Today, Explained - Agent Assange?

Episode Date: May 30, 2019

Julian Assange was already in heaps of trouble when the United States indicted him under the Espionage Act last week. Now he (and journalism) might be put on trial. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Julian Assange had a big hearing in London today. A bunch of his supporters showed up. But he did not. He's currently being held at Belmarsh Prison in London, and a WikiLeaks spokesperson said that while he's been there, his health has deteriorated, and he's lost a dramatic amount of weight. Today, his lawyer said he was too ill to appear in court. This is, like, bad news on top of bad news on top of bad news for Assange. But the worst news came about a week ago, and Andrew Prokop has been covering the story for Vox. Last week, the Justice Department announced a new superseding indictment,

17 new charges against Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. U.S. officials charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with violating the Espionage Act. For obtaining and publishing classified information with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These are in connection to the leaks of military documents and State Department cables back in 2010, given to him by then-private Chelsea Manning. Some of the documents leaked exposed abuse by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Including information that documented the names of confidential human sources and that the release of that information put the individuals in exceptionally grave danger. When I think espionage act, I think spies. Is this saying that basically what he did with Chelsea Manning in leaking a bunch of information about the United States government and our national security was in league with what a spy might do?

For over a century at this point on the books has been this espionage act, which says that the publication of any document, writing, it lists several types of pieces of information relating to the national defense, which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, is criminal. Two federal prosecutors argued against using the Espionage Act against Assange. They're reportedly worried about the threat that these charges could pose to the First Amendment.

So it's a very broad law that has scared people for a long time. And now it's being used by the Justice Department to say that Assange's publication of the leaked classified and military information that Chelsea Manning gave him is criminal. But this happened in 2010. Has the U.S. government just been weighing that question for, what, two administrations and nine years now? Well, the Obama Justice Department looked very seriously at charging Assange, and they even explored this option of charging him under the Espionage Act. But around 2013, they decided was a New York Times problem. against more respectable journalists and really any reporting on classified information or secret national security information that the U.S. government wants to keep hidden. As the Justice Department commented on whether this means that journalism itself is at risk? Well, essentially, they just say, don't worry about it. We don't consider Assange a journalist and we would not use the law in this way against journalists. And it's kind of like a trust us argument. What is the distinction between Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, journalism, The New York Times, Vox, Mother Jones, Bob's blog in Topeka?

Like, where do you draw the line? So in response to these concerns, John Demers, the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division said, some say that Assange is a journalist and that he should be immune from prosecution for these actions. The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy, and we thank you for it. It has not and never has been the department's policy to target them for reporting. But he went on to say that Assange is no journalist. And he also said that he was not a responsible actor that was purposefully publishing the names of individuals that could be confidential

human sources, exposing people to danger, and so on. So, I mean, their argument is essentially that Assange was irresponsible and dangerous and a bad guy and that they don't consider him a journalist. But the response from free speech activists and journalists themselves is that what he's doing, essentially obtaining secret information that the government wants to keep secret and making it public, is what they're doing too. The one difference maybe being that the New York Times or Vox or even Bob's blog in Topeka might be a little more careful to not publish names of active sources or government agents in a foreign country? That would be a difference, but it's not clear if there's a legal difference.

There's nothing in this law in particular that would make that distinction. Charlie Savage from the New York Times wrote in his story that the Times obtained the same archives of documents from Manning that WikiLeaks did back in 2010. And he writes, while the Times did take steps to withhold the names of informants in the subset of the files it published, it is not clear how that is legally different from publishing other classified information. That's been viewed as kind of a voluntary step that journalistic organizations have taken in response to governmental concerns, but it's not clear that it's a legal distinction. What is the distinction that they're making between Chelsea Manning, who leaked the information, and Julian Assange, who shared it? Well, the government has long taken a more aggressive stance against

the leakers themselves than the people who publish what the leakers give them. Manning was, of course, prosecuted under the Obama administration and other governmental leakers were as well. And Obama's Justice Department got harsh criticism for that. It was called his war on leaks. But they never went so far as filing charges against the people who published the classified or secret information rather than the people who leaked it. So the heat just got turned up significantly on Assange and it was already cranked, right? Where does this leave him? After spending several years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange was finally arrested and taken into British custody in April.

The U.S. is trying to extradite Assange to get him brought into the United States so they can prosecute him here. And as part of that effort, they filed an initial charge against Assange in April. And now they have filed this broader set of charges, apparently, in an attempt to settle exactly what he's going to be charged with before any potential extradition. Now, the extradition is not necessarily a sure thing, though. There's also an investigation into a rape allegation against Assange in Sweden. So there's the possibility he could be extradited there. There's the possibility that the UK government could turn down the US request to extradite Assange if they feel that his prosecution is

too political. So basically, it's not clear, but he's currently in a prison in London. It wasn't that long ago that Julian Assange was basically a folk hero. How he went from there to here next. It's the middle of the show, and if you don't mind, I'd like to use the opportunity to tell you about another show. This one is called Factually with Adam Conover. It's a podcast. You might know Adam as a stand-up comedian. He is also the host of a TV show called Adam Ruins Everything.

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It's in the podcast apps now. And you can subscribe now so you never miss an episode. Andrew, where does Julian come from? Well, Australia. Assange was born in Australia in 1971. By the time he was a teenager, he got into computer hacking. He called himself Mendax. According to a New Yorker profile of him, it meant nobly untruthful. I was a journalist. You know, I was a very young journalist activist in an early age. I wrote a magazine and was prosecuted for it when I was a teenager.

Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006, and his stated goal was to publish information the powerful were trying to keep secret. And over the next couple of years, he really had his greatest successes in obtaining and publishing United States military, national security, and foreign policy documents. And a big part of that is that Assange himself was a harsh critic of what he deemed the U.S.'s imperialist ambitions. The predominant form the U.S. empire has is an empire of U.S. bases, now more than 1,400 U.S. military bases, of its presence in organizations like the UN and IMF in order to secure advantageous deals and structures for the largest American companies. So when exactly does the world come to know of WikiLeaks? One of their first big scoops was in 2010. They published a video of a U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed civilians. From a distance, you hear the voices on the tape watches the wounded

try to crawl to help. But on. Clear. They also published a lot of military documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and all sorts of State Department cables in which diplomats were giving very candid assessments of foreign governments. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is called thin-skinned and the naked emperor. The German chancellor is described as Angela Teflon Merkel. And Afghan President Hamid Karzai is weak and driven by paranoia. These are essentially U.S. government secrets that the United States was trying to keep hidden. Some of it related to the deaths of civilians in wars abroad and terrible things that happened there. And these leaks were really unprecedented to an extent.

And they gained enormous attention and made him a kind of celebrity. Julian Assange as the sort of activist folk hero who was exposing the truth about these engagements that were deeply unpopular in the U.S. and abroad. How does he sort of fall from that perch? So yeah, Assange was a kind of folk hero. There was even a movie in 2013 called The Fifth Estate. He was played by Benedict Cumberbatch. What about the lives of the soldiers and the civilians involved in these conflicts? Death squads, unreported civilian casualties, countless incidents of friendly fire. This is information the world needs to know. And things started to somewhat turn for him in 2012.

He faced a rape allegation, which posed a risk that he would be extradited to Sweden. In June 2012, he showed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and asked for political asylum. And the imminent danger at the time was the Swedish extradition. But he said that what he was really worried about was political persecution from the United States government for the leaks that they so despised. And at the time, it was President Rafael Correa was the leader of Ecuador and the leftist government of the country was pretty sympathetic to Assange's anti-United States imperialism activism. So they granted his request and he took up residence in the Ecuadorian Assembly in London. And he like sets up his own personal WeWork there for what, seven years? Yeah, he was holed up there in the end for nearly seven years, from June 2012 to, in the end, April 2019.

But he wasn't just sitting around. He was continuing to run WikiLeaks and posting more leaked material and including most infamously, perhaps, during the 2016 campaign, posting hacked emails that had been obtained wonders about Sanders. Does he believe in a god? He has skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference. And from Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, John Podesta. Her inability to just do a national interview and communicate genuine feelings of remorse and regret

is now, I fear, becoming a character problem, more so than honesty. This became a central event of interest in the Mueller investigation. But in the end, Assange was not charged for anything related to those leaks. How does the sexual assault allegation coupled with the leaks of information that ultimately harms the Democratic Party, the DNC, and Hillary Clinton, and ultimately affects the 2016 presidential election, changed the way Assange is perceived by the public here or abroad. A lot of people turned against him, of course, who had previously been sympathetic to him. Like it wasn't clear whether Assange was trying to bring transparency by publishing the powerful people's communications or whether he was instead just trying to help out the Russians and hurt Hillary Clinton, who he had long really disliked. He called her a bright, well-connected, sadistic sociopath.

And weirdly enough, Republicans who had previously criticized him for leaking all this stuff started to support him. He called into Sean Hannity's show and was rapturously received there, for instance. It's absolutely incredible for Clinton to lie. She is lying. But it's a bit disturbing that James Coney goes along with that game. Wow. Julian Assange, fascinating. I do hope you get free one day. I wish you the best. Thank you for being with us. Thank you, Sean. Trump read out WikiLeaks on the campaign trail. He said, WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.

And, you know, then Trump was elected and it turned out that Assange didn't get the better treatment that he was hoping for. What exactly happened there? Do we have any idea how Trump went from WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks, to having his Justice Department file all these charges that he violated the Espionage Act? Well, it doesn't really seem like Trump initiated any of this.

I think what happened is that WikiLeaks got a hold of another series of leaks, and they posted a new set of material about the CIA's hacking capabilities. And this is called the Vault 7 leak. And it appeared to be the largest leak of CIA documents in history, according to The New York Times. WikiLeaks says the documents show the CIA's team of hackers have developed malware to be able to hack into almost any device people use and can remotely control iPhones, iPads, Android devices, taking video from their cameras, listening with their microphones. And this may have really been the thing that reactivated the Justice Department's efforts to go after Assange. How exactly does his relationship with the Ecuadorian embassy

shift? Because ultimately, they give him up, right? Yeah. So basically, Assange overstayed his welcome on one hand. And then on the other hand, Ecuador got a new president who was less sympathetic toward him and announced, we've ended the asylum of this spoiled brat. From now on, we'll be more careful in giving asylum to people who are really worth it and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to destabilize governments. Wow. What happened? There were all sorts of stories leaking out over the years that Assange has vigorously disputed. Wow, what happened? nuisance, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Then there was the issue of Assange's poop, which authorities said he spread across embassy walls on at least one occasion in an act of open defiance, showing how little he thought

of his hosts. Yikes. Yeah. So again, Assange has tried to dispute some of these allegations, but, you know, according to these Ecuadorian officials, he was not the greatest house guest. Julian Assange, now with a beard, carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy by London's Metropolitan Police. What happened in the end is that the Ecuadorian government said they were done with him and agreed to turn him over to the U.K. government. And now there's this battle over where he's going to be extradited.

His case will be argued in court. There will be First Amendment challenges probably against these charges. And traditionally, when the First Amendment is at risk in the United States in free speech cases, it's often not the most sympathetic or beloved people in the world that are trying to exercise those free speech rights. I think a really interesting question now is whether sentiment in the United States among, say, those Democrats who are so angry at what Assange did in the 2016 election can now kind of see past that and realize that criminalizing the publication of secret United States information is something that could have some very bad effects down the road.

This is not necessarily something that progressives or liberals should be happy to see happening. Andrew Prokop is a senior political correspondent at Vox.com. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. Thank you.