped operate a secretive US detention facility in Baghdad that was at the centre of some of the most serious human rights abuses to occur in Iraq after the invasion. Many of the detainees were brought there by snatch squads formed from Special Air Service and Special Boat Service squadrons.
Britain was also implicated in the extraordinary rendition (kidnapping and imprisonment) of detainees.
Underestimating deaths
As for the number of Iraqis killed during the war, The Canaryreported on figures far higher than the official estimates.
According to journalist Nafeez Ahmed:
the US-led war from 1991 to 2003 killed 1.9 million Iraqis; then from 2003 onwards around 1 million: totalling just under 3 million Iraqis dead over two decades.
Ahmed added that the overall figures of fatalities from Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan since the 1990s – from direct killings and the longer-term impact of war-imposed deprivation – constituted:
around 4 million (2 million in Iraq from 1991-2003, plus 2 million from the ‘war on terror’), and could be as high as 6-8 million people when accounting for higher avoidable death estimates in Afghanistan.
Back to front
The prosecution of Assange is arguably political. Indeed, journalist John McEvoy points out how mass media has responded to recent news of a plot to kill Assange with “ghoulish indifference”.
UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer has commented how Assange has been “systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed”. In other words, the Belmarsh Tribunal will at the very least help remind us that it’s the perpetrators of war crimes who should be prosecuted – not the person who helped reveal those crimes.
Netflix will begin streaming a brazen hatchet job on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for its American subscribers on October 24th, just three days prior to a significant court date in Assange’s fight against extradition from the UK to the United States on October 27th.
“You can stream We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks on Netflix starting Sunday, October 24, 2021, at 12 AM PT / 3 AM ET,” Netflix Schedule reports.
We Steal Secrets was a “documentary” that is now so outdated beyond its 2013 release that one of its central characters, Chelsea Manning, is referred to by a dead name throughout its entirety. Why choose this specific moment to release it?
Well it doesn’t make much sense at all, if the timing wasn’t deliberately geared toward damaging Assange’s reputation in the nation whose government is trying to extradite him for exposing its war crimes. Assange’s October court date was set way back in August and Netflix didn’t announce it had scheduled to begin streaming this film until two weeks ago.
Three days before a crucial court hearing – as Julian Assange fights against extradition to a US super-max prison – Netflix is showing Alex Gibney's execrable propaganda film We Steal Secrets. I wrote a post detailing its smears at the time of its release https://t.co/lJJUoerJDqhttps://t.co/BMpNrg2h4i
After all, We Steal Secrets was so egregious in its spin that not only did WikiLeaks supporters like World Socialist Website and journalist Jonathan Cook pan it as a smear at the time, but WikiLeaks itself went to the trouble of publishing a line-by-line refutation of the mountains of propaganda distortion heaped on the narrative by filmmaker Alex Gibney.
“The title (‘We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks’) is false,” WikiLeaks writes at the beginning of its response. “It directly implies that WikiLeaks steals secrets. In fact, the statement is made by former CIA/NSA director Michael Hayden in relation to the activities of US government spies, not in relation to WikiLeaks. This an irresponsible libel. Not even critics in the film say that WikiLeaks steals secrets.”
“Gibney’s latest release—We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks—is something else again,” World Socialist Website wrote in 2013. “The 130-minute feature is a political hatchet job against Julian Assange and dovetails with the media and US government campaign against the WikiLeaks web site. Whether Gibney has shifted to the right or simply revealed the fatal limitations of his liberal ‘oppositional’ views is a matter for a separate discussion. In any event, his newest work is an effort at disinformation.”
“The job of a good documentarist is to weigh the available material and then present as honest a record of what it reveals as possible. Anything less is at best polemic, if it sides with those who are silenced and weak, and at worst propaganda, if it sides with those who wield power,” critiqued Jonathan Cook at the time.
This would not be the first time Netflix has helped circulate narratives that advance the interests of the US empire, or the second, or the third, having already run blatantly propagandistic “documentaries” advancing imperial interests in nations like Ukraine, Russia, Egypt, and multipleonesaboutSyria. Netflix has also signed deals with the Obamas and with British royalty.
So they’re not exactly looking out for the little guy, which from a company worth an estimated $229 billion should come as no surprise.
Still, such open facilitation of the world’s most powerful government in its campaign to imprison a journalist for inconvenient journalistic activity is a special kind of reprehensible. If there is a healthy humanity in the future, it will look back on the worldwide smear campaign against Assange and WikiLeaks with horror.
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Yahoo! News (9/26/21) reported that “discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred ‘at the highest levels’ of the Trump administration.”
Yahoo! News (9/26/21) published a bombshell report detailing the US Central Intelligence Agency’s “secret war plans against WikiLeaks,” including clandestine plots to kill or kidnap publisher Julian Assange while he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Following WikiLeaks‘ publication of the Vault 7 files in 2017—the largest leak in CIA history, which exposed how US and UK intelligence agencies could hack into household devices—the US government designated WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service” (The Hill, 4/13/17), providing legal cover to target the organization as if it were an adversarial spy agency.
Within this context, the Donald Trump administration reportedly requested “sketches” or “options” for how to kill Assange, according to the Yahoo! expose (written by Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor and Michael Isikoff), while the CIA drew up plans to kidnap him. (Assange was expelled from the embassy in 2019 and has since then been in British prison, fighting a demand that he be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage—FAIR.org, 11/13/20.)
Shortly after publication, former CIA director Mike Pompeo (Yahoo! News, 9/29/21) seemed to confirm the report’s findings, declaring that the former US intelligence officials who spoke with Yahoo! “should all be prosecuted for speaking about classified activity inside the CIA.”
Ghoulish indifference
Patrick Cockburn (Independent, 10/1/21): “The scoop about the CIA’s plot to kidnap or kill Assange has been largely ignored or downplayed.”
It would seem that covert plans for the state-sanctioned murder on British soil of an award-winning journalist should attract sustained, wall-to-wall media coverage.
The news, however, has been met by Western establishment media with ghoulish indifference—a damning indictment of an industry that feverishly condemns attacks on press freedom in Official Enemy states.
BBC News, one of the most-read news outlets in the world, appears to have covered the story just once—in the Somali-language section of the BBC website (Media Lens on Twitter, 9/30/21).
Neither the New York Times or Washington Post, two of the world’s leading corporate news organizations, have published any articles about Assange since July 2021.
To its credit, since the story first broke on September 26, the Guardian has reported twice on the CIA-led conspiracy to kill or kidnap Assange. But to offer perspective, during the week after Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was reported to have been poisoned by the Russian government, the Guardian published 16 separate pieces on the issue, including video reports and opinion pieces.
Similarly, a Nexis search of British newspapers for the word “Navalny” brings up 288 results from August 20–25, 2020. The same search for “Assange” between September 26–October 1, 2021, brings up a meager 29 results—one of which, a notable exception, was a Patrick Cockburn piece in the Independent (10/1/21).
Crucial relief
Aaron Maté (PushBack, 9/30/21) interviews Yahoo!‘s Michael Isikoff about the CIA’s plans to assassinate Assange.
As is typical of stories that embarrass the Western intelligence services, independent media provided crucial relief to the backdrop of chilling indifference, with the Grayzone’s Aaron Maté (YouTube, 9/30/21) conducting a rigorous interview with one of the report’s authors, Michael Isikoff.
Indeed, the Grayzone (5/14/20) was the first outlet to provide evidence of a CIA-linked proposal to “kidnap or poison Assange” in May 2020. The story, however, was almost universally ignored, suggesting that, as Joe Lauria wrote in Consortium News (10/2/21), “until something appears in the mainstream media, it didn’t happen.”
One thing the corporate media cannot be accused of with regards to Assange, however, is inconsistency. After a key witness in the Department of Justice’s case against the publisher admitted to providing the US prosecution with false testimony, a detail that should ordinarily turn a case to dust, the corporate media responded by ignoring the story almost entirely. As Alan MacLeod wrote for FAIR.org (7/2/21):
The complete uniformity with which corporate media have treated this latest bombshell news raises even more concerns about how fundamentally intertwined and aligned they are with the interests of the US government.
Even after it was revealed that the UC Global security firm that targeted Assange had also spied on journalists at the Washington Post and New York Times, neither outlet mounted any protest (Grayzone, 9/18/20).
Perhaps most remarkably, UK judge Vanessa Baraitser relied on a falsified CNN report (7/15/19) to justify the CIA’s spying operation against Assange (Grayzone, 5/1/21). Now, CNN’s website contains no reports on the agency’s plans to kill or kidnap Assange.
The prevailing silence has extended into the NGO industry. Amnesty International, which refused in 2019 to consider Assange a prisoner of conscience, has said nothing about the latest revelations. Likewise, Index on Censorship, which describes itself as “The Global Voice of Free Expression,” hasn’t responded to the story.
The establishment media’s dismissal of Assange supports Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s framework of “worthy” and “unworthy” political dissidents, with Assange situated firmly in the latter camp.
‘Only barrier is pride’
This James Ball column (Guardian, 1/10/18) has not aged well.
The present circumstances become even more deplorable upon consideration of the corporate journalists who arrogantly diminished, or even delighted in, Assange’s concerns for his own safety.
The Guardian’s James Ball (1/10/18) published a now infamous article headlined, “The Only Barrier to Julian Assange Leaving Ecuador’s Embassy Is Pride.” “The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US,” the subhead confidently asserted. The column concluded:
Assange does not want to be trapped in Ecuador’s embassy, and his hosts do not want him there. Their problem is that what’s keeping him trapped there is not so much the iniquitous actions of world powers, but pride.
In a later article (3/29/18), Ball insisted that Assange “should hold his hands up and leave the embassy.”
Ball, at least, has written something on the latest revelations, but his article in the London Times (10/03/21) remains typically scornful of Assange’s persona.
The Guardian’s Marina Hyde (5/19/17) took a similar angle. Under the headline “The Moral of the Assange Story? Wait Long Enough, and Bad Stuff Goes Away,” Hyde wrote that “Captain WikiLeaks will get out of pretend-jail eventually.” More than four years later, Assange is in Belmarsh prison, “the closest comparison in the United Kingdom to Guantánamo,” according to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. Hyde has said nothing of the very real plans to murder or kidnap him.
In the same vein, journalist Suzanne Moore—who had previously publicly mocked Assange on a number of occasions—wrote in the New Statesman (4/12/19) after Assange’s arrest:
We are all bored out of our minds with Brexit when a demented-looking gnome is pulled out of the Ecuadorian embassy by the secret police of the deep state. Or “the met,” as normal people call them.
Moore, winner of the Orwell Prize for journalism in 2019, was not the first of her colleagues to ridicule WikiLeaks and its supporters as paranoid about an increasingly powerful state security apparatus. A column by the Guardian‘s Nick Cohen (6/23/12) offered “supporters of Julian Assange” as a “definition of paranoia”:
Assange’s supporters do not tell us how the Americans could prosecute the incontinent leaker. American democracy is guilty of many crimes and corruptions. But the First Amendment to the US constitution is the finest defense of freedom of speech yet written. The American Civil Liberties Union thinks it would be unconstitutional for a judge to punish Assange.
And, in any case, “Britain has a notoriously lax extradition treaty with the United States.”
Blinded by propaganda
Nils Melzer (Medium, 6/26/19): “Once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course.”
It is of little surprise, then, that the Guardian, among other news outlets, refused to publish the words of UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, who wrote in June 2019:
In the end, it finally dawned on me that I had been blinded by propaganda, and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. Once he had been dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide.
The Assange case once again demonstrates that when erroneous reporting falls on the right side of the US and UK foreign policy establishment, editorial standards are set aside, and journalistic failures are met with zero accountability.
As such, it’s important to remember those journalists who watched on, pointing, laughing, comfortable in the knowledge that their work would never produce the impact nor risk of WikiLeaks—and then said nothing as the right to a free press was removed in broad daylight.
The US prosecution of Julian Assange has been dealt another blow following revelations that the CIA plotted the kidnap and rendition or murder of the WikiLeaks founder. The revelations also directly implicate Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and secretary of state, and US president Donald Trump.
Separately, there’s evidence of how cyber activists foiled a 2012 attempt by British police to break into and enter the Ecuadorian embassy where Assange had sought asylum.
Permission to act
In April 2017, Pompeo publicly declared that “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service”. Arguably, that could be interpreted as an invitation to the CIA and other US agencies to take action against Assange and other WikiLeaks staffers.
The Intercept subsequently reported that the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 stated:
It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.
The plot
Plans to kill or kidnap Assange were discussed when Assange was still in refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy. Worried about an alleged scheme that could see Assange escape the UK for Russia, the CIA and the White House considered a number of scenarios, including:
potential gun battles with Kremlin operatives on the streets of London, crashing a car into a Russian diplomatic vehicle transporting Assange and then grabbing him, and shooting out the tires of a Russian plane carrying Assange before it could take off for Moscow. (U.S. officials asked their British counterparts to do the shooting if gunfire was required, and the British agreed, according to a former senior administration official.)
Reportedly, a former senior Trump official claimed that US, UK, and Russian undercover intelligence operatives had been stationed in the streets near the embassy.
And in May 2018, WikiLeaks claimed a “grab team” had been spotted near the embassy:
RELEASE: Infra-red footage of covert @JulianAssange "grab team" stake out operation reading mission briefing notes
However, Assange rejected all suggestions he planned to escape the UK for Russia.
It’s also claimed by Yahoo! News that then US president Donald Trump asked whether the CIA could assassinate the WikiLeaks founder, though Trump denies this.
Pompeo is now calling for the prosecution of those officials who talked with Yahoo! News regarding plans for Assange’s kidnapping or murder:
Pompeo calls for prosecution of sources who spoke to Yahoo News about plans to kidnap or kill Assange
"Those 30 people who allegedly spoke to one of these reporters, they should all be prosecuted for speaking about classified activity inside CIA"https://t.co/5e5u0RtWkc
Nor can UK authorities profess innocence to breaking the law in order to seize Assange. On the evening of 15 August 2012, around 20 British police officers attempted to extricate Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy’s protection. However, thanks to some eagle-eyed “cyber warriors”, that attempt was spectacularly foiled.
Darker Net published a timeline showing that police were spotted climbing a fire escape, then trying to enter the embassy from an upper floor fire door. One cyber observer immediately contacted Jennifer Robinson from Assange’s legal team, to ask that she contact senior Assange lawyer Gareth Peirce.
Meanwhile, hacker group AntiLeaks succeeded in blocking live video footage of the raid, but only temporarily. AntiLeaks had previously been conducting cyber attacks on WikiLeaks.
Had the raid not been exposed and subsequently thwarted, British authorities would have been guilty of contravening diplomatic immunity conventions.
Any transgression against the sanctity of the embassy is a unilateral and shameful act, and a violation of the Vienna Convention, which protects embassies worldwide.
Also that day, on hearing of the aborted raid, the Organisation of American States passed a motion in support of Ecuador.
Clive Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, later explained how some hours before the raid took place a “very senior official within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office” contacted him and said:
there was tremendous discomfort at this development within the British diplomatic service because of the potential exposure of British embassies and diplomats abroad to similar action. I asked how on earth such an illegal decision could have been reached. My ex-colleague said that political pressure exerted by the administration of the United States of America on Mr William Hague and Mr David Cameron had outweighed the views of British diplomats. [Emphasis by Murray]
Indeed, had the police gained full entry to the embassy, without permission from Ecuadorian authorities, that would arguably have placed every UK embassy around the world in danger of similar violation.
(Note: this author played a key role in exposing the police’s attempted illegal entry into the embassy.)
Interventions
Following the more recent revelations by Yahoo! News, Assange’s US lawyer Barry Pollack commented:
My hope and expectation is that the UK courts will consider this information [regarding plans to kidnap and murder] and it will further bolster its decision not to extradite to the US.
Documentary film maker Laura Poitras commented that “the CIA… conspired to seek the rendition and extrajudicial assassination of Julian Assange”. She described this as a “state-sponsored crime against the press”.
Moreover, celebrated whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, has called on US president Joe Biden to drop all charges against Assange:
Biden should drop his appeal to extradite Julian Assange and dismiss all charges against him, on the new disclosures that Assange has been subjected to the same governmental crimes that led to the dismissal of my own prosecution half a century ago. 1/ https://t.co/kfzYFN8krL
Meanwhile, Assange is still held in Belmarsh Prison, even though UK tribunal judge Vanessa Baraitser blocked his extradition to the US on health and safety grounds – meaning risk of suicide. Her ruling regarding the charges raised equated to a “ringing endorsement of the US prosecution case”.
However, the latest revelations provide further proof that the US case against Assange is political, and therefore the prosecution should cease.
Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News discusses his team’s reporting on the CIA plot to surveil, kidnap, and even kill Assange — all overseen by Michael Pompeo. In response, Pompeo has called for the prosecution of all the sources involved.
The story builds on previous disclosures including a May 2020 exposé by The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal, which revealed that the CIA was working with Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson and the Spanish security firm UC Global to target and surveil Assange in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.
Isikoff and Aaron Maté also debate Russia’s role in the Assange controversy, particularly the allegation that Russia stole Democratic Party emails in 2016 and gave them to Wikileaks.
If there was any reason to halt a farcical train of legal proceedings, the case against Julian Assange would have to be the standard bearing example, argues Binoy Kampmark.
This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter, a project of Shadowproof. Become a paid subscriber and help us expand our work.
Though District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the United States’ extradition request, she rejected the argument from the legal team for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that hostility within U.S. intelligence agencies “translated into improper pressure on federal prosecutors to bring charges.”
However, a Yahoo! News report on the CIA’s plans to kidnap or kill Assange contains some of the strongest evidence yet that Assange was only charged with crimes because of their thirst for vengeance.Assange was charged by the U.S. Justice Department with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of conspiracy to commit a computer intrusion that, as alleged in the indictment, is written like an Espionage Act offense.
The charges criminalize the act of merely receiving classified information, as well as the publication of state secrets from the U.S. government. It targets common practices in journalism, which is why the case is widely opposed by press freedom organizations throughout the world.Assange is detained at Belmarsh, a high-security prison in London where he has been held since he was expelled from the Ecuador embassy in April 2019 and denied bail.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo obsessed over Assange and WikiLeaks, and sought revenge after the publication of “Vault 7” materials, redefining the media organization as a “hostile entity.” (His successor, Gina Haspel, shared his zeal for retaliation.)
Pompeo proposed kidnapping Assange in the summer of 2017. His obsession led several CIA officials to draw up plans for assassinating the publisher.
“Some National Security Council officials” in President Donald Trump’s administration “worried that the CIA’s proposals to kidnap Assange would not only be illegal but also might jeopardize the prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder,” according to the report. “Concerned the CIA’s plans would derail a potential criminal case, the Justice Department expedited the drafting of charges against Assange to ensure that they were in place if he were brought to the United States.”
Discussions about putting Assange on a rendition flight alarmed senior administration officials, like John Eisenberg, who was the top lawyer for the National Security Council, and his deputy, Michael Ellis.
“Pompeo [was] advocating things that are not likely to be legal,” including “rendition-type activity,” one former national security official told Yahoo! News reporters.
The Justice Department had yet to indict Assange, “even under seal.” If the CIA kidnapped Assange from the Ecuador embassy, they would be doing so without any “legal basis to try him in the United States.”
Meetings involving the CIA, where plans for kidnapping or killing Assange were raised, put pressure on prosecutors at the Justice Department.
“Eisenberg urged Justice Department officials to accelerate their drafting of charges against Assange, in case the CIA’s rendition plans moved forward, according to former officials. The White House told Attorney General Jeff Sessions that if prosecutors had grounds to indict Assange they should hurry up and do so, according to a former senior administration official.”
The British government held Assange on a “bail-jumping charge” after the Swedish prosecution authority dropped their preliminary investigation into alleged sexual acts.
On December 21, 2017, an indictment against Assange was filed under seal for allegedly conspiring to commit a computer crime.
Representatives of the Assange legal team were asked to comment but declined.
Attorneys for Assange did not have any of the above details from internal discussions. However they had enough evidence from Pompeo’s first public remarks and the spying operation by Undercover Global against the Ecuador embassy to single out the undue influence on the Justice Department.
“There was a decision under [President Barack] Obama’s administration in 2013 that there would be no prosecution,” Assange’s defense declared in their closing argument. “In fact, there was no prosecution under the Obama administration for clear reasons of constitutional principle.”
“Pressure was placed on career prosecutors by political appointees,” like Pompeo and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“This was part of a concerted plan by the executive, first to handicap his legal defense through the targeting of his lawyers, and to have him indicted, expelled from the embassy, and extradited; and further to ensure the escalation of the charges against him in the two superseding indictments,” his legal team added.
In November 2018, the New York Times reported that the April 2017 speech by Pompeo and “other efforts were intended in part to pressure the Justice Department to intensify [their] reassessment of Assange.”
Baraitser was not troubled by the hostility among U.S. intelligence agencies. “Although the intelligence community has spoken in hostile terms about Mr. Assange and Wikileaks, this is unsurprising given that he disclosed a vast number of their classified documents.” She added, “The intelligence community does not speak on behalf of the president or his administration.”
The district court judge further contended:
The defense submits that Mike Pompeo was leading the pursuit of this prosecution. They rely in particular on a speech from 13 April 2017 during which he described Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence agency” and stated, “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now”. However, at this time Mr. Pompeo was Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (“the CIA”). After his appointment to Secretary of State in April 2018 there are no reports of hostile comments made in relation to Mr. Assange or to Wikileaks. [emphasis added]
The Yahoo! News report highlighted the intense debate within the Justice Department, FBI, and CIA in 2015. The FBI believed WikiLeaks should be their sole responsibility. The bureau did not think the CIA or NSA should be involved.
“The Justice Department, in particular, was ‘very protective’ of its authorities over whether to charge Assange and whether to treat WikiLeaks ‘like a media outlet,’ said Robert Litt, the intelligence community’s senior lawyer during the Obama administration.”
Because the Trump White House did not have the same hangups over “First Amendment issues,” the pressure to charge Assange was substantial. This was reflected in disagreements among career prosecutors, which the Washington Post covered the same month that Espionage Act charges were made public.
Still, Baraitser insisted, “I have been given no reason to consider that the U.S. criminal justice system in general or the judge designated to hear this case in particular, will be manipulated for political purposes at the behest of the executive or the CIA.”
Pompeo was asked about the Yahoo! News report by Megyn Kelly and replied by urging the Justice Department to launch mass prosecutions against the sources for the article.
“I can’t say much about this other than whoever those 30 people who allegedly spoke to one of these [Yahoo News] reporters — they should all be prosecuted for speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Based on the revelations, press freedom groups renewed their opposition to the political case.
“The CIA is a disgrace. The fact that it contemplated and engaged in so many illegal acts against WikiLeaks, its associates, and even other award-winning journalists is an outright scandal that should be investigated by Congress and the Justice Department,” stated Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director Trevor Timm, who testified at Assange’s extradition hearing.“[President Joe Biden’s administration] must drop [their] charges against Assange immediately. The case already threatens the rights of countless reporters. These new revelations, which involve a shocking disregard of the law, are truly beyond the pale.”
Rebecca Vincent, the director of international campaigns for Reporters Without Borders, reacted, “If true, these allegations of a CIA threat to Assange’s life are alarming, and underscore the very serious risk he remains at in detention, which would be exponentially heightened if the U.S. is successful in securing his extradition.”
“The exposed alleged plots that could cause severe harm or loss of life to Assange or his associates are threats to press freedom itself. The Biden administration must act immediately to distance itself from these shocking reports of the Trump administration’s actions, close the case against Assange once and for all, and allow for his release from prison before any further harm is caused.”
If there was any reason to halt a farcical train of legal proceedings, then the case against Julian Assange would have to be the standard bearing example. Since last year, the efforts by the US government to pursue his extradition to the vicious purgatory of American justice has seen more than a fair share of obscene revelations. While prosecutors for the US insist that the publisher must find himself in freedom land for having, incongruously, violated provisions under the Espionage Act of 1917, the broader political elements to this are impossible to shake.
From the moment classified US documents were released with daring aplomb on the WikiLeaks site, Assange was treated as a political target sneeringly condemned by Joe Biden (then Vice President) as a “cyber terrorist”. It did not matter that he had been granted political asylum by a foreign government, or that he had exposed the vicious nature of the US war machine in foreign lands.
The central strategy of the enraged in the face of such exposure is conventionally dull. Mock the publisher; redirect attention away from exposing the bloody mischief of empire. In the court of public opinion, such an individual can be queered and rendered indigestible, motives rubbished, intentions trashed. Cheeky public disclosure contrarians can be dismissed as cranks and discredited.
Once Michael Pompeo assumed the reins at the Central Intelligence Agency, WikiLeaks became something of an obsession, fascinating given Donald Trump’s sheer delight over its releases of those Democratic emails that holed Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is,” he told an audience at the Center for Strategic and international Studies (CSIS) on April 13, 2017, “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”
Such a perspective led to brazen efforts by the Spanish private security firm UC Global, hired to furnish surveillance equipment to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, to spy upon Assange and his various colleagues and confidantes. The firm, through its chief executive David Morales, was knee-deep with the Central Intelligence Agency and delighted to be of assistance.
The extent of Morales’s zeal alarmed a few former employees of the company, a point they were unreserved in expressing in the Old Bailey proceedings in September last year. “Around June 2017, while I was sourcing providers for the new camera equipment, David Morales instructed that the cameras should allow streaming capabilities so that ‘our friends’ in the United States’, as Morales explicitly put it, would be able to gain access to the interior of the embassy in real time. This request alarmed me greatly, and in order to impede the request, I claimed that remote access via streaming via the camera circuit was not technically achievable.” That witness noted Morales’s wish to bug the entire embassy and suggested that the purpose of installing microphones had been at the behest of the United States to target Assange’s legal representatives.
This was merely the start. One of the witnesses (for convenience, called Witness 2), revealed how Morales had asked him to “steal a nappy of a baby which according to the company’s security personnel deployed at the embassy, regularly visited Mr Assange.” The act was designed to ascertain whether, in fact, it came from “a child of the asylee.” It was “the Americans”, Morales claimed, “who wanted to establish paternity.”
Frustrated by a lack of movement on expelling Assange from the embassy, US officials began teasing out options. According to the second witness, “the Americans were desperate [in December 2017] and that they had even suggested that more extreme measures should be employed against the ‘guest’ to put an end to the situation of Assange’s permanence in the embassy.” An “accident” was proposed, one that could be claimed for covering an operation “which would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee”. And just in case such a scenario would not unfold, another, more final suggestion was put on the table: a handy poisoning.
As is often the nature of the modern news cycle, such damnable revelations are dips in what is otherwise a more substantive, disturbing story. It takes such reports as those of Yahoo!News to add a chilling confirmation. To the credit of the authors, much flesh is added to the narrative. A former Trump national security official is cited as claiming that the administration was “seeing blood” after WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 files, a set of hacking tools developed by the CIA. “This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred millions line of code,” crowed WikiLeaks in a press release at the time, “gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.”
But the interest in gathering material on the organisation in the intelligence community began prior, inspired by the revelations of Edward Snowden in June 2013 about the warrantless and expansive surveillance programs of the National Security Agency. Within the CIA, the Office of Transnational Issues got busy establishing its own “WikiLeaks team”. The intelligence community was abuzz with efforts to give the publishing outfit a different designation as “information brokers”.
With the publication of leaked Democratic Party emails, the belief among some intelligence operatives that Assange “was acting in collusion with people who were using him to hurt the interests of the United States” became, according to the community’s senior lawyer Robert Litt, palpable. With Trump taking up residence in the White House, a counterintelligence official could only remark that, “Nobody in that crew was going to be too broken up about the First Amendment issues.”
The Yahoo report is also filled with the wet dreams of adolescent functionaries pondering how the Australian might have made a dash for it. One of these involved the prospect that Assange might be spirited away by Russian agents after being granted diplomatic status by Ecuador. Scenarios involved crashing into any vehicle transporting Assange, snatching him and shooting the tyres of any plane intended to carry him to Moscow. “It was going to be like a prison break movie,” one former senior administration official fantasised with relish.
Outside the embassy, the area got cluttered with spooks and operatives. “It got to the point where every human being in a three-block radius was working for one of the intelligence services – whether they were street sweepers or police officers or security guards.”
Within some channels of the US government, concerns were aired that the rendition and kidnapping enthusiasts were getting out of hand. The fairly obvious point was expressed by some NSC officials that any such operation would be illegal. “You can’t throw people in a car and kidnap them,” a former national security official warned.
In the spring of 2017, assassination made it to the front of the queue as a possible remedy. President Trump put out the feelers for some advice. “It was viewed as unhinged and ridiculous,” a former senior CIA official is reported as saying. Another claimed that those proposing the idea “were just spitballing”, all part of an atmosphere where Trump was just being Trump. The spit balls in question evidently lingered long enough for rough sketches to be drawn up contemplating Assange’s murder and WikiLeaks members with access to the Vault 7 trove.
Assange’s US lawyer Barry Pollack wishes that this grubby state of affairs will lead to a sensible conclusion. “My hope and expectation is that the UK courts will consider this information and it will further bolster its decision not to extradite to the US.” The US appeal against the refusal to extradite Assange will be doing its best to avoid such thorny, and telling, revelations. Assange’s defence team will be doing its best to foil such efforts.
In the process of issuing another not-really-a-denial about a Yahoo News report that the CIA plotted to kidnap, extradite and assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2017, former CIA director Mike Pompeo said that the 30 former government officials the report was based on “should all be prosecuted for speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Here are some quotes from the exchange on Pompeo’s recent Megyn Kelly Show appearance courtesy of Mediaite:
Kelly asked Pompeo about the claims.
“Makes for pretty good fiction, Megyn,” said Pompeo. “They should write such a novel.”
He added, “Whoever those 30 people who allegedly spoke with one of these reporters, they should all be prosecuted for speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Pompeo called Wikileaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” that is “actively seeking to steal American classified information.”
“You deny the report?” asked Kelly.
“There’s pieces of it that are true,” said Pompeo. “We tried to protect American information from Julian Assange and Wikileaks, absolutely, yes. Did our justice department believe they had a valid claim which would’ve resulted in the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to stand trial? Yes. I supported that effort for sure. Did we ever engage in activity that was inconsistent with U.S. law?… We’re not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations. We never acted in a way that was inconsistent with that.”
Fmr. CIA Director Mike Pompeo calls for mass prosecutions of sources who spoke to Yahoo! News reporters about plans to kidnap or kill Assange.
"Whoever those 30 people [are] who allegedly spoke with one of these reporters, they should all be prosecuted"https://t.co/UWNgmFAvUX
Pompeo’s point that “We’re not permitted by U.S. law to conduct assassinations” is not especially convincing considering how the Trump administration openly assassinated Iran’s top military commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike last year, a move which Pompeo supported and defended.
“President Trump and those of us in his national security team are re-establishing deterrence, real deterrence, against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo gushed in support of the assassination at the time.
Pompeo’s pseudo-denial is of course further undermined by his position that the former officials who spoke to the press should all be prosecuted for “speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency.” Is it false or is it “classified activity”? It can’t be both. The two things Pompeo admitted to, trying to “protect American information” and working to extradite Assange, are not classified information. The classified information he wants them prosecuted for is therefore something else.
After a lot of flailing and humming and hawing Pompeo does eventually make what sounds like a concrete denial with the curiously-worded phrase “I can say we never conducted planning to violate US law.” But even this wouldn’t be a denial of the claims in the Yahoo News report, because the report is mostly about the intelligence community and the Trump administration trying to find legal loopholes that would allow them to take out Assange.
For example, this quote from the Yahoo News article: “A primary question for U.S. officials was whether any CIA plan to kidnap or potentially kill Assange was legal.” This would in no way be contradicted by Pompeo’s claim that “we never conducted planning to violate US law.” It would mean that there were discussions and plans about assassinating Assange amid conversations and debates about whether it would be legal to do so. The fact that they didn’t plan to violate US law doesn’t mean they didn’t plan to assassinate Assange if they could find a legal loophole for it.
This follows an earlier non-denial by Pompeo of the exact same nature in an interview with conservative pundit Glenn Beck. Pompeo points out that one of the article’s authors was a Russiagater and says of the former officials cited in the report that “those sources didn’t know what we were doing.” But he doesn’t actually deny it.
If Pompeo had not been involved in plots to kidnap, rendition and assassinate Julian Assange, he would have just said so. He wouldn’t have engaged in all kinds of verbal gymnastics to squirm his way out of a difficult question, and he certainly wouldn’t be calling for the criminal prosecution of his accusers for “speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency.”
This is because Mike Pompeo, as full of centipedes and demon spawn as his enormous head may be, is highly representative of the mainstream US power establishment. He is the embodiment of the empire’s values. He’s just one of its less-subtle representatives.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Under the leadership of then-Director Mike Pompeo, the CIA in 2017 reportedly plotted to kidnap — and discussed plans to assassinate — WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange, who is currently imprisoned in London as he fights the Biden administration’sefforts to extradite himto the United States.
Citing conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials,Yahoo NewsreportedSunday that “discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred ‘at the highest levels’ of the Trump administration.”
According toYahoo:
The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency’s multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.
While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks‘ ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as “Vault 7,” which the agency ultimately concluded represented “the largest data loss in CIA history.”
President Trump’s newly installed CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was seeking revenge on WikiLeaks and Assange, who had sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations he denied. Pompeo and other top agency leaders “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7,” said a former Trump national security official. “They were seeing blood.”
Yahoo’s reporting makes clear that Assange is not the only journalist U.S. officials have attempted to target in recent years. During the Obama presidency, according toYahoo, “top intelligence officials lobbied the White House to redefine WikiLeaks — and some high-profile journalists — as ‘information brokers,’ which would have opened up the use of more investigative tools against them, potentially paving the way for their prosecution.”
“Among the journalists some U.S. officials wanted to designate as ‘information brokers’ were Glenn Greenwald, then a columnist forThe Guardian, and Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, who had both been instrumental in publishing documents provided by [NSA whistleblower Edward] Snowden,”Yahooreported.
In a statement toYahoo, Poitras called the intelligence officials’ efforts “bone-chilling and a threat to journalists worldwide.”
If you’re a journalist, American or otherwise, you need to understand that turning a blind eye to this story moves the entire world toward a paradigm where the criminalization of journalism is routine.
Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in astatementthat “these new revelations, which involve a shocking disregard of the law, are truly beyond the pale.”
“The CIA is a disgrace,” said Timm. “The fact that it contemplated and engaged in so many illegal acts against WikiLeaks, its associates, and even other award-winning journalists is an outright scandal that should be investigated by Congress and the Justice Department. The Biden administration must drop its charges against Assange immediately. The case already threatens the rights of countless reporters.”
You really have to read this entire, well-reported investigation to believe it.
Truly appalling behavior by the CIA involving illegal kidnapping and assassination plans. The Biden admin needs to drop its charges against Assange immediately. https://t.co/N72BSmdTPR
The Trump Justice DepartmentchargedAssange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for publishing classified documents, something journalists do often. Despite urgent pleas frompress freedom advocates, the Biden administration has refused to drop the charges and continuedits predecessor’s attemptto extradite the WikiLeaks founder.
As Poitras wrote in anop-edfor the theNew York Timeslast year, “It is impossible to overstate the dangerous precedent Mr. Assange’s indictment under the Espionage Act and possible extradition sets: Every national security journalist who reports on classified information now faces possible Espionage Act charges.”
“It paves the way for the United States government to indict other international journalists and publishers. And it normalizes other countries’ prosecution of journalists from the United States as spies,” Poitras noted. “To reverse this dangerous precedent, the Justice Department should immediately drop these charges and the president should pardon Mr. Assange.”
Citing “conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials,” a new report by Yahoo News has confirmed earlier allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency not only spied on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his associates, but also drew up plans for kidnapping, renditioning, and assassinating him.
These plans were reportedly made in coordination with the Trump White House as then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo and then-Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel raged over WikiLeaks’ 2017 Vault 7 release which revealed that the CIA had lost control of an enormous digital arsenal of hacking tools. These included tools which enabled the surveillance of smartphones, smart TVs and web browsers, the hacking of computerized vehicle control systems, and the ability to frame foreign governments for cyber attacks by inserting the digital “fingerprints” of the hacking methods they employ for investigators to find. It was the single largest data leak in CIA history.
Normally we have to wait decades for confirmation that the CIA did something nefarious, and then people absurdly assume that such things no longer occur because it was so long ago, and because changing your worldview is uncomfortable. But here we are with an extensively sourced report that the agency plotted to kidnap, rendition and assassinate a journalist for publishing authentic documents in the public interest, just four years after the fact.
Journalists for Yahoo! News finally confirmed a narrative around Mike Pompeo and the CIA's war on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, which I outlined back in October 2019. It's an important report.
Which is about as spectacular a violation of virtually every value that western society claims to uphold. Particularly the assassination bit.
The authors of the story (who for the record insert their own flimsy spin insinuating ties between Russia and WikiLeaks) say it’s not known just how serious the assassination plans were taken at Langley. But they make it abundantly clear that such plans were made:
“[A]gency executives requested and received ‘sketches’ of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members who had access to Vault 7 materials, said a former intelligence official. There were discussions ‘on whether killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal,’ the former official said.”
And that, right there, just by itself, should be reason enough to completely abolish the Central Intelligence Agency. Just the fact that this is an institution where such conversations even happen and such plans even get made, to say nothing of the obvious implication that they wouldn’t have such conversations and make such plans if they did not act on them from time to time.
I just can’t get over how this claim was openly confirmed by a mainstream journalism investigation and the public response has been “Oh wow what an alarming news story,” instead of, “Okay well the CIA doesn’t get to exist then.”
I mean, is it not out-of-this-world bizarre that we just found out the CIA recently drew up plans to assassinate a journalist for journalistic activity, and yet we’re not all unanimously demanding that the CIA be completely dismantled and flushed down the toilet forever?
I’m seriously confused at the people who are opposed to abolishing the CIA?
Is the argument that they are doing good work?
How can anyone hear about the history of the CIA and what they do and be like, “I approve”
So why does it exist? Why is there still an institution whose extensive use of torture has reportedly included “Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock (‘the Bell Telephone Hour’) rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the ‘water treatment’; the ‘airplane’ in which the prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners”?
I am of course being rhetorical. We all know why the CIA still exists. An agency which exerts control over the news media with ever-increasing brazenness is not about to start helping the public become more well-informed about its unbroken track record of horrific abuses, and if anyone in power ever even thinks about crossing them they have “six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.”
The date of the absolute last time the CIA ever did anything evil keeps getting moved forward. The CIA just casually had plans drawn up for the assassination of Julian Assange in case they decided that was something they wanted to do, but you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist if you think they might be doing other bad things right now.
The reason the latest Assange story isn’t getting more traction and causing more people to think critically about the CIA is because the US government making plans to kidnap, rendition and assassinate a journalist for telling the truth is so incomprehensibly evil that it causes too much cognitive dissonance for people to really take in. Our minds are wired to reject information which disrupts our worldview, and people who’ve spent their lives marinating in the belief that they live in a free democracy will have worldviews that are resistant to information which shows we are actually ruled by secretive power structures who laugh at our votes.
So to recap, the CIA made plans to kidnap and rendition Julian Assange and to assassinate him and his associates. The CIA also spied on Assange and his legal team, and a notoriously untrustworthy key witness for the prosecution in his case has admitted to fabricating evidence. And yet the CIA is not being burnt to the ground and its ashes scattered to the Langley winds, and the UK is still somehow proceeding right along with the US appeal to extradite Assange.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as much light as WikiLeaks has shone on the dark inner workings of the powerful over the years, the persecution of Julian Assange by those very same power structures has revealed far, far more. The more they seek to persecute him the brighter that light shines on them, making it easier and easier for us to see who they are, what they do, and how they do it.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
During last week’s Tory Cabinet reshuffle, ITV political editor Robert Peston inadvertently summed up the primary function of political journalists:
‘I simply pass on’
His tweet was in reference to a ministerial source saying that Priti Patel was ‘not looking happy’. She remained in her job as Home Secretary.
Peston’s phrase was a tragicomic echo of a remark by Nick Robinson, ITV political editor during the Iraq war, who infamously declared that:
‘It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking… That is all someone in my sort of job can do.’
(‘“Remember the last time you shouted like that?” I asked the spin doctor’, The Times, 16 July, 2004)
In 2012, Robinson, by now the BBC’s political editor, mourned:
‘The build-up to the invasion of Iraq is the point in my career when I have most regretted not pushing harder and not asking more questions’.1
However, Robinson’s career certainly did not appear to have been harmed having abdicated this basic responsibility of journalism; namely, holding those in power to account. After a ten-year stint as the BBC political editor, he became a presenter on the high-profile BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Peston’s counterpart at the BBC, political editor Laura Kuenssberg, also performs the required function of ‘I simply pass on’, broadcasting and amplifying the words of those in power with minimal ‘analysis’, far less critical appraisal. Relaying Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s words on the current crisis in gas supply in the UK, as he flew to New York to attend climate talks, she tweeted:
‘Speaking on the plane Johnson said..
1. gas supply probs shd be “temporary”, the squeeze is a result of world waking up from pandemic shutdowns like everyone “going to put the kettle on at the end of the TV programme” and he said he was confident in UK supply chains’
Gary Neville, the football pundit and former Manchester United defender, replied to Kuenssberg’s tweet:
‘Hi Laura do you believe this guys crap ?’
A tad blunt perhaps. But, judging by the number of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’, it was a welcome challenge from someone with a public profile to the endless channelling by highly-paid political journalists of Johnson’s twaddle – and worse (as we will see below).
Daniel Finkelstein, the Tory peer and Times columnist, defended Kuenssberg and responded that reporting the Prime Minister’s words ‘is a part of her job’ so that the public can judge them for themselves. Three obvious glaring holes in his argument are that the BBC political editor:
(a) rarely challenges Johnson (or other government ministers) to any significant extent;
(b) provides very few perspectives or opinions from outside the narrow range of ‘mainstream’ Parliamentary debate (Labour hardly counts as an effective ‘Opposition’ under the Blair-lite Sir Keir Starmer;
(c) ignores Johnson’s many lies, falsehoods and misrepresentations which have been well-documented by several independent political observers, including Peter Oborne and Peter Stefanovic. Kuenssberg and her corporate media peers have given the Prime Minister a free pass on his serial deceptions.
There are countless examples of establishment bias by Kuenssberg (and her predecessors as BBC political editor). Recall, for example, that for years she channelled a one-sided account of Labour’s supposed antisemitism crisis, including an infamous BBC Panorama programme that was demolished as a ‘catalogue of reporting failures’ by the Media Reform Coalition. Recall, too, her evident disapproval when Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of the Labour Party, refused to give her a commitment in a BBC News television interview that he was willing to press the nuclear button to launch weapons that would cause untold death and suffering.
On 20 September, 2021, The National newspaper in Scotland reported that the flagship BBC News at Six ‘did not run a single negative news story about the UK Government’ during the previous week, 13-17 September. This was probably not an unusual week in that regard. Genuinely hard-hitting critical reporting of the Tory government is notable by its absence on BBC News and other establishment news media.
The truth is, that on one issue after another, leading journalists like Kuenssberg, Peston, and all the high-profile correspondents ‘reporting’ on politicians, the military and intelligence services spend too much time performing as mere stenographers to power. Rational and critical opposing voices are routinely ignored, marginalised or ridiculed.
Media Lens has documented and explained over the past two decades how ‘objectivity’ and ‘impartiality’ are alien concepts to state-corporate journalism. As the US commentator Michael Parenti once noted:
‘Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for “objectivity”. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.’
Similarly, Matt Kennard, head of investigations at Declassified UK, a vital resource for independent journalism, put it well:
‘If you’re sympathetic to the weak, it’s activist journalism. If you’re sympathetic to the powerful, it’s objective journalism.’
The public are, in effect, constantly being subjected to gaslighting by corporate journalists purporting to inform the public what is happening around us. We are being told, explicitly and implicitly, that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the system of economics and power politics that prevail in the world. We are being misled that any serious problems that arise – even climate instability – can be ‘fixed’ by ‘incentivising’ changes to consumer behaviour, rejigging the economy by redirecting public subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables, but all still within a corporate-driven ‘market’ framework to maximise private profit, and by implementing technical ‘solutions’, such as capturing and storing carbon emissions (which have failed to live up to the grandiose PR promises made, while fossil fuel companies have received large injections of public cash from governments).
In fact, ‘mainstream’ news is characterised by serial deceptions and omissions that hide essential truths about the world. We are being drip-fed propaganda that preserves the current inequitable system of power, privilege and class – even as we hurtle towards the abyss of climate chaos.
Any one of the topics addressed here could merit a media alert in its own right. Indeed, in each case, we have done so several times before. The objective here is to provide something of an overview of the propaganda system that is leading us towards ever greater levels of inequality and misery, even human extinction; a timely reminder of what is at stake.
Endless War
Consider the recent pull-out of US troops from Afghanistan after twenty years of occupation. In an excellent article for the Morning Star, Ian Sinclair observed that BBC News and other outlets continued to promote ‘misleading narratives about the Afghan invasion and its motives’. As just one example, Sinclair highlighted Johnson’s ‘astonishingly deceitful claim’ that:
‘It was no accident that there has been no terrorist attack launched against Britain or any other Western country from Afghanistan in the last 20 years.’
Sinclair countered:
‘First, terrorist attacks have taken place in Britain and the US that have been inspired by the US-British invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.’
He continued:
‘Second, it is widely understood by intelligence agencies and experts that the West’s military intervention in Afghanistan led to a heightened terrorist threat to the West.’
Sinclair added:
‘The final problem with the government’s claim that the war stopped terrorism on the West from Afghanistan is that it’s based on a simplistic understanding of the September 11 2001 terror attacks — that it was necessary for terrorists to “have a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on America and other civilised nations,” as president George W Bush explained in 2006.’
However, the 9-11 attacks were planned initially in Germany, training was implemented in the US and most of the hijackers were Saudi. A recent article in CovertAction Magazine noted that:
‘The invasion of Afghanistan was launched following the NATO invocation of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, but eventually it emerged that the report presented to NATO by U.S. Ambassador Frank Taylor contained no actual forensic evidence to support the assertion that the terror attacks had been orchestrated in Afghanistan.’
The 7 July 2005 bomb attacks in London, and the Manchester Arena bombing and London Bridge attacks in 2017, required no ‘safe haven’ for terrorists to commit atrocities in Britain.
Sinclair summed up:
‘The omissions and distortions that have been made by politicians about Afghanistan over the last few weeks, echoed by much of the media, have been so big and unremitting it’s easy to start questioning one’s own grip on reality.’
But following corporate news media daily can have precisely that effect. In gaslighting media audiences, ‘mainstream’ news routinely skews the agenda in favour of what Washington and its allies wish to project. Thus, as Julie Hollar noted in a piece for US-based media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), the corporate media only rediscovered Afghan women and their human rights when US troops left:
‘[corporate media] coverage gives the impression that Afghan women desperately want the US occupation to continue, and that military occupation has always been the only way for the US to help them. But for two decades, women’s rights groups have been arguing that the US needed to support local women’s efforts and a local peace process. Instead, both Democrat and Republican administrations continued to funnel trillions of dollars into the war effort, propping up misogynist warlords and fueling violence and corruption.’
Hollar continued:
‘The US did not “rescue” Afghan women with its military invasion in 2001, or its subsequent 20-year occupation. Afghan women need international help, but facile and opportunistic US media coverage pushes toward the same wrong kind of help that it’s been pushing for the last two decades: military “assistance,” rather than diplomacy and aid.’
She concluded:
‘For more than 20 years, US corporate media could have listened seriously to Afghan women and their concerns, bringing attention to their own efforts to improve their situation. Instead, those media outlets are proving once again that Afghan women’s rights are only of interest to them when they can be used to prop up imperialism and the military industrial complex.’
FAIR has summarised a 20-year-long pattern of corporate media self-censorship, scapegoating and stenography since 9-11. The US ‘war on terror’ has likely killed more than one million people at a cost of $8 trillion, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. The report states:
‘Several times as many more have been killed as a reverberating effect of the wars – because, for example, of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural issues, and water-related disease.’
Cost of War co-director Stephanie Savell said:
‘Twenty years from now, we’ll still be reckoning with the high societal costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – long after US forces are gone.’
The corporate media played a major role in bringing about this catastrophe, then covering it up afterwards.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is continuing its immoral mission to prosecute Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks co-founder and publisher, for telling the truth about US crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Assange rightly said in 2011 that the US goal was ‘an endless war, not a successful war’. The aim is to line the pockets of the narrow sector of society that profits from the military-industrial complex, at the expense of the general population.
In a piece for Newsweek, Daniel Ellsberg, Alice Walker and Noam Chomsky wrote that:
‘When Assange published hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the public was given an unprecedented window into the lack of justification and the futility of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The truth was hidden by a generation of governmental lies. Assange’s efforts helped show the American public what their government was doing in their name.’
As we have noted in previous media alerts, Assange’s continued incarceration and long-term confinement, described as torture by Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, is a damning indictment of Western ‘democracy’.
Political commentator Philip Roddis observes astutely that ‘Western democracy is ninety-five percent bogus’ because:
‘(a) democracy implies consent, (b) consent is meaningless if not informed, and (c) informed consent implies truly independent media. That last we do not have when they are “large corporations selling privileged audiences to other large corporations” [quoting Noam Chomsky].’
A recurring feature of ‘democracy’ and its ‘free press’ is judicious silence or quiet mumbling when a ‘mistake’ is made. Consider the BBC’s limited apology, and dearth of follow-up by almost all media, when the BBC conceded its coverage of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian city of Douma on 7 April, 2018 was ‘seriously flawed’.
As we have described in numerousmediaalerts, the corporate media declared with instant unanimity and certainty that Syria’s President Bashar Assad was responsible for the attack. One week later, the US, UK and France launched missiles on Syria in response to the unproven allegations. Since then, there has been a mounting deluge of evidence, in particular from whistleblowers, that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the UN poison gas watchdog, has perpetrated a cover-up to preserve the Western narrative that Assad gassed civilians in Douma.
Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens had complained to the BBC following last November’s Radio 4 broadcast of ‘Mayday: The Canister On The Bed’, which propagated the official Western narrative of the attack. In particular, Hitchens had objected to the slurs against an anonymous OPCW whistleblower named ‘Alex’. The BBC had claimed that ‘Alex’ only cast doubt on the official narrative because he had been promised $100,000 by WikiLeaks. The claim was false, as the BBC later admitted. There was no evidence to suggest that ‘Alex’, described as ‘a highly qualified and apolitical scientist’, was motivated by anything other than a desire for truth in sharing his doubts about the attack.
Aaron Maté, an independent journalist with The Grayzone, has vigorously and repeatedly pursued the story, shaming both ‘mainstream’ media and most progressive media outlets who, like the corporate media, have blanked the scandal. He recently wrote a devastating account of the deceptions and evasions by OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias when appearing before the UN. Now, in a must-watch interview with Jimmy Dore about the BBC’s apology, Maté said that the BBC only retracted part of its attack on the OPCW whistleblowers and that ‘the retraction only scratches the surface of its deceit.’
Steve Sweeney, international editor of the Morning Star, noted in response to the BBC’s apology on its Douma coverage that:
‘None of the major British newspapers such as The Times, The Telegraph, or the liberal mouthpiece for war with a human face, The Guardian, gave it column space despite the serious nature of the matter.’
The Stark Reality Of Newspeak
But, of course, ‘we’ are the ‘good guys’. And when evidence emerges to the contrary, it is shunted to the margins or buried. Other countries might be ‘belligerent’, but not us. Hence the deeply skewed reporting of the recent ‘Aukus pact’ between the US, UK and Australia which will provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. This was largely presented by state-corporate news, including the BBC and the Guardian, as a ‘defence’ deal to ‘counter’ China in its ‘belligerent behaviour’ in the Indo-Pacific.
BBC News at Ten declared on 16 September:
‘The deal will deliver nuclear-powered submarines to the Australian navy to promote stability in the Indo-Pacific region which has come under increasing pressure from China.’
The BBC might as well admit that they are reading out press releases on behalf of Western power.
An online BBC News article included the deceptive wording:
‘Aukus is being widely viewed as an effort to counter Beijing’s influence in the contested South China Sea.’
The weasel phrase ‘widely viewed’ is newspeak for ‘the view from Washington and London’.
Likewise, the Guardiandutifully carried the official US-UK view and framed its reporting accordingly:
‘In Washington, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, made clear that the administration had chosen to close ranks with Australia in the face of belligerent Chinese behaviour.
‘Austin said he had discussed with Australian ministers “China’s destabilising activities and Beijing’s efforts to coerce and intimidate other countries, contrary to established rules and norms”, adding: “While we seek a constructive results-oriented relationship with [China], we will remain clear-eyed in our view of Beijing’s efforts to undermine the established international order.”’
Imagine if western journalists regularly wrote news reports about the plentiful examples of belligerent US behaviour. And about America’s destabilising activities and efforts to coerce and intimidate other countries, contrary to established rules and norms. But that would be real journalism. Instead, a Guardian editorial oozed its approval:
‘A firm and unified response to China’s actions by democratic nations is both sensible and desirable.’
There was no mention in any of the current reporting, as far as we could see, that the UK is set to increase its number of nuclear warheads by over 40 per cent, breaking international law. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is encouraging the public to report the UK government to the UN.
This behaviour by the UK is no exception. ‘We’ routinely flout the law on arms, nuclear or conventional. Andrew Feinstein and Alexandra Smidman recently reported for Declassified UK, that Britain’s ‘robust’ arms export controls are a fiction:
‘In practice, UK controls on arms exports are all but voluntary, and Britain routinely arms states abusing human rights and those at war.
‘Britain exported more than £11-billion worth of arms around the world in 2019 but UK ministers claim this trade is properly administered in a mantra that goes like this:
‘“HM Government takes its export control responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world. We consider all export applications thoroughly against a strict risk assessment framework and keep all licences under careful and continual review as standard.”’
However, Feinstein and Smidman pointed out that:
‘These contentions are not true and the stark, unavoidable reality is that the British government and its weapons manufacturers, between whom there is a symbiotic relationship, repeatedly violate domestic law and international agreements on arms controls with no repercussions.’
In short:
‘The British arms industry, politicians, the military and intelligence services can all essentially do what they want, with limited scrutiny and virtually no accountability.’
The UK also defies its own arms exports criteria in relation to Israel, to whom the UK has sold military equipment worth more than £400 million since 2015. Even this year’s deadly Israeli attacks in Gaza caused no let-up in UK sales to Israel.
These are all yet more examples of the gaslighting that state-corporate news media are guilty of: the constant framing of the UK as a ‘defender’ and ‘promoter’ of ‘security’ and ‘stability’, while the state and military companies pursue arms sales and a wider foreign policy that kills and endangers people abroad and at home.
‘Nothing Is Moving’ On Climate
Almost inevitably, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg makes a return in this alert for another dishonourable mention. ‘Boris Johnson aims to push for more climate action during trip’, she gushed after travelling as part of a press pack with him and his entourage on a plane headed to New York for climate talks. She wrote that Johnson was ‘delighted’ to be:
‘acting as the host of the government plane he has had repainted with the Union Jack on the tail, urging journalists to approve of the new paint job.’
But the most significant ‘paint job’ here was the BBC’s depiction of Johnson as some kind of climate hero. ‘Brokering climate deals a political priority’, was one headline in Kuenssberg’s report. She added:
‘the prime minister’s main task on this trip to New York is to push other countries to make more meaningful promises on cash and climate.’
The notion that Johnson, who has frequently cast doubt on global warming and made derogatory remarks about ‘bunny-hugging’, is a true champion of climate and environmental protection is bogus and dangerous. As recently as December 2015, when it was unseasonably warm, he published a Telegraphpiece titled, ‘I can’t stand this December heat, but it has nothing to do with global warming’.
He wrote:
‘We may all be sweating in the winter air, but remember, we humans have always put ourselves at the centre of cosmic events.’
Referring to the leaders of state who had been at the 2015 Paris climate talks, Johnson added:
‘I am sure that those global leaders were driven by a primitive fear that the present ambient warm weather is somehow caused by humanity; and that fear – as far as I understand the science – is equally without foundation.
‘There may be all kinds of reasons why I was sweating at ping-pong [in December] – but they don’t include global warming.’
The reference to ‘ping-pong’, and his flippant remarks on the climate talks, suggest the whole thing was all just a game to Johnson; a ‘jolly wheeze’ to provide ammo to churn out another newspaper column.
In this month’s Cabinet reshuffle, Johnson appointed Anne-Marie Trevelyan as his new International Trade Secretary. She had previously rejected climate science in a series of tweets between 2010 and 2012, stating in one:
‘Clear evidence that the ice caps aren’t melting after all, to counter those doom-mongers and global warming fanatics.’
People can, of course, change their minds when confronted by cast-iron evidence and solid arguments. Johnson himself said this month that ‘the facts change and people change their minds’. But the facts had not changed. Certainly not since 1988 when the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up and renowned climate scientist James Hansen testified to the US Congress about the already-known dangers of climate instability.
Moreover, how sincere can someone like Johnson be with his appalling track record? Has his understanding around the serious reality and implications of catastrophic climate change really changed? Or does he just say whatever he believes is politically expedient to retain his grip on power?
In April 2021, Johnson waffled about ‘building back greener’ after the pandemic.
‘It’s vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging.
‘What I’m driving at is this is about growth and jobs.’
Experienced observers of political rhetoric will recognise that ‘jobs’ is often newspeak for ‘corporate profits’.
Johnson’s insincerity and disregard for those he considers beneath him surfaced once more in the grossly insensitive remarks he made in ‘joking’ about Margaret Thatcher’s ‘green legacy’. During a visit to a windfarm off the Aberdeenshire coast in July, he was asked if he would set a deadline for ending fossil fuel extraction. He replied with what he clearly thought was a witty remark:
‘Look at what we’ve done already. We’ve transitioned away from coal in my lifetime.
‘Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal altogether.’
Continuing his track record of serial deceptions, Johnson boasted this month that:
‘The fact is the UK is leading the world [in tackling the climate crisis] and you should be proud of it.’
The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was scathing of this ‘lie’ that has been channelled repeatedly by Johnson and other cabinet ministers ahead of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this November:
‘There’s a lie that the UK is a climate leader and that they have reduced their emissions by 45 per cent since 1990.’
She pointed out that the statistics do not include the UK’s share of emissions from international aviation, shipping and imported goods:
‘Of course, if you don’t include all emissions of course the statistics are going to look much nicer. I’m really hoping that we stop referring to the UK as a climate leader, because if you look at the reality that is simply not true. They are very good at creative carbon accounting, I must give them that, but it doesn’t mean much in practice.’
Rational analysis also shows that none of the world’s major economies – in particular, the entire G20 (which includes the UK) – is in line with the Paris Agreement on climate.
The watchdog Climate Action Tracker (CAT) analysed the policies of 36 countries, as well as the 27-nation European Union, and found that all major economies were off track to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The countries together make up 80 per cent of the world’s emissions.
Niklas Höhne, a founding partner of the NewClimate Institute, a CAT partner, warned that:
‘there has been little to no improvement: nothing is moving. Anyone would think they have all the time in the world, when in fact the opposite is the case.’
The lack of seriousness given by UK broadcasters to the crisis is evident in the results of a recent study that showed that the word ‘cake’ appeared 10 times more on British television than ‘climate change’ in 2020 while ‘dog’ was mentioned 22 times more. Mentions of climate change and global warming fell by 10 per cent and 19 per cent respectively compared with 2019, the report from BAFTA-backed sustainability initiative Albert found.
Joanna Donnelly of Met Éireann, the Irish Meteorological Service, told viewers of the ‘Claire Byrne Live’ programme on Irish television that:
‘when it comes to climate change, we are in an emergency situation’
Irish journalist John Gibbons highlighted the TV clip on Twitter, praising Donnelly’s forthright words, adding:
‘We’re in a Code Red national/global emergency, might be a good time to start acting like it (yes, media friends, that means YOU)’
A soberly-worded, but terrifying, assessment of climate change risk published last week by Chatham House warned that, unless countries dramatically increase their commitments in carbon cuts:
‘many of the climate change impacts described in this research paper are likely to be locked in by 2040, and become so severe they go beyond the limits of what nations can adapt to.’
The report added that:
‘Any relapse or stasis in emissions reduction policies could lead to a plausible worst case of 7°C of warming by the end of the century’
That prospect is terrifying. John Schellnhuber, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, warned a decade ago that:
‘the difference between two degrees and four degrees [of global warming] is human civilisation.’
In other words, we are potentially talking about the end of human life as we know it; perhaps even human extinction.
James Hansen, the previously mentioned climate expert, remains sceptical about a truly successful outcome of COP26 in Glasgow. He wrote earlier this month:
‘The bad news: we approach the gas bag season – the next Conference of the Parties (COP26) is scheduled for November 1-12. Gas bag politicians won’t show you the data that matter because that would reveal their miserable performances. Instead, they set climate goals for their children while adopting no polices that would give such goals a chance. Some of them may have been honestly duped about the science and engineering, but many must be blatant hypocrites.’ 2
Other than the ever-present risk of nuclear war, there is no greater threat to humanity than the climate crisis. And there is no more damning example of gaslighting by state-corporate media when they tell us we can trust governments and corporations to do what is required to avert catastrophe.
Nick Robinson, ‘Live From Downing Street’, Bantam Books, London, 2012, p. 332
James Hansen, ‘August Temperature Update & Gas Bag Season Approaches’, email, 14 September 2021.
On August 11, in a rare occurrence, U.K. High Court Lord Justice Holroyde and Mrs. Justice Farbey overruled the July 5 decision of Mr. Justice Swift and allowed the Biden administration to add two additional grounds for its appeal against Julian Assange, who is being held on charges filed by the Trump administration under the Espionage Act. Assange was indicted for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo that Chelsea Manning furnished him and WikiLeaks. He faces 175 years in prison if he is extradited from the U.K., tried and convicted in the United States.
Mr. Justice Swift had ruled that the United States could base its appeal on three of the five grounds it requested. The August 11 ruling allows the U.S. to argue two additional grounds as well. The expansion of the U.S. appeal is a worrying sign for Assange — and for the future of investigative journalism.
In September 2020, a three-week extradition hearing was held in Assange’s case. On January 4, U.K. District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser issued her decision denying the Trump administration’s request to extradite Assange to the United States to stand trial. Judge Baraitser ruled that Assange would be a high risk for suicide in light of his mental state and conditions under which he would be held in U.S. prisons. As Donald Trump was leaving office, his administration successfully petitioned the High Court for permission to appeal Judge Baraitser’s ruling.
Joe Biden should have dismissed Trump’s appeal — consistent with the Obama-Biden administration’s refusal to indict Assange out of fear that indicting a journalist would imperil the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press. No journalist or media outlet has been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing truthful information. The First Amendment protects journalists who publish illegally obtained material that is a matter of public concern, including evidence of war crimes. The U.S. government has never prosecuted a journalist or media outlet for publishing classified information, which constitutes an essential tool of journalism.
But Biden is doubling down and continuing Trump’s appeal.
When the United States’ appeal is heard on October 27 and 28, the High Court may reweigh factual findings made by the District Court judge who was uniquely positioned to determine the credibility of the witnesses who testified at the extradition hearing.
U.S. Grounds for Appeal
The five grounds on which the Biden administration is appealing the denial of extradition are as follows:
Judge Baraitser committed legal error when she concluded that extradition would be unjust or oppressive due to Assange’s mental or physical condition under section 91 of the 2003 Extradition Act;
Judge Baraitser should have notified the United States in order to provide it an opportunity to offer assurances to the court that Assange would not be subjected to conditions that imperiled his health and his life;
Judge Baraitser should have excluded, or assigned less weight to, the evidence of defense psychiatric expert Professor Michael Kopelman regarding the severity of Assange’s mental condition;
Judge Baraitser committed error in her overall assessment of the evidence of suicide risk; and
After the extradition hearing, the United States provided the U.K. with a package of “assurances” regarding the conditions under which Assange would be held if extradited to the U.S. The United States also offered an assurance that if Assange is convicted, it would consent to his transfer to Australia to serve his custodial sentence.
On July 5, the High Court allowed the United States to appeal on all but grounds three and four. After the August 11 ruling, the U.S. is now permitted to appeal on all five grounds.
Professor Kopelman’s Testimony
Judge Baraitser relied largely, but not exclusively, on the evidence presented by Professor Michael Kopelman. In her January 4 ruling, Judge Baraitser wrote:
[Kopelman] assessed Mr. Assange during the period May to December 2019 and was best placed to consider at first-hand his symptoms. He has taken great care to provide an informed account of Mr. Assange’s background and psychiatric history. He has given close attention to the prison medical notes and provided a detailed summary annexed to his December report. He is an experienced clinician and he was well aware of the possibility of exaggeration and malingering. I had no reason to doubt his clinical opinion.
Kopelman, an international authority on neuro-psychiatry, evaluated Assange in prison and concluded that he was at severe risk of suicide if imprisoned in the U.S. Judge Baraitser cited Kopelman’s statement, “I am as confident as a psychiatrist ever can be that, if extradition to the United States were to become imminent, Mr. Assange will find a way of suiciding.”She noted that other experts corroborated Kopelman’s predictions of suicide.
The United States is arguing on appeal that Judge Baraitser should have excluded Kopelman’s evidence (or given it less weight) because he omitted from his December 2019 report that Assange had a partner, Stella Morris, and they had two young children together. Kopelman knew about them but was concerned about Morris’s anxiety about the privacy of her children. Both Kopelman’s subsequent report in August 2020 and his testimony at the September 2020 extradition hearing referred to Morris and their children. By then, it had become public knowledge.
Judge Baraitser considered Kopelman’s two reports as well as his testimony before rendering her January 4 ruling. She acknowledged the initial concealment but excused it, writing:
I did not accept that Professor Kopelman failed in his duty to the court when he did not disclose Ms. Morris’s relationship with Mr. Assange…. In my judgment, Professor Kopelman’s decision to conceal their relationship was misleading and inappropriate in the context of his obligations to the court, but an understandable human response to Ms. Morris’s predicament…. In short, I found Professor Kopelman’s opinion to be impartial and dispassionate; I was given no reason to doubt his motives or the reliability of his evidence.
It is well-established in English courts that the appellate court will not generally review factual findings — including credibility determinations — made by the trial court.
Lord Justice Holroyde admitted that it is “very unusual for an appellate court to have to consider the position of an expert witness whose written evidence has been found to be misleading, but whose opinion has nonetheless been accepted by the court below.” He added that there is not a “complete bar” to an appellate court finding “that the judge below was wrong in her assessment of the evidence. I have come to the conclusion that it is here at least arguable that the present case is one in which such a power may operate.”
U.S. “Assurances”
The United States is presenting “assurances” that if Assange is extradited to the U.S., tried, convicted and imprisoned, he will not be subject to special administrative measures (SAMs) — which are onerous conditions that would keep him in virtual isolation — or be held at ADX maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. And the U.S. would not object to Assange serving any custodial sentence he may receive in Australia.
These so-called assurances are conditional, however. The U.S. reserves the right to impose SAMs or hold Assange at ADX if future behavior warrants. And the U.S. cannot guarantee that Australia would consent to host Assange’s incarceration.
The U.S. is arguing that Judge Baraitser should have told them during the extradition hearing that she intended to refuse extradition based on Assange’s life and health if imprisoned in the United States. They would then have presented assurances at that time. But their current proffer amounts to new evidence that should have been submitted at the extradition hearing.
In October, the High Court during the appeal hearing will consider the grounds that the United States is raising on appeal and determine whether to sustain or overrule Judge Baraitser’s decision denying extradition. If the High Court affirms the District Court ruling, the United States could ask the U.K. Supreme Court to review the case. If the High Court overrules the District Court decision, Assange could appeal to the Supreme Court and then to the European Court of Human Rights if the Supreme Court ruling goes against him.
If the United States is ultimately allowed to extradite Assange and try him under the Espionage Act, it will send an ominous message to investigative journalists that they publish material critical of the U.S. government at their peril. This would threaten freedom of the press under the First Amendment and deprive the American people of crucial information with which to hold their government accountable.
For the “crime” of truth-telling, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being relentless pursued by the United States government, determined to secure his extradition at any cost, writes John Pilger.
