Friday, November 16, 2018

The Accidental Indictment of Julian Assange

What many have long suspected has finally been confirmed. Julian Assange of Wikileaks is indeed under sealed federal criminal indictment.

The secret Assange indictment was (ahem) "accidentally" cut and pasted by prosecutors on an unrelated court filing where it sat ever so passive-aggressively until some roving reportorial eye finally spotted it. Or, more likely, was tipped off by an official who was not allowed to speak publicly because of the sensitivity of the matter. Oops.

Here's my suspicion: prosecutors and the spy/police agencies have been itching for years to get their anxious claws on the most famous whistleblower of all time, but could not do so for a number of reasons.

 First, they were loath to set a precedent by going after someone who, for all intents and purposes, is a publisher, and not a hacker or a thief. If embarrassed officials in the Bush and Obama administrations had charged or seized Assange, they would rightly have been seen as the enemies of the First Amendment that they were, and still are. And then there was the pesky little matter of Ecuador then being led by a socialist government who took the concept of democracy more seriously than the US hegemon.

Second, they would have been put in the awkward position of appearing hypocritical if they did not also indict the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all the other quasi-official house organs upon whom they traditionally rely to sell their wars and to selectively leak their self-serving secrets and "narratives" explaining why, for instance, we cannot have non-profit single payer health insurance.

 Such a messy court case against the free press would have dirtied the hands of all manner of corporatists working both within and without the government and the military-industrial-media complex.

But with the advent of Trump, the aromatic bloom on Assange's rose has sufficiently faded in the sensitive eyes and mental nostrils of the public. The man once lauded by liberals as a hero for his exposure of the war crimes of the Bush administration is now anathema because of x degrees of separation from the Trump victory over Hillary Clinton. And once the Wikileaks documents (from SONY and other Hollywood bigwigs, the Democratic Party, and the sordid Clinton campaign) began to surface during the Obama years, Assange quickly morphed from the most important and successful journalistic muckraker in modern history to a Russian stooge, a traitor, and worst of all, a good pal of the Donald Trump machine.

Therefore, the punishing surveillance and carceral state will bite while the biting is still good, realizing that the public will not only not make a stink about his arrest and extradition, they will be cheering it on like the good little authoritarian subjects that they are. London, moreover, is currently in a state of chaotic disarray because of the Brexit finale, so complicit British officials can thus be held harmless in the event of a midnight raid on the embassy. It helps that Ecuador, whose embassy currently shelters Assange, itself is now controlled by an authoritarian right-wing regime anxious for US dollars and protection at the expense of its own citizens. 

And last but not least, the increasingly cornered and legally jeopardized Trump can be made to appear "serious" about going after Putin by seriously going after Wikileaks, which he once sarcastically urged to release more of Hillary's emails in the closing days of the 2016 campaign.  

The only problem is that the US government seems to have zero proof that Assange acted in concert with either Russian operatives or Trump to publish the DNC and Clinton (via her adviser John Podesta's account) emails. Even the sycophantic press can only say, with the usual obfuscatory language, that the usual anonymous officials have "a high degree of certainty" that Assange and Trump and the Russians were all in cahoots to subvert our non-existing democracy. It's nothing but a vain and dogged attempt to translate mere suspicion into absolute proof in the minds of the audience.

The government has no case. 

But I see this as a glass half-full scenario for a number of reasons.

First, prosecutors will now be pressured to outline whatever case they do have against Assange sooner rather than later. Second, the "accidental" filing brings his plight back to the forefront of public discourse, where it belongs. While Assange has been holed up in the Ecuador Embassy in London for many years, both his mental and his physical health have reportedly deteriorated. If he is extradited back to the US, he will at least (presumably) have his teeth seen to. And should he be treated as cruelly as his Bush-era source, Chelsea Manning, was, and locked up in solitary for a lengthy period without a trial, the liberal class will be forced to confront its own hypocrisy as it pertains to its outrage over Trump's own serial assaults on the rule of law.

This will be especially true if Assange is charged as a terrorist or an enemy combatant and sent to the Guantanamo gulag, a military prison and even perhaps "renditioned" to a secret CIA black site.

The liberal class will rightly be made to feel uncomfortable making a stink about CNN's Jim Acosta being barred from the White House, and not making a similar stink about Julian Assange being prosecuted - or persecuted - for simply telling the truth about corrupt government and corporate officials.

Finally, the failure of prosecutors to bring an imprisoned Assange to trial in a timely, constitutional manner might even force them to admit that #Russiagate itself has always been nothing but a big fat propaganda campaign dreamed up by Clinton operatives as a tool to absolve her of any responsibility for her own loss. 

The New York Times, in its own account of the secret indictment filing, twisted itself into a pretzel by parroting the evidence-free propaganda that it was "Russian intelligence officers" - and not another inside or outside source - who stole the DNC emails and handed them over to Assange - while at  the same time tacitly acknowledging that Assange himself was merely acting as a publisher and a journalist. If it can happen to him, it can happen to them as well.
WikiLeaks published thousands of emailsthat year from Democrats during the presidential race that were stolen by Russian intelligence officers. The hackings were a major part of Moscow’s campaign of disruption.
Though the legal move against Mr. Assange remained a mystery on Thursday, charges centering on the publication of information of public interest — even if it was obtained from Russian government hackers — would create a precedent with profound implications for press freedoms.
If Assange does go on trial, the American media and the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights will go on trial right along with him. Publishers and reporters will be called as witnesses by both the prosecution and defense and asked to explain why they chose to disseminate stolen information. The Fourth Estate, whose traditional mantra is to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" will be plopped center-stage in a legal and ethical drama which, for a refreshing change, might finally force them to play themselves rather than the trite group-thinking #Resistance against Donald Trump, fighters-for-hire in the service of the corrupt neoliberal system that produced Trump in the first place.  

Of course, the biggest spanner in the works of justice for Julian Assange could be Donald Trump himself, tweeting loud and tweeting often about how unfairly he thinks the Wikileaks founder is being treated and casting him as a major player on the same victimized-by-Mueller team. That might be the ultimate kiss of death for Assange in the court of liberal public opinion, which has already turned so hypocritically against him. 

The best thing that could happen to Assange would be for the ever-contradictory and unpredictable Trump to suddenly begin bellowing  "Lock Him Up!" at his Nuremberg-style rallies. And presto-change-o, the new enemy of their enemy would morph right back into being the best friend a liberal ever had.

Liberals are a fickle bunch. And stranger things have happened. Just look at their recent miraculous rehabilitation, if not downright beatification, of George W Bush.




10 comments:

  1. "The best thing that could happen to Assange would be for the ever-contradictory and unpredictable Trump to suddenly begin bellowing "Lock Him Up!" at his Nuremberg-style rallies. And presto-change-o, the new enemy of their enemy would morph right back into being the best friend a liberal ever had."

    Right on! Great point and great post, Karen. Then Trump can pardon Assange later.

    I'm afraid Assange's confinement has already taken its toll though, shortening his life significantly. I agree with his mother who said his treatment by the UK Gov't and by extension the USA constitutes "a slow and cruel assassination".

    Oh, and I hope Assange/Wikileaks kept a secret 'insurance policy' to cash in about now.

    Karen wrote "#Russiagate itself has always been nothing but a big fat propaganda campaign dreamed up by Clinton operatives as a tool to absolve her of any responsibility for her own loss."

    Absolutely, but not just to absolve her, themselves, and the Democratic Party but more importantly to set the stage for the next iteration of her political image - Victim/War Hero (not the 'liberal firebrand' Mark Penn predicts.) She can't pull that off without keeping Russiagate alive even without any evidence.

    Watch for Hillary's new look: epaulets on her gold Mao-style jackets and maybe aviator glasses and a flight jacket occasionally during her 'speaking tour' with Bill. Someday she might even admit to wearing the body armor she's kept hidden beneath her moomoos and coats. I expect she'll eventually tell us it's been to protect her from assassination by Putin's henchmen.

    Hillary's new campaign has already started and it's written all over her face and in the gleam in her eyes, not to mention in the launch of her pricey national 'speaking tour' (Listening Tour 2.0). She's no longer the bitter, self-pitying old woman post-2016 but the fully recovered Wounded Warrior who's eager to get back into political fray - Hillary 4.0 meets Comeback Kid 2.0.

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  2. Hi Karen. I posted a comment about MoDo’s column “Too Rich to Jail, “ where you had misstated the timeline of the Dumpster Fire’s rise.
    By the time I saw your reply to me, telling me to read “Fear City,” comments had closed. So I tracked you down here. Even though it’s off topic, I would love to expand. I have not read the book, in fact, I hadn’t heard of it. But with the link you provided, I read the review, which omitted a bunch of YUGELY salient points.

    First, a little background. In 1975, I was a very politically engaged junior at NYC’s Stuyvesant High School, and I was born and raised on Staten Island. The review referred to Beame as hapless, but he was ass deep in the creation of the fiscal crisis. (How deep is the ass of a man 5 foot 3, anyway?) From 1952-61, he was NYC’s budget director. In 1961, he ran for, and won, his first citywide office, NYC Comptroller. In 1965, he was sent out of office, supplanted by Mario Procaccino. Procaccino himself opened the door to Beame reclaiming the Comptroller’s office when he ran for mayor, losing in a three way race with my state senator, John Marchi, and liberal republican John Lindsay. Notable that year were minor party eruptions featuring the abortive candidacy of William F Buckley and the quixotic running mate pairing of Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin.
    So Beame was the city’s chief financial officer for the four years immediately preceding his ascent to Mayor. He had to have been, likely was, fully aware of the city’s parlous fiscal state.
    As far as ending free tuition at CUNY, the byzantine structure of NYC & NYS government means that Beame had no control whatsoever over what happened. State law dictates that almost everything a mayor wants to do requires the assent of the state legislature and the governor. That was required when Mikey Billionsberg wanted to take control of the schools, and when DeBlase wanted to lower the default speed limit in the city from 30-25 mph. It was how Amazon Cuomo alone was able to effect a ma$$ive giveaway to Bezo$.

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  3. @Paul,

    Everything's on-topic these days.

    Thanks for your reply to my Times comment and follow-up. I did misleadingly imply in my original comment that Trump arrived on the scene right in the middle of the 70s fiscal crisis at the express behest of city leaders, when in fact he simply swooped in as the dust settled, and took advantage of a city still feeling jittery because of its near-bankruptcy. Trump, as became his lifelong m.o., was merely taking advantage of a crisis, which had morphed into the "manufactured" stage by the plutocrats who increasingly were taking over municipal govt and looting the public sphere in the process. Naomi Klein, who wrote "The Shock Doctrine" recently explored this bit of Trumpian history:

    https://theintercept.com/2017/04/23/fear-city-explores-how-donald-trump-exploited-the-new-york-debt-crisis-to-boost-his-own-fortune/

    I myself never lived in NYC, but in the mid 70s was just starting out at my first newspaper job in Newburgh, NY, about an hour north of the Big Apple. This city, blighted then and blighted now, was a racist right-wing bastion filled with contempt for those big city libruls. It's a lot like Ferguson, MO and Detroit. So my perspective was different than yours... not that I ascribed to the politics of the place where I worked, as a matter of fact it made me sick to my stomach. The whole state of New York has always been a corrupt bastion, no matter which party is in charge at any given time. And we knew all about Trump. I knew several people from NYMA, where he attended high school, who were intimately acquainted with him. He was a real sociopath, according to them. About 15 or so years ago he was invited back to address the cadets and he alit from his helicopter on the athletic field, a model on each arm so as to impress the teenage boys. We locals thought he was a colossal jerk. Little did we guess....

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  4. Loose ends. Upchuck Schumer wasn’t elected as a Representative until 1980, with his term starting in 1981, fully six years after “Drop Dead.” In fact, in 1975, Upchuck was a freshman assemblyman.

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  5. No, Karen, your perspective isn’t all that different. Staten Island, where I was born and raised, was so conservative that Nixon wasn’t reactionary enough for it. It became almost the only community north of the Mason-Dixon line that went for Wallace in 1968.

    As a Jew, the neighborhood kids who went to Our Lady of Good Counsel School were still calling me “Christ Killer” years after Vatican II.

    Didn’t NYMA close down, with lil Dotard refusing to infuse his failing alma mater with ca$h? But the real story is how he got there in the first place. He was a student at a very tony Prep School in Queens called Kew Forest (for its location between Kew Gardens and Forest Hills), and Fred was on the Board of Trustees. Lil Dotard, a bully since childhood, managed to get himself expelled, even with his dad on the board. The full story has yet to see 5he light of day, but it must be a doozy that Fred couldn’t save his place there.

    Speaking of Forest Hills, negotiating a deal to keep low income housing out of Forest Hills, and keeping white flight from accelerating, is what put Mario Cuomo on the political map in the first place.

    As far as “whichever party is in charge” in Albania goes, well, that is true enough, and the fact that out of the “three men in a room” that has long run the state now boasts of Amazon Cuomo the only one not in jail, and the two septuagenarians who ARE in jail are Democrat Shelly Silver and Republican Dean Skelos, attests to bipartisan, longterm corruption. But a fun fact is that in sapphire blue Noo Yawk, Republicans have controlled the $tate $enate for all but 4 years since the end of WW II. Of course, for the last six years, that control was effected by a renegade clique of alleged Democrats.
    Also, in my lifetime, and I am 60, the sixteen gubernatorial elections have toted up 9 Democrat and Seven Republican. In NYC, DeBlase is the first Democrat elected mayor since 1989. Food for thought...

    At Stuyvesant HS, my homeroom and senior creative writing teacher was Frank McCourt. Interesting for a creative writing class, but a research paper was required, on the history of NYC. My future wife, whom I didn’t start dating until we were in college-we wrote letters freshman year- did hers on Boss Marcy. McCourt was faculty advisor for the literary magazine. I got out of the research paper because I criticized the literary magazine and he dared me to do better. So I assembled one. I still have the mimeograph masters in my basement.

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  6. Sardonicky covers corruption mostly at the national level, where legislative, executive and judicial departments generate a gold mine of corruption every day.

    Reading this aside between two downstaters about the goings on around Albany and the Big Apple, I wonder whether muckraking journalists (and bloggers) could (in a perfect journalistic world) entertain the world and make a good living by confining themselves to the Empire State alone.

    Saul Steinberg's cover for the New Yorker got it just about right decades ago:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Avenue

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  7. Newburgh, where I used to report the news, first on radio and then in print, no longer has either a radio station (it used to have several) or a newspaper (it used to have two.)

    Neoliberalism killed the independent media then, and it's trying to kill it again, via the censorship efforts of the Duopoly as well as the suppressive search algorithms employed by Google. All the better for the corrupt ruling class to do their deeds in secret.

    The writing was on the wall when Obama insisted on accepting his "transparency" award from the Sunlight Foundation behind closed doors and no press allowed.

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  8. Re NYMA (Neema, short for New York Military Academy) closed briefly after filing for bankruptcy, and was eventually bought at auction by some Chinese investors and since has reopened. There was some talk of Trump bailing out his alma mater. He didn't, probably because he doesn't have has much cash as he pretends to. They probably wouldn't have let him use his other heavily mortgaged/leveraged properties as collateral. His wealth is largely an invention of his own ego and it holds up only because so many other corrupt entities are willing to play along and maintain the charade. He is like a bank himself, too big to fail, or jail.

    Re Assange: Mike Pomposity of the CIA and proud grad of the USMA, West Point, is apparently behind the indictment of Assange. I wouldn't put it past this goon to order an Osama-style raid and then dispose of the body to avoid a show trial. This guy doesn't seem too concerned with legal niceties. He can always blame Hillary Clinton for the botched raid, for she had once "jokily" suggested in a cabinet meeting that Assange be droned.

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  9. If Julian Assange walks out, is thrown out or is ambulanced out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, the UK government is very clear about its intention of making him their own political prisoner and setting him on a conveyor belt that leads to his auto-da-fé in the USA. Given what has transpired over the past eight years, it appears Julian Assange qualifies as a world class political prisoner.

    Almost three years ago the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations declared that the continued detention of Assange was "arbitrary." As we know, his own country, Australia, as well as the UK, Sweden and Ecuador have ignored the UN's pronouncements urging his release. Furthermore, Ecuador, the country that once offered him protection from vengeful governments has now joined those vengeful governments by making his confinement progressively more intolerable. Amnesty International chapters in the countries mentioned and elsewhere fall far short of their potential to correct these injustices through the flood of letter writing campaigns and serious diplomacy.
    https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17013&LangID=E

    This restatement of the obvious is prelude to the following question: Why hasn't Amnesty International at some point during Assange's eight-year hell initiated a world-wide campaign to secure his release?

    If you google "Assange and AI," you'll come up with weak, diversionary or contradictory statements by AI and its national affiliates. The problem, I suspect, is more than the fancy algorithms of suppression by collaborating tech giants. AI is simply not what it once was. AI has not initiated the kind of world-wide full-court press that often succeeded in the past in springing political prisoners, or at least making their fate more widely known and sympathetic. Shaming national leaders responsible for imprisoning dissidents is an effective means of springing political prisoners.

    Is AI full of resolve and doing its utmost for Assange? AI, it seems to me as a former long-time supporter and activist in that organization, has lost its soul in this case. It is dragging its feet in shaming leaders in the West about their crimes against truth tellers and especially Assange. Such crimes will only multiply as organizations like AI continue to waffle.

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  10. Another very well written article Karen.
    I used to be 50/50 on Assange - while I agree he should be granted free speech rights, I never really saw where he was much of a Journalist - just raw dumping tens of thousands (or millions) of pages of secret documents doesn't take any skill whatsoever & often hurts more than it helps.
    The careful release of info that exposes crimes is critical as a challenge to power.
    But personal info like SS#s of secretaries and janitors? That itself is criminal.
    Then after years of this type of sloppy dumping of usually embarrassing moreso than "truth to power" it became quite obvious that Assange only goes after Dems in power in America with one or two possible exceptions.
    No Panama Papers from Assange.
    Nothing on Russia from Assange.
    Nothing from the RNC from Assange.
    Nothing on Blackwater from Assange.
    Nothing on ANY 'stubs from Assange.
    Why do Congressional 'stubs go to visit Assange and no Dems?

    Occam's Razor leaves Assange bleeding IMHO.

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