Tangle - Julian Assange's plea deal.

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Julian Assange’s plea deal. On Tuesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released from a British prison to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge with the U.S. Justice Department. After his release, Assange traveled to the island of Saipan in the U.S. territory of the Marianas Islands in the Pacific, where he stood trial at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday morning (Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time). If you’re interested, you can read what I've previously written about Assange and my interactions with WikiLeaks.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can catch our latest YouTube video on Juneteenth here.We were previously publishing these episodes on our Tangle podcast page, but we just re-launched the series — and released a brand new episode — on a unique podcast channel for The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment! Check out Episode 4 of our podcast series.Today’s clickables: A note (0:48), Quick hits (1:46), Today’s story (4:26), Right’s take (8:15), Left’s take (12:27), Isaac’s take (16:23), Listener question (21:58), Under the Radar (24:46), Numbers (25:35), Have a nice day (26:50)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of Julian Assange’s plea deal? Let us know!Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and today is June 26th. We're going to be talking about Julian Assange's plea deal. The WikiLeaks founder was released from a prison and is now walking free. We're going to talk about that, share some views from the left and the right, and as always, my take. Before we jump in, I want to give you a quick heads up. I am headed out of the country tonight, going to be working

internationally for a week or so. So if you are a Tangle podcast listener this week and next week, you'll be hearing a little bit more of John than usual. I'm bringing my mic with me because I want to be able to dial in and do a podcast after this presidential debate. And I'm going to try and hop in as much as I can, but the travel plans are a little bit in flux. So I'm not exactly sure where and when I'm going to be able to work. And so just want to prepare you guys for that. You'll be in capable hands, of course, and I'll still be penning some my takes and making sure I'm overseeing the daily scripting of the podcast and the newsletter. So I'll be here just maybe a little bit more in the background than usual until I get back on July 4th. And we've

got a couple of days off around that holiday, and then we'll be back to normal on July 8th. So just wanted to give you a heads up on all that. And without any further ado, I'll pass it over to John for today's pod. Thanks, Isaac. And here are your quick hits for today, folks. First up, George Latimer defeated Representative Jamal Bowman in the primary race for New York's 16th congressional district. It was the most expensive House primary race in U.S. history. Separately, Representative Lauren Boebert, the Republican from Colorado, won her primary race after changing districts to avoid a competitive Democratic challenger. Number two, New York Judge Juan Marchand partially lifted the

gag order against former President Donald Trump just weeks after a jury found him guilty on all counts of falsifying business records. Number three, Israel's Supreme Court unanimously ruled the country's military could begin drafting previously exempted ultra-orthodox Jewish men into its ranks. The decision threatens to fracture Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition, which includes two major ultra-Orthodox parties. Number four, Oklahoma's Supreme Court blocked the launch of a religious charter school. This school would have been the first of its kind in the U.S., and the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City plans to appeal the ruling. Number five, at least 23 people died in protests in Kenya over a finance bill that would have increased taxes. On Wednesday, Kenyan President

William Rotu said he would not sign the bill. And number six, a bit of breaking news. The Supreme Court rejected a conservative-led challenge to the Biden administration's contacts with social media companies, ruling that the states and users who challenged the communications did not have standing to sue. Tonight, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, late today, landing back on U.S. territory to plead guilty after fighting extradition for years, where he will then go free. The founder of the online whistleblowing site Wikileaks has been released from a British prison.

Julian Assange will enter a plea in a U.S. court that's expected to free him. It will resolve a long-running case over his publication of classified U.S. documents, some involving U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is out of prison, departing the UK overnight in this video released by his organization. It comes after the US Justice Department announced the apparent plea deal with Assange, allowing him to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate classified national security information.

On Tuesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released from a British prison to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge with the United States Justice Department. After his release, Assange traveled to the island of Saipan in the U.S. territory of the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, where he stood trial at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday morning, Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern time. The deal ends the three-years-long battle of the U.S. government trying to prosecute the computer expert and internet publisher over his public release of classified materials. In 2019, the United States indicted Assange on charges of hacking-related conspiracy and espionage for soliciting and publishing U.S. national security secrets.

As part of this week's deal, Assange pleaded guilty to a single felony count of conspiracy to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information. He was not sentenced to additional prison time and was granted time served for the five years he spent imprisoned in the U.K., according to court documents. Upon the conclusion of his hearing, Assange returned to Australia. His only remaining debt is now $500,000 owed to the Australian government for his chartered flight home, which he expects to raise through crowdsourcing. Let's take a look back. In 2009, U.S. Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning began uploading documents from a classified

computer onto WikiLeaks, which published them in 2010. The leaked documents include a video of a U.S. helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed a Reuters photographer, incident logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables from American embassies around the world, and hundreds of intelligence dossiers about Guantanamo detainees. In 2010, Manning was arrested and charged with violating the Espionage Act and, in 2013, was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Obama commuted her sentence shortly before leaving office in 2017. In 2010, Sweden issued an arrest warrant for Assange in connection to a sexual assault investigation. Assange, then in the UK, lost his appeal of the

Swedish warrant, then violated his bail by fleeing to the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Ecuador granted Assange asylum and allowed him to shelter in the embassy for the next seven years. In 2017, Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation, and the U.S. Justice Department indicted Assange in 2018 on a narrow charge of hacking-related conspiracy. In 2019, Ecuador revoked Assange's asylum, inviting the British police to enter the embassy, arrest him, and sentence him to 50 weeks in jail for violating bail. After his arrest in London, U.S. prosecutors revealed a sealed indictment charging Assange with conspiring to hack into a classified Pentagon computer network

and sought his extradition. Weeks later, the Justice Department announced a second superseding indictment charging Assange with an additional 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act. For the past five years, Assange has been imprisoned in London's Belmarsh Prison, one of the UK's highest security facilities, while he fought extradition to the US. In addition to the Manning leaks, Assange and WikiLeaks also published 573,000 intercepted pager messages sent during the 9-11 terror attacks, thousands of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, and the names and addresses and contact information of more than 13,000 members of the British

National Party. For over a decade, Assange and WikiLeaks have been the subject of an intense debate over the line between journalism and espionage. Today, we're going to get into what the right and the left are saying about the Assange deal, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime,

Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,

which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. All right, first up, here's what the rightists say. The right is mixed on the plea deal, with many arguing Assange should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Some disagree and say Assange is a model for holding power to account. Others say Assange has been punished called the plea deal a tragedy.

In 2010 and 2011, WikiLeaks released a cachet of illegally obtained classified documents revealing American methods, assets, and allies in the Afghan and Iraqi theaters where U.S. service personnel were actively engaged in counterinsurgency operations. His work outed the Afghans who worked directly with the American servicemen, opening them up to retribution. And they most certainly did face retribution, Rothman wrote. Assange's crime was not limited only to the publication of documents that explicitly imperiled U.S. interests, it was to facilitate the pilfering of those documents in the first place. So many of Assange's defenders have confused repertorial best practices with activism. Not just any activism in this case,

but acts of criminality designed to imperil U.S. interests and put American soldiers in additional danger, Rothman said. It's perhaps too much to ask that American journalists display a modicum of patriotism, but it's not a big ask to demand that they observe the laws meant to keep America's men and women in uniform safe. We should certainly expect the executor of America's laws in the White House to mete out justice on behalf of the U.S. soldiers and their assets all over the globe who have been harmed by Assange's conduct. In The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson wrote, If Julian Assange is a criminal, so is the entire corporate press.

As Assange's years-long ordeal comes to a close, it's worth noting that what was done to him is criminal, and it poses a very real threat to journalists who dare to question the national security state. Simply put, what Assange did was no different than what the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and many other corporate media outlets do every day. They publish and report on classified material that was stolen or obtained illegally by sources, Davidson said. The main difference between Assange and these outlets is that Assange did what he did in order to hold power to account, whereas corporate press does it in service of power. Charging Assange with espionage for publishing illegally leaked materials sets a horrible precedent for free speech and journalism.

It means, for example, that every New York Times or Washington Post reporter who writes a story citing anonymous government sources or citing classified documents could be criminally charged, Davidson wrote. Of course, most corporate journalists are unlikely to see or admit the connection, mostly because they maintain there's a difference between what they believe are legitimate news organizations and something like WikiLeaks. But there's not. The only difference is that Assange was honest about his ideological commitments. In The Spectator, Mary Dijavesky argued the deal is ethically dubious. Assange's freedom was essentially the result of a U.S.-style plea bargain in which the defendant pleads guilty in return for a lesser charge or sentence.

The practice of plea bargaining is ethically dubious anyway, but it is particularly so in this case where it is highly contestable whether Assange had any charge to answer to, least of all in the U.S., Dijavesky wrote. Assange was under no oath of allegiance to the United States and had broken no U.S. law. He was acting as a publisher and journalist, not leaker or traitor. He was not in the U.S. at the time, and he was not a U.S. citizen. How could the U.S. argue that he was subject to their jurisdiction? The agreement that Assange would accept an appearance in a U.S. argue that he was subject to their jurisdiction? The agreement that Assange would accept an appearance in a U.S. court, albeit one thousandth of miles from the U.S. mainland, and plead guilty to a crime that he and his supporters had hitherto strenuously denied

was the face-saving formula eventually found. It was an ingenious solution, even if it represented a climb down in legal principle for Assange, Dejavesky wrote. In the end, the balance sheet is probably as even as it could realistically be, and the diplomats and lawyers who had the imagination to pull it off deserve more recognition than they will probably ever receive. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left also has mixed feelings on the deal, with many worrying that the outcome could still have a chilling effect on press freedoms. Some say Assange is no hero, but the terms of the deal are acceptable. Others suggest that there will never be true closure in Assange's case. In the Daily Beast, Seth Stern wrote, Julian Assange's plea deal still threatens free speech.

The shameful years-long saga has left the U.S.'s global credibility on press freedom severely diminished. Even worse, it has put national security journalists on notice that the U.S. government stands ready and willing to criminalize their work at its discretion, Stern said. The Biden administration needed to settle the case to save face, but the administration had the opportunity to do more than shield itself from embarrassment. It could have proven that the president meant it when he declared that journalism is not a crime. It could have distinguished itself from Donald Trump, Biden's openly anti-press electoral opponent, whose administration first indicted Assange. It could have dropped the case. The plea agreement does not add any more prison time or

punishment for Assange. It's purely symbolic and entirely unnecessary. Its only impact will be to legitimize the criminalization of routine journalistic conduct and future administrations to follow suit, including a potential second Trump administration, Stern wrote. Plea deals send a message, especially in a high-profile test case for a novel and constitutionally dubious legal theory. Judges and prosecutors all over the country will read about the plea deal and feel emboldened to punish journalists for doing their jobs. The Economist called the deal a suitable end to a grubby saga. Those who would have liked him to stand trial in America regard him as a reckless criminal. If he exposed injustices by publishing unredacted copies of government documents, he also put honorable people at risk, the author said.

His lack of judgment was also on display in 2016 when WikiLeaks spread conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for the American presidential nomination, and asked Russia for stolen emails about her. But the central issue is that Mr. Assange was accused of breaking the law. His supporters often cite his First Amendment rights, comparing him to a truth-telling journalist. But journalists do not have the right to hack computers. On that ground, America was justified in asking Britain to extradite him,

the authors wrote. Showing him some compassion now is also no bad thing. Mr. Assange is not a hero and does not deserve martyrdom. A plea deal is a suitable end to a grubby saga. In Bloomberg, Noah Feldman said, Assange's saga will forever exist in a legal gray area. The outcome is unlikely to satisfy either national security hawks who wanted Assange behind bars in the U.S. for the substantial damage he did to the country's interests, or First Amendment absolutists who think freedom of the press should extend to WikiLeaks. The truth is that Assange's case was always in a gray area between espionage and protected speech, Feldman wrote. Assange's behavior sits smack in the middle between two areas of long

established law. On the one hand, if you are a government employee or contractor with authorized access to classified material and you leak it, you may be criminally prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Espionage Act. On the other hand, if you're a news organization that receives classified information and makes it public, the First Amendment generally protects you, although that protection isn't unlimited. Then comes the gray area, for which Assange is the exemplar, people who cooperate with leakers in some way to facilitate the public release of classified information, Feldman said. Assange's time served is enough to make free speech advocates worried about the future, but not enough to satisfy those concerned about protecting long-term

national security. The affair is thus ending in the same uncertainty with which it began. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So I need to start by confessing that there was a tangled newsletter in my drafts folder with this headline, quote, it's time to free Julian Assange. So in an effort not to bury the lead here, I'll just say that I think it is long past time for Assange to be a free man, and that this plea deal was overdue. If you're interested, you can read what I've written about Assange and my interactions with WikiLeaks in previous editions. We'll drop some links to them

in today's episode description. But the simple truth here is that there are differences between Julian Assange and traditional journalists. Some have described him as a kind of anarchist hacker, which isn't quite right, but it isn't totally off-base either. There have been times in the past when Assange has enlisted the help of actual reporters to publish his work, which is a kind of concession that he and WikiLeaks aren't journalists or a news organization in the traditional sense. Assange wasn't in the business of framing and reporting a story, but releasing raw information to the public and letting whatever happens happen. Unlike journalists, Assange usually doesn't contact the subjects of leaked materials he

comes into possession of and ask them for context, or give them a chance to address what he plans to publish. There are obvious dangers in that. Imagine a hacker obtains your text to friends and reads some kind of inside joke as a literal threat and then shares the text with the public without context. Contextualizing information is why journalism exists. Assange also rarely interacts with state governments to figure out what information he has that might put innocents at risk. In the most notorious example, the Taliban once used documents released by WikiLeaks to identify Afghans who were aiding the U.S. and then sought them out for retribution. Furthermore, for an organization that bestows the mantle of truth-tellers on itself,

WikiLeaks has done some pretty corrupt things. For example, leaked messages obtained by The Atlantic from before Trump was elected show that WikiLeaks asked Donald Trump Jr. to leak them part of his father's tax returns, which had already been published by The New York Times. WikiLeaks wanted to create a facade of being more impartial in order to give its document dumps about Hillary Clinton, quote, much higher impact because it won't be perceived as coming from a pro-Trump or pro-Russia source, end quote. After Trump was elected, the group reached out to Trump Jr. again, this time insisting he get his dad to ask Australia to

appoint Assange as its U.S. ambassador, even going so far as to draft up part of an announcement. You can decide whether the group was working hand in glove with a presidential campaign or simply working to preserve its public image, but either way, it looks pretty bad. To me, this is not the work of a noble, above-reproach, independent, power-fighting journalist. At the same time, Assange has arguably exposed more wrongdoing by powerful governments and institutions than any living person. WikiLeaks' record of releasing authentic documents is strong, some argue spotless, though in its early days their verification process seemed lackluster. Either way, as far as I know, they haven't been caught in a single major mistake. In one sense, Assange is the greatest journalist alive, and in another

sense, he's one of the most reckless disseminators of raw information on the planet today. So, why am I happy he is walking free? Primarily because, in both my view and now in the view of the U.S. government, he's served his time. Assange has effectively spent the last 14 years in prison, hiding in various embassies or being held in actual prisons. His friend, Sreko Horvat, wrote about how Assange went thousands of days without ever seeing the sky. His case exists in the gray era of legality, and yet his punishment has already been served, and all that time he spent exiled from home, either in hiding or in an actual prison, is enough punishment for me. Second, because I did not want to see this case tried in a U.S.

courtroom. However you feel about Assange, if his case had gone to trial, it would have amounted to the U.S. government prosecuting someone for actions that are directly tied to the work journalists do every day across the world. Even removing the hacking charges from the case, Assange was facing decades in prison for disseminating classified documents, something major news organizations do responsibly all the time. Every journalist should be opposed to that kind of prosecution, and we should all want the press to be able to obtain and disseminate classified documents to the public. That isn't to excuse some of Assange's recklessness, but just to recognize that the press won't be able to hold our government to account if so much of Assange's work becomes criminal. Third and finally, the CIA has reportedly floated plans to kill him. Bringing him

back to the U.S. for prosecution was a combustible situation, and a lot could have gone wrong, so I'm glad he's headed back to Australia as a free man. My feelings about Assange and WikiLeaks are genuinely mixed, but I prefer that any legal gray area not be treated as unambiguously illegal, and I prefer the U.S. government not criminalize journalists who operate in that gray area to the point of endangering more traditional methods of journalism, or further prevent the kinds of information from getting to the public that WikiLeaks has been able to publish. Assange served his time. I say that not metaphorically, but literally. After 14 years, it was time he walked free, and time for the U.S. to close the book on this case.

to close the book on this case. We'll be right back after this quick break. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.

It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one is from Isaac. Great name. Hello, Isaac. From York, England. Isaac said, obviously, the majority of the court cases that get featured in news outlets and major media are the ones elevated and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. While I'm no legal scholar, I know it typically requires several court processes to get a case to that level. To your

knowledge, how many major legal questions allow their rulings to stand at the lower trial levels? All right, I love this question, not just because your name's Isaac, but because it gives me the opportunity to discuss the U.S. court system, which can be very confusing. So let's start by saying there are two paths a case can take to get to the Supreme Court, through the state system and through the federal system. State courts hear most criminal and civil cases. Every state's court system is a little different, but the highest level of court in every state is that state's Supreme Court. When cases before the state Supreme Courts deal with the federal law,

their rulings may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, though this path only represents about 10% of the high courts cases in recent years. Most cases come to the Supreme Court through federal courts, which deal with U.S. laws and the constitutionality of a law. In either state or federal court, a defendant may appeal a guilty verdict and sentencing, but a plaintiff can only appeal the latter. In the federal court system, there are 94 district courts, 13 circuit courts of appeal, and finally the Supreme Court. Federal district court cases can be appealed to the circuit court, whose rulings can then be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Between all

counts, roughly 65 million cases were heard in 2022. 16 million of those cases were criminal, 14 million were civil cases, 4 million were domestic, and a whopping 30 million were traffic cases. Of the non-traffic cases, only a small number were eligible for any kind of appeal. State cases are harder to summarize, but here are basic stats for federal courts from 2023. The 94 U.S. district courts had about 584,000 pending civil cases and 119,000 pending criminal cases for a total of 703,000 cases. Between the 13 U.S. courts of appeals, including the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, roughly 35,000 cases were pending. Every year, the Supreme Court hears about 100 to 150 cases. I know that was a lot of numbers I just

threw at you, but to answer the question directly, 95% of all U.S. district court cases stand without being appealed to the circuit court level, and the Supreme Court only hears one out of every 5,000 federal court cases. All right, that is it for today's reader question. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks. The Department of Homeland Security has identified over 400 migrants who have come to the U.S. from Central Asia and other regions as subjects of concern because they were brought by an ISIS- affiliated human smuggling network. Over 150 of the migrants have already been arrested, while the whereabouts of over 50 others remain unknown.

The Biden administration said they were making arrests out of an abundance of caution, adding that none of the unauthorized migrants have been linked to a threat against a U.S. homeland since ICE began arresting them. Many of the migrants entered the U.S. through the southern border and were released by Customs and Border Protection because they were not on a terrorism watch list. NBC News has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Democrats who believe Julian Assange committed espionage by sharing state secrets on WikiLeaks is 35%, according to a 2021 Hill-Harris-X poll. The percentage of Republicans who believe Assange committed espionage by sharing state secrets on

WikiLeaks is 24%. The percentage of Americans who said Assange should be extradited to the U.S. after his arrest in the U.K. in 2019 is 53%, according to a YouGov poll. The percentage of Americans who said they supported the prosecution of Assange in a 2018 YouGov poll. The percentage of Americans who said they supported the prosecution of Assange in a 2018 YouGov economist poll was 29%. The percentage of Australians who say Assange was right to publish sensitive U.S. information via WikiLeaks is 52% according to a 2022 Morning Consult poll. The percentage of U.K. citizens who say Assange was right to publish sensitive U.S. information via WikiLeaks is 38%. The percentage of Americans who say Assange was right to publish sensitive U.S. information via Wikileaks is 38%. The percentage of Americans who say Assange was right to publish sensitive U.S. information via Wikileaks is 42%.

The United States rank out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders 2024 Press Freedom Index is 55. The United States rank on that index in 2023 was 45. 55. The United States' rank on that index in 2023 was 45. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. After visiting a museum in Mexico, Anneli Dozier of Washington, D.C. noticed how similar some artifacts looked to a vase she had bought at a thrift store a year prior. So she decided to get her bargain find appraised, and learned that her 399 purchase was actually a ceremonial Mayan urn, nearly 2000 years old and a priceless treasure.

In a second twist to this story, Dozier decided not to hawk her thrift store vase for a small fortune, but to return the cultural artifact to Mexico, surrendering the urn to Mexican ambassador, Esteban Moctezuma Barragan at a formal ceremony. Sunny Skies has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support

our work, please go to readtangled.com and sign up for a membership. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Law. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.