FREEDOM OF SPEECH

THE ABSURD TIMES

Can you say Psychopath?

Freedom of Speech

By

Czar Donic

Yes, the first Amendment is under attack. 

When the country was founded, Franklin was asked "What kind of government do we have?"

He replied "A Republic, if we can keep it."

The first ten amendments were not in the original Constitution, but the governor of one state would not sign it unless he was promised these amendments.   Jefferson kept that promise.  Unusual, but not in those days.  The framers were after all trying to insure what the Colonial power of the Kingdom had done to them under occupation. 

One of the framers said words to the effect "If I had to choose between a free press and a Democracy, I'd choose the free press.  Today, the press has pretty much been occupied by corporations, but the amendment still stands.

During the witch hunt of the McCarthy era, most of those under attack stook under the fifth Ammendment, the right not to testify against yourself.  This is meant to make torture and forced confessions illegal.

One, however, stood behind the First Amendment: Pete Seeger, the folk singer, activist, and so on who also had a background in journalism.  See, the first Amendment also guarantees freedom of assembly, the right to gather together for political and other purposes.  So, may he did sing in front of some Socialist groups.  He had a right to.  He offered to sing the song to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, but they passed on it.  He went free.

Many journalists, people such as John Pilger, an Australian journalist, I believe, publishes here because of the right to free speech.  Otherwise, he would be sued.  Our own prosecution of Assange is very dangerous and an attack on freedom of speech, not some espionage deal.  And does anyone remember Lenny Bruce?  A very popular and profitable radio personality, Dan Sorkin, whith whom I spoke on several occasions, left Chicago because of Mayor Daley's attempts of censorship of his show, mainly playing any Lenny Bruce recordings.  Not only would he be fired, but the engineer who put the recording on the turntable and played it for him would be fired.  He left for San Francisco and loved it there.  He went on to be popular there as well.

Anyway, it is not Assange who is being attacked here – it is the First Amendment.  Here is an interview about that from what is left of free speech.  I'd read it all, long as this edition is, but take your time with it.  I am getting tired of this situation and publishing this does no good anyway.  The only reason I continue from time to time is that I just can't help it:

n an unprecedented move, the Justice Department has indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act for his role in publishing U.S. classified military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents were leaked by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The Espionage Act of 1917 has never been used to prosecute a journalist or media outlet. The new charges come just over a month after British police forcibly removed Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he took asylum in 2012. Initially the Trump administration indicted Assange on a single count of helping Manning hack a government computer, but Assange faces up to 170 additional years in prison under the new charges—10 years for each count of violating the Espionage Act. We speak with Jennifer Robinson, an attorney for Julian Assange. "It is a grave threat to press freedom and should be cause for concern for journalists and publishers everywhere," Robinson says.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: In an unprecedented move, the Justice Department has indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act for his role in publishing U.S. classified military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents were leaked by Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The Espionage Act of 1917 has never been used to prosecute a journalist or media outlet. The new charges come just over a month after British police forcibly removed Assange from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he took asylum in 2012. Initially, the Trump administration indicted Assange on a single count of helping Manning hack a government computer. But Assange faces up to 170 years in prison under the new charges—10 years for each count of violating the Espionage Act.

Press freedom advocates have denounced the new charges. Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union said, quote, "For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information. This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism and a direct assault on the First Amendment." Joel Simon, the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said, quote, "Press freedom in the United States and around the world is imperiled by this prosecution." The legendary journalist Seymour Hersh told The New York Times, quote, "Today Assange. Tomorrow, perhaps, The New York Timesand other media that published so much of the important news and information Assange provided," unquote.

Assange is being held in a British jail but faces extradition to both the United States and Sweden, where authorities have reopened an investigation into sexual assault charges.

Later in the broadcast, we'll be joined by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who was charged under the Espionage [Act] in 1973, and the award-winning national security journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. But first we go to London, where we're joined by Jennifer Robinson, an attorney for Julian Assange.

First, Jen, can you start off by talking about these new charges, the possibility that if Julian Assange were extradited to the United States, he could face 170 years in jail?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: As you said, these are unprecedented charges. Since 2010, we've been warning about this very possibility. The Obama administration opened this criminal investigation in 2010, and we've been warning since then that any prosecution under the Espionage Act would be a direct attack on the First Amendment and all media organizations, in a precedent that could be used against journalists and publishers everywhere. Since the Trump administration came to power, they've been more aggressively pursuing the investigation, and the outcome is this indictment overnight.

It is a grave threat to press freedom and should be cause for concern for journalists and publishers everywhere, because, of course, Julian Assange is not American. Everything that he did was outside of the United States. So this is a concern for all journalists and publishers anywhere in the world who are publishing truthful information about the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: The United States has the death penalty. What does this mean for Assange? And what agreement did the Ecuadorean government make with the British authorities, who removed Julian Assange from the embassy, where he had political asylum for the last almost seven years?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: Of course, the reason Julian went into the embassy in the first place was to protect himself from extradition to the United States to face prosecution, not in relation to the death penalty. But the asylum that was granted was to protect him from this very outcome. Publishers, for publishing truthful information, should not be facing criminal prosecution at all.

The U.K. government has given an assurance against extradition to the death penalty. The U.K. does not typically extradite to the death penalty in any event. But that assurance does not cover off his extradition to the United States. And that's what we've been asking for, for a long time. It is not right or appropriate that a publisher should face criminal prosecution in this way. And 170 years, certainly a very long time in prison, is, for a publisher who has won journalism awards—he's won the Sydney Peace Prize, journalism awards the world over—for having revealed government wrongdoing, human rights abuse, war crimes—this is a direct attack on the press and democracy itself.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what espionage means, what exactly Julian Assange faces?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: Well, if you look at the indictment, while it is the Espionage Act, it's publishing classified information damaging to the United States. But if you look at the indictment and the way in which it's been described, effectively what this is, is a journalist and a publisher having conversations with a source about what information is available, and discussing with that source publishing the information. This is what journalists do, investigative journalists do, all the time. It is criminalizing the investigative journalism process and will place a massive chill on national security journalism in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to the late Michael Ratner, who served for many years as an attorney for Julian Assange. He was the former head of the Center for Constitutional Rights. This was Michael speakingto Democracy Now! in 2012 about the Espionage Act.

MICHAEL RATNER: I think there's a serious question whether someone like Julian Assange, who is not a U.S. citizen, can be indicted under the Espionage Act. What duty does Julian Assange owe the United States vis-à-vis the Espionage Act? If I, tomorrow, surface documents that had to do with the Soviet Union, or Russia, rather, and what it's doing in Chechnya, that were classified, could Russia actually get my extradition from the United States because I put out classified documents belonging to Russia? I don't think so. But that would be—if they actually have an indictment and if they go after Julian Assange in the way that so far they've indicated they want to, that will certainly be an important issue. What duty did Julian Assange owe to the United States?

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn now to an interview I did with Julian Assange in 2012. I visited him in the Ecuadorean Embassy—oh, this is when he was speaking on Skype to us, when he talked, himself, about the Espionage Act.

JULIAN ASSANGE: The new interpretation of the Espionage Act that the Pentagon is trying to hammer in to the legal system, and which the Department of Justice is complicit in, would mean the end of national security journalism in the United States, and not only the United States, because the Pentagon is trying to apply this extraterritorially. Why would it be the end of national security journalism? Because the interpretation is that if any document that the U.S. government claims to be classified is given to a journalist, who then makes any part of it public, that journalist has committed espionage, and the person who gave them the material has committed the crime, communicating with the enemy.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Julian Assange speaking to us a few years ago. This is John Demers, the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, briefing reporters on Thursday about the new charges against Julian Assange. He said, quote, "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 is not and has never been the department's policy to target them for reporting. But Julian Assange is no journalist," he said. Your response, Jennifer Robinson?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: If the Department of Justice is concerned about journalism, then they ought to be concerned about the precedent this sets and the impact it will have on all American journalists. Michael Ratner was absolutely correct in making the points that he made, and I think that is the concern. It's not even just a concern about journalists in the United States, but what this precedent says about the Department of Justice exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction over journalists and publishers outside of the country for having published this information. As Michael rightly pointed out, what would it mean if Russia or China was starting to seek the extradition of American journalists for having published Chinese or Russian secrets? This is an incredibly serious precedent. And for the Department of Justice to suggest that this won't be used by the Trump administration against other media organizations and journalists, I think, is naive at best.

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Robinson, Ecuador has seized some of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's possessions, left behind when the British authorities took him out of the embassy. WikiLeaks says that Ecuador is allowing U.S. prosecutors to help themselves to Assange's belongings. Is this the case?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: Ecuador did receive a request from the United States to seize control over WikiLeaks property that was inside the embassy and Julian's property inside the embassy. Ecuador has provided that. We are very concerned, both about the fact that Ecuador has allowed their embassy staff to be questioned by U.S. prosecutors and now handing over this material. In circumstances where there is no chain of custody, we don't know who has been into the embassy and who has accessed that room, accessed the belongings. So, it raises serious concerns about our ability to defend ourselves and defend him in this case, and serious concerns about the nature of the evidence and the process by which it was obtained.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, what about Sweden also reviving, reopening their case, their allegations of rape against Julian Assange, when they had dropped all of the charges, both of sexual assault and rape before? What does this mean, Sweden calling for the extradition also of Julian Assange?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: First, of course, he's never been charged in Sweden. And this is the third time that a different prosecutor has reopened this investigation, after it has been closed. It was first closed in 2010 because the first prosecutor said there wasn't evidence of any crime. It was reopened again by a prosecutor who dragged it out for years despite our offers to cooperate. After finally questioning Julian inside the embassy, that case was dropped. The entire matter was dropped again. And now we have, now that he's in prison here, a third prosecutor reopening the case, over a decade. This is, by any stretch, an abuse of process. He has always been willing to answer those allegations. He has given his testimony. And it's time that that matter is determined once and for all.

Of course, now there is a serious question that will arise here in the U.K. as to which of the requests, if Sweden does seek his extradition—they've only reopened the criminal investigation and will have to make a decision about whether to seek his extradition. But if they do, it raises questions about which extradition request will take precedence. As you can see, Julian Assange is going to be in a—is in a very difficult position with respect to both extradition requests.

AMY GOODMAN: And which one takes precedence, U.S. or Sweden? And if Sweden were to extradite him—and again, you just said he actually has never officially been charged, even now, with rape or sexual assault. They are reopening the investigation, and that's been going on for years. If he were extradited to Sweden, his original concern was that he would then be extradited to the United States. Do you still fear this?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: Of course. That was the reason he sought asylum in the first place, is that we were seeking assurances from Sweden that if he were to return to Sweden to face any potential process there with respect to those allegations, that he would not be sent to the United States. Sweden refused to give that assurance. The Australian government—he's an Australian citizen—refused to request that assurance. The Ecuadorean government, once he got asylum inside the embassy, also sought that assurance from Sweden, and they refused to give it.

Now we're in a situation where we have an indictment on the record from the United States, and it will be a matter for the home secretary here to determine, if Sweden also requests his extradition, which of those two cases will take precedence. We are, of course, concerned about the risk that he will face if he goes back to the United States. And it will raise massive free speech questions, irrespective of whether he goes to Sweden first or not.

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Robinson, how is Julian doing in prison? He was in the Ecuadorean Embassy for almost seven years, taken out by British authorities. Where is he currently jailed, and how is he?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: He's currently imprisoned in Belmarsh Prison in South East London, which is a high-security prison here in the U.K. We were very concerned about his health at the time he was forcibly removed from the embassy. He had been denied medical treatment for more than seven years. We are concerned it's had a permanent impact upon his health. We've recently had a visit from the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, who came with medical experts to assess his health inside the prison. And I am very concerned about the ongoing health issues that he has and whether he's getting adequate medical treatment here within the British prison system. He's finding it very difficult. He's very isolated.

And I think the prospect of a very long extradition fight and potential extradition to the United States is a real concern. But, of course, he is resolved to fight this, as he said at his first extradition hearing. He refused to consent to extradition to the United States, because he would not be extradited for doing journalism. And this case raises—as we've seen from the free speech groups that have come out overnight, this case raises fundamental questions of free speech, which is why he is resolved to absolutely fighting this extradition.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, as we speak today, it's just been a few hours since the British Prime Minister Theresa May announced she is resigning. Will that make a difference in Julian's case?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: It remains to be seen who will become the prime minister after Theresa May's resignation. We've already seen, from the leader of the opposition here, Jeremy Corbyn, say that the British government should not extradite Julian to the United States to face prosecution for having revealed war crimes. So I think there would need to be a change of government here to see the British government positions change, because the Conservative government has made very clear their position on this and that it's a matter for the British courts, but have not said that they would prevent any extradition if it were ultimately ordered. So, really, it depends what happens. And we've still got a very long extradition fight ahead of us.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think if Jeremy Corbyn were to ascend to the prime ministership, that he could free Julian Assange?

JENNIFER ROBINSON: Of course, it is a matter for the courts, but the British government retains the discretion, ultimately, about whether to extradite a person or not. And if Jeremy Corbyn came to power, he has already said, made clear, in a public statement and through the the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, that Julian Assange ought not be extradited to the U.S. for publishing truthful information and for revealing war crimes. So, it remains to be seen what would happen if he came to power and where Julian was in the extradition process at that time, but it is a possibility.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, explain the sentence he is now serving and what will happen after that sentence.

JENNIFER ROBINSON: He has been convicted of a bail offense for having sought asylum when he did, going into the embassy. He was given a sentence of 50 weeks, which he's currently serving in Belmarsh Prison. And the extradition process will carry on shortly. The U.S. issued a provisional warrant back in April, when he was first arrested. Now that there's an additional indictment, we are expecting a new extradition request that will include those additional charges. And the extradition process will begin. Fighting extradition with respect to the United States can take anywhere between one and three years. So, this is the beginning of, like I said, what will be quite a long process.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that U.S. press has come out strongly enough? Today, The New York Times, in an editorial, said, "It is a marked escalation in the effort to prosecute Mr. Assange, one that could have a chilling effect on American journalism as it has been practiced for generations. It is aimed straight at the heart of the First Amendment."

JENNIFER ROBINSON: I think it's very important that The New York Times and other major media organizations come forward and speak about this principle and stand against this prosecution, because, as you've rightly pointed out, this will have a chilling impact on all media organizations and is a cause for concern that the precedent that is being set by the Trump administration could be used against The New York Times and other media organizations. We've been saying, since 2010, that the media needs to get behind WikiLeaks, and they need to acknowledge that any prosecution would set that precedent and cause them risk. Finally, we're seeing an acknowledgment of that. And I hope that we will see that continue as this fight goes on.

AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Robinson, we want to thank you for being with us, human rights attorney who's been advising Julian Assange and WikiLeaks since 2010.

When we come back, the legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. He faced over a hundred years in jail for espionage. He'll talk to us about Julian Assange. Stay with us.

As the Justice Department charges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, we speak to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. In 1971, he was charged with violating the Espionage Act for leaking a top-secret report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other publications. At the time, Ellsberg faced over 100 years in prison. He tells Democracy Now!, "There hasn't actually been such a significant attack on the freedom of the press … since my case in 1971."

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at the Justice Department's unprecedented decision to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 charges of espionage for publishing U.S. military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes. Assange faces up to 170 years in prison.

We're joined now by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. He was charged in the early '70s with violating the Espionage Act for leaking a top-secret report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other publications. Ellsberg faced over 100 years in jail. He was a military analyst who worked with the Pentagon and the RANDCorporation. Daniel Ellsberg joins us now from Berkeley, California.

Dan, welcome back to Democracy Now! Your response to this unprecedented series of charges against Julian Assange?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, Amy, I was sitting here listening to your stunning litany of events that are going on now in the country. You started out with mentioning Prime Minister May's, in Britain, efforts, long efforts, and the failure of her efforts to exit from the European Union, from Brexit. And it made me think of the other news you were giving of President Trump's two years' effort to exit from the American Constitution. You mentioned the 14th Amendment that's under attack.

Yesterday is a day that will be—live in the history of journalism, of law in this country and of civil liberties in this country, because it was a direct attack on the First Amendment, an unprecedented one. There hasn't actually been such a significant attack on the freedom of the press, the First Amendment, which is the bedrock of our republic, really, our form of government, since my case in 1971, 48 years ago. But this is—I was indicted as a source. And I warned newsmen then that that would not be the last indictment of a source, if I were convicted. Well, I wasn't convicted. The charges were dropped on governmental misconduct. And it was another 10 years before anybody else faced that charge under the Espionage Act again, Samuel Loring Morison. And it was not until President Obama that nine cases were brought, as I had been warning for so long.

But my warning really was that it wasn't going to stop there, that almost inevitably there would be a stronger attack directly on the foundations of journalism, against editors, publishers and journalists themselves. And we've now seen that as of yesterday. That's a new front in President Trump's war on the free press, which he regards as the enemy of the people.

AMY GOODMAN: And the Trump administration saying Julian Assange is not a publisher, is not a journalist, that's why he is not protected by the First Amendment?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: In the face of this new indictment, which—and let me correct something that's been said just a little wrong by everybody so far. He doesn't just face 170 years. That's for the 17 counts on the Espionage Act, each worth 10. Plus, he's still facing the five-year conspiracy charge that he started out with a few weeks ago. I was sure that the administration did not want to keep Julian Assange in jail just for five years. So I've been expecting these Espionage Act charges. I really expected them later, after he was extradited, because adding them now makes it a little more complicated for Britain to extradite him now, as I understand it. They're not supposed to extradite for political offenses or for political motives, and this is obviously for both political motives and political offenses. So, from Julian Assange's point of view, it makes extradition a little more difficult.

Why then did they bring it right now? Well, coming back to the case, by the way, that I faced, I faced only 11 [Espionage] Act charges, each worth 10 years in prison, plus a conspiracy charge worth five. So I was facing exactly 115 years in prison. He's facing exactly 175. Now, that's not a difference that makes any difference. In both cases, it's a question of a life sentence.

I think that the reason they brought these charges so soon, because they had until June 12th, was to lay out—the necessity to lay out for extradition all the charges they plan to bring. And I don't assume these are the last ones. They've got a couple weeks left to string up some new charges.

They started out with a charge that made Julian look something other than a normal journalist. The help to hacking a password sounded like something that, even in the Digital Age, perhaps most journalists wouldn't do, and that would hope to separate him from the support of other journalists.

In this case, when they had to lay out their larger charge, this is straight journalism. They mention, for instance, that he solicited investigative material, he solicited classified information—terribly, he didn't just passively receive it over the transom. I can't count the number of times I have been solicited for classified information, starting with the Pentagon Papers, but long after that, and that's by every member of the responsible press that I dealt with—the Times, the Post, AP, you name it. That's journalism. So, what they have done is recognizable, I think, this time to all journalists, that they are in the crosshairs of this one. They may not have known enough about digital performance to help a source conceal her identity by using new passwords, as Julian was charged with. They may not be able to do that. But every one of them has eagerly received classified information and solicited it.

So, every journalist—and not only in this country and not only at the federal level—already, Brian Carmody in San Francisco has had his house broken into with sledgehammers to get all his material, looking for his source, in a local dispute. Daniel Hale, NSA, has been brought. I think that President Trump has, in effect, opened the doors to these kinds of constitutions in state and country jurisdictions—state and county, I meant to say, jurisdictions, and undoubtedly in other countries, as well, that may not have a First Amendment but have—looking to some precedent for the United States. That's what it's able to do. So there's a full-scale, multi-front war going on, not only in this country, and President Trump is leading the way.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break and then come back to our discussion. But first we're going to play a video of Jeremy Scahill and The Intercept talking about Trump's war on whistleblowers. We've been speaking with and will continue with Daniel Ellsberg, one of the world's most famous whistleblowers. In '71, he was a high-level defense analyst when he leaked a top-secret report on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other publications, that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers and played a key role in ending the Vietnam War. Stay with us.

The Espionage Act charges filed against Julian Assange mark just the latest attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize journalism and whistleblowers. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning is back in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Two weeks ago, drone whistleblower Daniel Hale was arrested in Tennessee. We air a new video by The Intercept titled "Why You Should Care About Trump's War on Whistleblowers," featuring Jeremy Scahill. We also speak to Scahill and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about how the corporate media has failed to stand up for Assange and others.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at the Justice Department's unprecedented decision to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for violating the Espionage Act. We turn now to a new video produced by The Intercept titled "Why You Should Care About Trump's War on Whistleblowers." It features Interceptco-founder Jeremy Scahill, who will join us after this video.

JEREMY SCAHILL: On June 16th, 1918, the prominent socialist labor leader Eugene Debs delivered a speech in Canton, Ohio. And in that speech, Debs argued against U.S. involvement in World War I, and he praised activists who had been organizing against the military draft or had been convicted of sedition. At the time, Debs was one of the most prominent socialists in the United States, and his speech came on the heels of the Russian revolution and the rise of global socialist and communist movements.

EUGENE DEBS: [read by Mark Ruffalo] The working class who fight all the battles, the working calls who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Soon after Debs delivered that speech, he was arrested and charged under a new law in the U.S. that had passed just a year earlier. It was called the Espionage Act. Debs and his lawyers argued that his antiwar speech was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. They lost. And Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices voted unanimously to uphold his conviction. "I believe in free speech, in war as well as in peace," Debs told the jury during his trial. "If the Espionage Law stands, then the Constitution of the United States is dead."

Congress eventually amended parts of that act, but the thrust of the law has remained in effect to this day. Anarchist Emma Goldman was also prosecuted under the act. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed after being convicted under the law.

Throughout its history, the Espionage Act has been used as a weapon to attack free speech and dissent. And then came the Pentagon Papers case, where the government charged the whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg under the Espionage Act. He faced more than a hundred years in prison.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: How can you measure the jeopardy that I'm in, whether it's 10 years, 20 years, 115 years—rather ludicrous amounts like that—to the penalty that has been paid already by 50,000 American families here and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families.

JEREMY SCAHILL: The charges were ultimately dismissed in 1973, mostly because of rampant misconduct and illegal surveillance by the Nixon administration. But it was this model, developed by Nixon's Justice Department, that would be passionately adopted decades later as the weapon of choice of President Barack Obama to wage attacks on journalistic sources and journalism.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Since I've been in office, my attitude has been zero tolerance for these kinds of leaks and speculation.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Obama's Justice Department indicted eight journalistic sources under the Espionage Act—more than all U.S. presidents before him combined. Among these cases was U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In some of these cases, people were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. In others, the government ruined the lives of the targets.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're going to find the leakers. We're going to find the leakers. They're going to pay a big price for leaking.

JEREMY SCAHILL: And then Donald Trump takes power and immediately begins using the playbook refined and sharpened by his predecessor, President Obama. Donald Trump is now surpassing Obama's eight-year record in just over two years in office. The first case Trump brought was against Reality Winner, who was accused of leaking a top-secret document to a news organization. That NSA document related to alleged Russian intelligence operations aimed at breaching software systems used in some U.S. voting systems. And then FBI agent Terry Albury was indicted for allegedly leaking information about FBI surveillance and informant operations to a news organization.

The government did not name the media outlet in these cases, but other news organizations attributed the reporting to The Intercept. And then, in early May, came the arrest of another alleged whistleblower: Daniel Everett Hale. The Justice Department is accusing Hale of leaking documents on the global assassination program and drone programs run by the Obama administration. This indictment also does not name a news organization, but Trump administration officials, in leaks to news organizations, have claimed that it's The Intercept.

I want to be clear here: Nothing I say here should be understood as discussing the specifics of the Hale case. And The Intercept does not discuss confidential sources or alleged sources, whoever they are. But I want to state the following: Whoever provided documents for The Intercept's reporting on U.S. assassination operations should be viewed as a hero who did a major public service at immense personal risk. This whistleblower provided the most detailed account ever published of what amounts to a secret legal system wherein the president of the United States and his advisers make lists of people to kill, including U.S. citizens who have not been charged with crimes.

These documents we published showed that at times as many as 9 out of 10 people that the U.S. kills in its so-called targeted assassinations are not the intended target. They revealed how the watch-listing system has spiraled out of control and how U.S. citizens have no right to know if or why they are on watch lists or kill lists. This was an extremely important and brave moment in the history of the post-9/11 secrecy and mass killing operations and the fight against them. Back in 2015, I discussed this on Democracy Now!

JEREMY SCAHILL: This government has been relentless in its pursuit of people of conscience who blow the whistle, and has characterized them as traitors and spies, and, in the process, has criminalized the ability to do independent journalism that is meant to hold them accountable, the government accountable.

JEREMY SCAHILL: We are at an extremely dangerous moment in the history of this country. Donald Trump is using the same rhetoric used by Nazi officials in 1930s and '40s to attack the press. He said he wants to jail journalists who publish stories he doesn't like. And he's wielding the Espionage Act like a chainsaw against journalistic sources. What makes it all so much worse is that it was the constitutional law scholar and Trump predecessor, Barack Obama, who teed Trump up, who laid the groundwork, who blazed the trail for this extremely deranged and dangerous man currently occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But look at the way these stories are covered in the broader media. With a few notable exceptions, the lack of solidarity or just basic understanding of how dangerous these cases are is just largely absent. Instead there are attacks on the news organizations or the reporters. For all of the talk of how dangerous Trump is to a free press, why hasn't the Reality Winner case been covered more extensively? Why is a CNN reporter losing credentials a national scandal, and threatening alleged whistleblowers with 50 years in prison is a non-story?

My colleague James Risen knows a lot about the Espionage Act. He fought the Bush and Obama administrations for some seven-odd years when they tried to force him to testify against an alleged source being prosecuted under the act. Recently, Jim was on Democracy Now! discussing how many media organizations cover these cases.

JAMES RISEN: I think that's a fundamental flaw in the way the press covers these things, is that they look at it as a crime rather than as an attack by the Justice Department on the press in the United States, which is what this is.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Daniel Everett Hale is facing a half a century in prison for his alleged crime of blowing the whistle on a secret assassination program that regularly resulted in the killing of civilians, including an American teenager. None of this is about espionage. And it should be clear to every journalist in this country, to every person of conscience, that what this prosecution is about is threatening anyone who even thinks of leaking, say, a Trump tax return. This is about criminalizing journalism. It's about increasing the secrecy and decreasing the transparency. It's an assault on the very idea of a democratic society. At these moments, silence is complicity. Everyone should care about what happened to Reality Winner and what's happening again to Chelsea Manning and what's happened to Edward Snowden and, yes, what's happening to Julian Assange. And we should all care what happens to Daniel Hale.

This is a precedent-setting moment, not just legally, but morally, because this is not the end. This is the beginning. And they will eventually come for other news organizations, or they will scare media outlets from doing high-stakes national security reporting. It doesn't matter what you think of any of these individual whistleblowers. It doesn't matter what you think of The Intercept. But it does matter that we all recognize that this is an attack on our basic rights to information about what the U.S. government does in our names and with our tax dollars. It matters that people who blow the whistle on crimes and war crimes be defended and not abandoned or portrayed as violent criminals or traitors. All of us must ask ourselves where we stand. History will remember our answers.

AMY GOODMAN: "Why You Should Care About Trump's War on Whistleblowers," a new video by The Intercept featuring Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, who's joining us now live in studio, host of the weekly podcast Intercepted. Also with us, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. So, Jeremy, you did this video before these new charges of espionage were brought against Julian Assange, for which he could face more than 170 years in prison.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah. And I think it's so important to remind people that Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower in this case, is again in prison. Why is she in prison? She's in prison indefinitely right now for her refusal to participate in a grand jury proceeding that had at its center an attempt by the Trump Justice Department to criminalize national security journalism. You know, a lot of people will tweet and say, "Oh, Trump is attacking the free press. We need to stand up against this." Who stood up against it and already has paid a price? Chelsea Manning. Chelsea Manning was put in prison for 62 days for her refusal to participate in the recent grand jury. Then she was dragged in front of a new grand jury and said, "I refuse to participate in this." And Chelsea Manning launched an all-out attack on the grand jury system, in general, but also has talked about this in the context of a war on press freedom. Everyone who believes, as The New York Times has now come out and said, as other journalists are, that this is an assault on press freedom should be demanding that the ongoing persecution of Chelsea Manning end immediately and that she should be released from prison.

Look what's happened, Amy. Trump is trying to run the deck on this. They are digging up old cases. They are trying to throw the book at anyone who does critical national security reporting. This isn't about Julian Assange 2016, the election, Sweden. This is about a war on the press. And it was a huge, fatal mistake that major news organizations refused to stand up when they started coming for WikiLeaks and Chelsea Manning in 2010. Huge mistake. They owe some of the responsibility for this.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to read Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning's statement that she just released from jail on Thursday. She said, "This administration describes the press as the opposition party and an enemy of the people. Today, they use the law as a sword, and have shown their willingness to bring the full power of the state against the very institution intended to shield us from such excesses." Those are the words of Chelsea Manning, speaking to us from jail.

JEREMY SCAHILL: And again, every media organization in this country should be demanding the dropping of the charges against Assange, particularly the Espionage Act charges, and the freedom of Chelsea Manning.

In the other case that recently happened here—let's remember, the Trump Justice Department, under Jeff Sessions, the first indictment that they issued was against Reality Winner, allegedly for leaking a document that was dealing with Russian military attacks, or attempted attacks, on U.S. software systems used to service the elections. Then they go after Terry Albury, an African-American FBI agent in Minnesota, on charges that he leaked information about their neo-COINTELPRO-type operations, about the informant system and how they set people up. And then there was a BuzzFeed source that was indicted. There was a Senate staffer who they went after.

Trump now is blasting through Obama's horrid record of eight journalistic sources charged under the Espionage Act. But this happens in the context, too, of William Barr, who is an obsessive-compulsive addict of the unitary executive, the notion that the executive branch should be a dictatorship when it comes to national security policy. They are going after people who blew the whistle on war crimes.

And for the news organizations that were publishing and selling their papers based on the risks that Chelsea Manning took, based on the risks that Julian Assange took, waited far too long. Far too long. You know the famous speech that was given about, you know, when they came for the socialists, I didn't speak up because I wasn't a socialist. When they came for WikiLeaks was not yesterday, Amy. When they came for WikiLeaks started in 2010. And where was the outrage?

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to 2017, when Mike Pompeo talked about WikiLeaks. This wasn't when he was secretary of state, but this was in his first address as CIA director.

MIKE POMPEO: WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged his followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. It overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a nonstate, hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, that's, at the time, CIA Director Pompeo. Now he's secretary of state. Dan Ellsberg, your response, and what it means to talk about WikiLeaks in this way for Julian Assange?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Why is it Julian Assange selected by this administration as the first target in our national history and the first target in a hundred years of the Espionage Act to use that act against a journalist? Because he is not regarded with liking by very many people. He's a ripe fruit here to be collected, because a lot of journalists are mad at him because of his actions in 2016—which, by the way, I'm not happy about, either. The reason for many people to hate, even, Julian Assange—not me—is that his actions appeared and seemed to be even motivated by a desire to help Donald Trump in the election. That's a serious charge for anybody. It's like all of those at Fox News or Stephen Bannon. The fact is, I would be making the stand I am now, against extraditing Julian Assange or prosecuting him under the Espionage Act, which means he could not get a fair trial as a whistleblower or journalist any more than any of the others who have been subject to that. All the ones before the recent ones, that Jeremy Scahill mentioned, I have met. I made an effort to meet them. As whistleblowers, I like them, I respect them, I identify with them.

And I have warned the press, as I've said, for all: You're not going to end with whistleblowers; this is going to go after you. Why hasn't the press come out before? Because, frankly, they didn't feel it was pointing at them. It was at their sources. The only real commitment, I've discovered, they feel to their sources is not to reveal their name, not to help them in their trial, even by comprehensive and fair coverage of it in any way. But now this is them. If Stephen Bannon or Fox News was sitting facing the charges that he is facing, that Julian Assange is facing now, facing the possibility of extradition, whether they were American or not, I would be defending them with the same words and the same vehemence as I do right now Julian Assange, because our press freedom is at stake.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy, 30 seconds, and I also want to talk about the content of what Julian Assange released.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Julian Assange released evidence, very clear evidence, of U.S. war crimes, including the murder of Reuters journalists and civilians, duplicity, dirty tricks around the world on the part of the U.S. government. I agree with Dan. And I just want to say, it's actually irrelevant whether Julian Assange—whether you think Julian Assange is a journalist. The First Amendment does not just cover freedom of the press. It's all of our rights. And this is not just about press freedom. This is about a democratic society and a major frontal assault on our basic liberties and free speech.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept and legendary Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. We'll continue Part 2 at democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

Web-only discussion with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. They discuss the Justice Department's decision to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act for publishing U.S. military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes. This comes as President Trump is considering Memorial Day pardons for American military members accused or convicted of war crimes, including former Blackwater contractor Nicholas Slatten, who was twice found guilty of first-degree murder in the deadly 2007 Nisoor Square massacre in Baghdad which killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians. He was sentenced to life in prison last December.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at the Justice Department's unprecedented decision to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act for publishing U.S. military and diplomatic documents exposing U.S. war crimes. Assange faces at least 170 years in a U.S. prison now.

I'd like to go back to 2017, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was CIA director. He talked about WikiLeaks in his first CIA address.

MIKE POMPEO: WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged his followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. It overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a nonstate, hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he was CIA director. Julian Assange later responded to the allegation in an interview with Jeremy Scahill in his podcast, Intercepted.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Pompeo has stated that WikiLeaks instructed Chelsea Manning to go after certain information. That's an interesting revelation. And then there is his statement that this, i.e.WikiLeaks and its publications, are end now. So, how does he propose to conduct this ending? He didn't say, but the CIA is only in the business of collecting information, kidnapping people and assassinating people. So, it's quite a menacing statement that he does need to clarify.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Julian Assange, as we continue our conversation with our two guests. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, in 1973, he was charged with violating the Espionage Act for leaking a top-secret report on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other publications. Here in New York, Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill, host of the podcast Intercepted.

I want to put that to Dan Ellsberg, and go further, as we talked in Part 1, about the content of what it is that Julian Assange released, because now it's all spoken in shorthand, if it's covered at all in the corporate media, what it is he released, and why, Dan Ellsberg, you so identify with him, based on what motivated you to release the Pentagon Papers so many decades ago.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Amy, I'd like to correct one little fact, and it'll help explain the context. You mentioned a couple times that my case was 1973. Actually, it was begun in 1971. When the Times began publishing my papers, they had a Supreme Court civil case, which ended with the Supreme Court saying that the injunctions against them were invalid under the First Amendment. But that was followed immediately by my criminal case in '71 for having delivered the newspapers to The New York Times, The Washington Post and 17 other newspapers who had come in. So, it really was 1971. Now, the war was still waging at that time, the Vietnam War, and I knew that it was going to continue and get larger in the air, as it actually did. In '71, it had four years to go, really, including three years, essentially, of American—or two years of American ground combat, but the prospect of American air power indefinitely, if Nixon had not been forced to leave office, and largely because of crimes that he had committed against me.

Now, when Pompeo talks about WikiLeaks as having been a hostile intelligence service, he probably thinks of it that way, and because that's the way, I'm sure, he thinks of The New York Times or The Washington Post. I have no doubt, by the way, that Trump, in particular, thinks of The Washington Post as a treasonous, hostile intelligence service. You can just substitute the words "critical journalist" or "investigative journalist" for those words, in their minds.

I would go so far as to say, by the way, that the attitude shown by this administration relates to an oath that I took as a member of the U.S. government and, for earlier, the same oath as a member of the U.S. Marines. And it's the same oath that every congressperson takes. And that's an oath not to secrecy. And it's not to failure to criticize the commander-in-chief, which is criticism that this president regards as treason. It's an oath to uphold and support the Constitution of the United States against all enemies—the Constitution of the United States, including the Bill of Rights, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Especially after yesterday, but over the last two years, I've come to see President Trump as a domestic enemy of the American Constitution, just as I saw Vice President Cheney in that role. And I distinguish them a little bit from President Nixon, who indicted me. He violated the First Amendment, by the standards of that time and by the best legal scholars of that time. But I don't have the perception of Richard Nixon as someone who intended to change the amendments, to change the Bill of Rights, to change our form of government. He violated it when necessary. He thought of the government—the president, in particular—as above the law, which is exactly the way Donald Trump sees it. But I think Vice President Cheney and Donald Trump, while patriotic—I'm not calling them traitors—who wanted the best for this country, thought that the best was not served by the existing Constitution and Bill of Rights. And they set off, I think, very clearly in their minds, to change that, as I think John Bolton does right now, and perhaps Pompeo—I don't know enough about him. I have no doubt that Pompeo—that Bolton is impatient with any restrictions on the president by Congress, by treaties, by Constitution, by international law, anything else, in his desires for war and his contempt for Congress. So, we're dealing here, what I'm—what I would call are domestic enemies of the American Constitution, as it exists.

When Julian Assange put out his first leak from Chelsea Manning, with—the one that caught my attention and nearly everybody else's was a video showing a number of—one helicopter, actually, shooting down 17 unarmed people in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Dan, I'm going to interrupt you, because we have that video, and we want to play a clip. In April 2010 is what you're talking about.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: WikiLeaks made international headlines when it published this video, leaked by, as you pointed out, Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The chilling video footage, taken from a U.S. military helicopter, shows U.S. forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqis in the New Baghdad neighborhood of Baghdad in Iraq. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency, the videographer, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, who was something like 22 years old, the up-and-coming videographer, and driver Saeed Chmagh, the father of four. It became known as the "Collateral Murder" video. This is a clip.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: There, one o'clock. Haven't seen anything since then.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Just [expletive]. Once you get on, just open up.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: I am.

U.S. SOLDIER 4: I see your element, got about four Humvees, out along this—

U.S. SOLDIER 2: You're clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: All right, firing.

U.S. SOLDIER 4: Let me know when you've got them.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Let's shoot. Light 'em all up.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: Come on, fire!

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Keep shootin'. Keep shootin'. Keep shootin'. Keep shootin'.

U.S. SOLDIER 5: Hotel, Bushmaster two-six, Bushmaster two-six, we need to move, time now!

U.S. SOLDIER 2: All right, we just engaged all eight individuals.

AMY GOODMAN: Minutes later, the video shows U.S. forces watching as a van pulls up to evacuate the wounded. They again open fire from the helicopter, killing several more people and wounding two children inside the van.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: Where's that van at?

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Right down there by the bodies.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: OK, yeah.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly picking up bodies and weapons.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: Let me engage. Can I shoot?

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Roger. Break. Crazy Horse one-eight, request permission to engage.

U.S. SOLDIER 6: Picking up the wounded?

U.S. SOLDIER 3: Yeah, we're trying to get permission to engage. Come on, let us shoot!

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: They're taking him.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.

U.S. SOLDIER 7: This is Bushmaster seven, go ahead.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Roger. We have a black SUV—or Bongo truck picking up the bodies. Request permission to engage.

U.S. SOLDIER 7: Bushmaster seven, roger. This is Bushmaster seven, roger. Engage.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: One-eight, engage. Clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: Come on!

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Clear. Clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: We're engaging.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Coming around. Clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: Roger. Trying to—

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: I hear 'em—I lost 'em in the dust.

U.S. SOLDIER 6: I got 'em.

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Should have a van in the middle of the road with about 12 to 15 bodies.

U.S. SOLDIER 3: Oh, yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!

AMY GOODMAN: As you can see, this is an absolutely horrifying video. The numbers vary of the number of people killed, from 12 to perhaps 18 or beyond. Two of them worked for Reuters news agency, which had tried for several years to get any evidence of what had happened to their staff, and they weren't able to, until this video was released. Again, the video taken from the Army helicopter. We're speaking with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dan Ellsberg and Jeremy Scahill. You see the men gunned down from the helicopter. I mean, this is much longer, this video. You hear the soldiers laughing and cursing. They are not rogue. They call back to base to request permission to shoot and to open fire. Namir Noor-Eldeen is killed with the other men, but Chmagh is crawling away. And in the second attack on the people below, including the dad with his two children in the van, the children grievously injured, Chmagh, who's crawling away wounded, is blown up, as well. Jeremy?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, this is very similar to when the CIAdoes these double-tap strikes, where they'll kill a group of people, and then they come back around and they kill the first responders. That appears to be what we witness in this video, that they're attacking unarmed individuals, including members of the news media.

And, of course, we also have to remember that the Bush administration set the tone for the killing of journalists very early on, when the Pentagon spokesperson, Victoria Clarke, basically said, "We can't guarantee the safety of any journalists who are not with our forces." And they—

AMY GOODMAN: Who are not embedded.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Who are not—right, who are not embedded. And, of course, they killed Tareq Ayyoub in a direct strike, the Al Jazeera correspondent, reporting from the center of Baghdad during the initial stages of the occupation. They shelled the Palestine Hotel, killing José Couso, the Spanish cameraman, and then yet another Reuters employee, a Ukrainian cameraman.

So, the public service of leaking this video was to try to show the American public documented evidence of war crimes being committed in their names, with their tax dollars. It clearly was leaked by someone within the system who was horrified at what they witnessed. And we now know that was Chelsea Manning.

But let's talk about other documents, too. It's not just the, you know, hundreds of thousands of State Department cables. Those are very significant also, because they showed the way that the United States uses bribery, blackmail, threats, cajoling, to get pliant governments or hostile governments to do the bidding of the United States. But then, also—and I think this is the strongest parallel to Dan Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers—is the Iraq and Afghan war logs, that were released by WikiLeaks, gave us raw historical material that painted a picture of the mass killing operations in Iraq that the United States was running; operations by its secretive kill-capture task forces; the torture of prisoners; the way that the United States set up death squads in Iraq as part of the so-called Salvador option—the idea that you were going to "Iraqicize" the U.S. occupation by training Iraqi forces to do your bidding; how the United States fanned the flames of sectarian warfare in Iraq, which is a very diverse country, split among Shia, Sunnis and Kurds. I mean, this was—if you look at the totality of what WikiLeaks and Julian Assange published on this utterly criminal war based on lies, this was an incredible public service.

And if you look at Section 36 of the indictment against Julian Assange, of these new indictments, there's this allegation that Assange and Manning, by publishing these documents, put U.S. personnel in harm. The U.S. government has not been able to come up with a single person who was killed as a result of the WikiLeaks disclosures. And, in fact, one of the interesting revelations in this indictment is that the United States has this network of informants, that include journalists and NGOs and others. That practice by the United States of using people who have legitimate reason to be in crisis zones, as aid workers or journalists or clergy or others, that they're using them as informants, is, in and of itself, a morally reprehensible practice, because it endangers the real aid workers or the real journalists who are there. It's akin to what the United States did in Pakistan with its fake polio vaccine program that they were running in an effort to confirm that Osama bin Laden was in the compound in Abbottabad. Rates plummeted of polio vaccinations in Pakistan as a result of the United States weaponizing something that is supposed to be in the public good.

And I think it's also important that we juxtapose what the Trump administration is doing, going after Daniel Hale, threatening him with 50 years in prison for allegedly blowing the whistle on the bipartisan extrajudicial killing program that was escalated—started under Bush, escalated under Obama, continued under Trump—that you juxtapose the prosecution of Daniel Hale, these 17 new espionage charges against Julian Assange, the continued imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, the locking up of Terry Albury, the five-year prison sentence handed down to Reality Winner—juxtapose that with the Trump administration's positions on actual war crimes. And Trump is trying to pardon Navy SEALs, Blackwater operatives and others who have been responsible for massacring civilians. And in the case of Nicholas Slatten, the Blackwater operative, he was one of the lead gunners in the Nisoor Square massacre on September 16, 2007, in Baghdad. And this was a guy who had made racist, derogatory comments about Iraqis and the lack of value for their humanity, and just cold-blooded gunned down people, including an infant, a 9-year-old boy named Ali Kinani. More than a dozen women and children were massacred. And these are the people that Trump is now saying that he wants to pardon.

I don't think Trump cooked any of this stuff stuff up in his "very big brain," as he talks about it. Trump is the Trojan horse for the agenda of, on the one hand, the radical, extreme, Christian supremacist right, helmed by Mike Pence at this point, but also the John Bolton-Dick Cheney-Mike Pompeo view of executive power, the idea that Oliver North and Iran-Contra was not a crime, but a model for how the United States should conduct itself. That these are the people, these are the ideas that we see being implemented, using Trump as a vehicle, as a Trojan horse, to exonerate the real criminals and indict those who blew the whistle or published information showing the war crimes, that's the society we're living in right now.

You know, I think the Obama administration wanted to hit Julian Assange with these charges, but, ultimately, at the end—

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, there was a sealed indictment.

JEREMY SCAHILL: There was a sealed indictment. But if you look at some of the recent comments from senior Justice Department officials who were in the Obama administration at the time, what they've been saying is that the Obama administration didn't just view it as a legal issue, they viewed it as a policy issue. And it's a great lesson, Amy, in the power of ordinary people and of news organizations speaking out. Part of the reason that former Obama people are citing for not doing this is—for not doing what Trump is now doing with Assange, is the idea that the public, the American public, would perceive this as an attack on press freedom. That wasn't because Obama had some conscience about this. It's because people were raising a ruckus.

And this is why, you know, in the earlier segment that we did today, I was arguing that the failure of major news organizations to recognize this threat in 2010, 2011, 2012, when it was clear that they were coming for WikiLeaks, is part of how we ended up here, that if bigger, more powerful news organizations had spoken up earlier about this or had, say, covered Chelsea Manning's trial in a drumbeat way, then maybe we wouldn't be in this position with Donald Trump. But Obama bears responsibility for this, as well, as do powerful news organizations, particularly those who published WikiLeaks material, that refused to make this a central campaign for press freedom.

AMY GOODMAN: You're talking about New York Times.

JEREMY SCAHILL: I'm talking about, well, The New York Times, but also, you know, international news organizations. The Guardian has been pretty relentless in its attacks on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange in some of its reporting. At the same—you know, there's other people; I don't mean to paint The Guardian as a monolith. There are other people at The Guardian who have been very fierce in their defense of WikiLeaks. But, in general, these news organizations, that benefited from the bravery of Chelsea Manning and the audacious bravery of Julian Assange in being willing to take on the most powerful empire in the world, it's pathetic that they did not just ring the bells from the top of the hill saying, "All of us should care about this." You know, it's fine to do an unsigned editorial the day after an indictment. Where were you when the fight was on to try to prevent this from happening?

And that's why, I was just saying yesterday to a friend, I deeply miss Michael Ratner. You know, at a moment like this, this—Michael Ratner spent the better part of the last period of his life—

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Ratner, the former chair of the board of Center for Constitutional Rights, one of Julian Assange's lawyers.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yes, and also a lawyer who, when you and I were under attack on issues of press freedom—very early on in my time at Democracy Now!, we were arrested reporting on a protest at Andrews Air Force Base, an anti-nuclear protest. And we were basically assaulted by military police, arrested, held without being able to talk to our lawyers, our tapes taken away. You know, Michael Ratner intervened in that case and got the military to return our stuff and to rescind a ban. They had banned you and I from ever entering military property.

I bring this up because we need more Michael Ratners. We needed Michael Ratner to be alive these past few years, and he hasn't been. And I think, you know, Michael would have been fighting this tooth and nail. He would have been on the front lines of it. And and it shows—prophets are not people who see the future. They're people that understand the present. And Michael Ratner was a great American prophet. He knew what the threat was, and he tried to warn us about it.

AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Dan Ellsberg, you are the legendary whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers, the history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. You faced, yourself, over a hundred years in prison. The trial started in 1973, the actual trial. Explain what happened, why ultimately you went free. But also, we are here on this day where two things have taken place. You've got the espionage charges that have been leveled against Julian Assange, who's currently in a British prison, and you have this escalating tension that the U.S. is creating with Iran, another issue that you have so deeply cared about over the years, begging for whistleblowers inside the Pentagon or other places to release information about the United States' relationship with Iran. But your final thoughts?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Amy, I'm at a rare moment for me, that I see a hopeful thing in this very ominous—very ominous moment. And I agree with everything Jeremy Scahill said during the main program and just now, absolutely. But I see an explanation that may suggest that we're at a turning point. He's asked over and again, very rightly: Where were the press, and where were lawyers and others defending the press, over these last 40 years, 10 years, 12 years? They really haven't been there. There's no question about that. The New York Times was not there for me, let me tell you—that's a longer story—in 1971. I was a source, and they felt no real commitment to share briefs from the Supreme Court with my defense people, to help our funding effort in any way, even by admitting the fact that we had a defense funding effort. And that was what I warned Julian about and others: Don't expect help from the press.

Why not? Well, the famous Pastor Niemöller, the Lutheran pastor of Berlin who spent the war in Dachau, famous, was, afterwards for explaining the attitudes of the Germans, to some degree including himself, at the beginning, in the late '30s. And he said—in Germany of the '30s, under Hitler. And he said, "First they came for the socialists, and I said nothing, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the communists, etc. I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews. I was not a Jew. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak."

Well, the analogy here would be: When they came, 48 years ago, for Daniel Ellsberg, he was a former official. He had raised his hand, or he promised to keep secrets. He asked for what he's getting, and so forth. Thirty-nine years go before somebody else releases as much. It's Chelsea Manning, a young person. What did she have to do as a writer—another source, by the way, not a journalist. She's transgender. We can't identify with her. Let's pass by. Edward Snowden, he seeks—he seeks refuge in Russia. We can't sympathize with him. What's happened to—and Julian Assange, he was like Fox News in 2016. Write him off. I myself think seven years in one room in the Ecuadorean Embassy was not good for his judgment. I don't think it would be good for mine. So I write him a lot of slack when I disagree with him in recent years, as I do with his politics, having visited him there, later. But right now this one finally puts the crosshairs on us, on Niemöller when they came for him. The journalists can't miss the point, with this latest indictment, that this could apply to any one of them.

So there is reason to hope that for the first time they will rise up and see several very specific things about it, by the way. For one thing, they're now subject to the Espionage Act. That's new as of yesterday. They should recognize then that the Espionage Act was meant for spies, and it does not apply either to whistleblowers or journalists, fairly, under the First Amendment. You can't get a fair trial. Neither a journalist nor a whistleblower can argue their motive, so the role they play in society. They can't answer the question: Why did you do what you did? I was not able to answer that question in my trial, facing 115 years in prison. "Objection, irrelevant." And that's been true with all the later whistleblowers, meaning they had nothing like a fair trial. As I've said, I've met nearly all of them, except the most recent ones, whom I hope to meet. But that's true for the journalists, as well.

Several editorials I was very happy to see last night, with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for example, drawing the lesson, even before yesterday, on the basis of Chelsea Manning's new imprisonment and on the basis of Reality Winner, who's been mentioned, and Daniel Hale and others: There must be an alternative to the Espionage Act. It should be rescinded for use against anybody but spies, who don't have a good reason for saying why they did what they did, who can't explain what it was meant to do for the public. There should be a public interest defense, the ability to explain what the impact was, why it was intended, what the damage was, if any, and what was hoped for from this. Can't be done under the Espionage Act now. That's very important.

And the press, as a whole, should take this attack on the new press as an attack on the freedom of press, in general. And I have to say, humanly, it's kind of understanding why they laid back on that one, as long as it wasn't about them personally. It was about their sources. Well, when I urged the point, you've got to recognize that this law is subject to abuse—let me tell you one little thing. Read the law, 18 U.S.C. 793, paragraphs D and E, especially E, and you'll see something that almost nobody mentions. The words not only apply to journalists, not just to officials; they apply to readers, who are not authorized to read this stuff. Anyone who's not authorized to have it, obtain it or pass it on to their spouse is a reader of The New York Times. Now, as long as that wasn't being applied to journalists, or journalists, their attitude, and the lawyers', was "Let sleeping dogs lie. Don't raise the issue. We may get an unfavorable ruling." Well, that time is past. The sleeping dog, which is the antagonist to a free press, is not sleeping anymore. It's throwing itself at their throats.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to end by asking Jeremy Scahill about how the Democratic presidential candidates have addressed the growing war on press freedom. In 2010, Joe Biden called Assange a "high-tech terrorist." Earlier this year, the mayor, Pete Buttigieg, told CBShe was "troubled" by clemency for Chelsea Manning. Meanwhile, Hawaii Congressmember Tulsi Gabbard has called for criminal charges to be dropped against Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Jeremy, as we wrap up, looking forward.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, and I'd be very curious to hear Elizabeth Warren's thoughts on this, as well as Bernie Sanders'. I mean, one of the points that Dan Ellsberg has made throughout his career, and that I've been making more recently about this, is that it's not just the sins of commission, where you're saying, "Oh, Julian Assange should rot in prison," or "I don't like Julian Assange because of 2016, so I don't care what happens to him."

AMY GOODMAN: And just, again, clarify 2016.

JEREMY SCAHILL: So, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks published all of these emails, from John Podesta, from the DNC, that Hillary Clinton and her supporters and some intelligence entities within the U.S. government have alleged were obtained by Russia originally through hacking. You know, that has not been definitively proven. That may or may not be who originally got the documents. The question then is: Was Assange in on it? Did he know? I mean, I did an interview with Assange where I tried to ask him some of these questions, you know, and he's a bit circumspect about it. But there's a lot of allegations about Russia working with WikiLeaks, and there's pretty thin or, at best, circumstantial evidence that we have about this—you know, the tweets with Roger Stone and the Don Jr. direct messages—but, you know, those aren't proof that Russia gave these to Julian Assange. It may well be the case.

But the point I'm making is that it's not just the people that are saying, "I don't care about Chelsea Manning," or "I question her clemency," or "I don't care what happens to Julian Assange." Silence is complicity—the sins of omission, not saying anything. And I think that's what we—the lesson that should be learned here is that when you don't speak up, then it gets to this extreme point, when people don't stand together, even when people they don't like are being attacked. You know, I always say that your real conscience is tested when someone that you voted for or liked is in power. You know, it's easy to be against Donald Trump doing this right now. Where were these voices when Mr. Nobel Peace Prize Winner Constitutional Law Scholar was gutting press freedoms and attacking journalistic sources by using an act intended to catch spies? Where was the outcry at the time that this was happening? Because it laid the groundwork. It normalized this so that Trump can say, "Huh, you know, Obama, he did it more than any—all presidents in U.S. history combined."

And don't think for one second that Trump cares anything about the actual content of this stuff. This is all about threatening people who even think of leaking about him. That's what—that's how I think that they sold him on it. They drew some cartoons for Donald, you know, with bullet points mentioning his name, to make sure that he said, "Yeah, let's do it." I mean, the guy said, "I love WikiLeaks," constantly talking about how he loves WikiLeaks. He's a pathological liar. I really think they sold him on the idea: This is the way to prevent leaks, is throw the book at everyone.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, I want to thank you for being with us, investigative journalist, co-founder of The Intercept, and legendary Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

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