At Assange Trial, US Press Freedom Chief Says Extradition Imperils Journalists
If the United States gets its hands on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, journalists around the world will be next.
That was the testimony in a British court, from Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm, testifying by videolink in the third day of Assange’s extradition hearings, who is facing 175 years in jail if sent to the US to face Espionage Act charges for revealing military secrets
Timm’s testimony came after Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University in Yorkshire, England, told the court President Donald Trump's enmity toward former President Barack Obama is behind the persecution and prosecution.
Rogers said that “the Trump Administration sees Wikileaks as a threat,” and was a political witchhunt to get Assange after Obama's government didn't bring any charges.
Newspapers and news sites which published WikiLeaks revelations, including a video of a 2007 helicopter attack by US forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists, have been left untouched during the crusade against Assange.
An Australian abandoned by his country, Assange, 49 is wanted in the US for allegedly conspiring with army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, his key source in exposing classified documents about the wars in Irag and Afghanistan.
Timm told the court there have been attempts by the US government to use the Espionage Act against journalists, none successful, and that Assange's extradition would mean any reporter holding classified documents could be arrested.
He drew parallels to Watergate in the 1970s, and commented that the prosecution’s argument against Assange would also have seen Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein threatened with jail time. Woodward and Bernstein brought down President Richard Nixon with the help of whistleblower Mark Felt – an FBI agent known under the cover Deep Throat.
Timm also said if asking a source for classified information is espionage then the securedropbox systems used by over 80 publications worldwide to encourage whistleblowers to send them information could also be deemed illegal for soliciting classified information.
“I myself have advocated for leaks in cases where the US secrecy system is hiding abuse, corruption, or illegal acts and no-one has ever suggested I was committing a criminal act,” he testified.
The prosecution barrister, James Lewis QC, challenged Timm’s status as an “expert witness,” noting that the Freedom of the Press Foundation had contributed $100,000 to Assange’s legal costs so he could not be considered to be objective and had a conflict of interest.
Lewis told the court, said that the prosecution “do not regard Julian Assange as a journalist,” Timm firing back that this is not determination the US government gets to make and that Assange was clearly “engaged in journalistic activities.”
Lewis then changing tack to say Assange was not being prosecuted for publication of classified material but for endangering the lives of people whose names were revealed.
Timm replied he made his judgement “based on the facts, not US government press releases,” and that, “It shouldn’t be up to the US government to decide if an editorial judgment is criminal,” citing The New York Times and the British newspaper The Guardian's decision to report WikiLeaks findings.
Rogers said Iraq War logs released by Wikileaks revealed 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths and that today the site is a key archive used by scholars studying the wars.