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I got our old friend Trevor Tim on the line.
He is the co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation at freedom.press.
What a great URL you got there, Trevor.
Freedom.press.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you?
Great.
Thanks for having me back.
Good to talk to you again, man.
And sound URL game here.
Freedom.press.
All right.
And, of course, Trevor is a lawyer, and he used to be with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He's written for a lot of important papers, et cetera.
He has a regular column at The Guardian, at theguardian.com.
All right.
So here's what's really important, man.
The First Amendment, well, it protects us from some things, presumably, and put some limitations on government power.
And then also there's this thing called WikiLeaks, and they keep publishing stuff.
And there's conflict.
And I think I'm paraphrasing him right, Trevor.
You correct me when I go off the story here, but I think this is right.
That the head of the CIA said, well, you know, WikiLeaks is an independent intelligence agency, which was a way of saying that it doesn't matter that there's not a state that I can say that this is the intelligence agency of a state.
I'll just characterize it like that.
And then that means it's not a online newspaper, like, say, The Drudge Report or The Washington Post, which are protected by the First Amendment, protected from American federal government prosecution.
And so I bet you think some things about all of that.
First of all, set me straight on my facts if I misparaphrased anything there.
No, absolutely.
I mean, the CIA director came out three or four weeks ago and essentially decided to redefine what WikiLeaks does out of the journalism realm.
And I have no idea why anybody on earth would listen to the CIA director of all people to get their definition of who is and who isn't a journalist.
But, you know, he said essentially that WikiLeaks does not have First Amendment rights and that they are going to do everything they do they can do to come after him.
And shortly after that, the Justice Department and Attorney General Jeff Sessions came out and said that they were seeking to bring charges against WikiLeaks for essentially publishing classified information, either through what they did in 2010 with Chelsea Manning or in their most recent CIA Vault 7 leaks, where they published some information on how the CIA hacks people around the world.
And this is a incredible threat to press freedom in the First Amendment and to all journalists.
You know, there's a lot of, you know, there's certainly, WikiLeaks is not the most popular kid in the room these days, you could say.
There's a lot of people that don't like them.
But what we have to understand is that what they are doing, while they may do it in bigger volume, they are doing essentially what other newspapers do all the time, which is publish classified information in the public interest.
And by going after WikiLeaks, this is a very easy way for the Justice Department to eventually prosecute any journalist in the U.S., whether it's from The New York Times, The Washington Post or any independent media.
And so I think it's important, incredibly important, for anybody to loudly denounce this attack on the First Amendment, whether you like WikiLeaks or not.
Yeah.
Well now, but what if it's not a matter of liking them?
What about the fact that this guy's an Australian and he's hiding out in England in the embassy of Ecuador?
And what's that got to do with the First Amendment?
Can't the U.S. government do anything they want to somebody like that?
Well, they can't prosecute him on U.S. soil.
You know, it's a big misconception that only, you know, U.S. citizens have First Amendment rights.
First Amendment rights are universal.
And, you know, once they bring...
Meaning, meaning, wait, wait, wait, let me make sure I understand what you're saying when you say that.
It's not that the rights are First Amendment rights.
It's that the restriction against the government prosecuting someone for publishing something is universal.
Right.
Exactly.
So if there was a case in the United States, anybody who was charged would have the exact same rights as anybody who lives here.
So, you know, they may try to extradite him to the United States, but as soon as, you know, he sets foot on U.S. soil and for all the things that he's charged with, he has the exact same rights as anybody else.
I see.
And, you know, they are trying to essentially narrow not just the definition of who's a journalist or a publisher, but really cut the First Amendment rights out for, you know, hundreds of millions or billions of people that potentially could have them.
And you know, that's almost just as worrying as their attempt to prosecute Assange.
Mm hmm.
OK, but now.
So Woodrow Wilson, though, the ruiner of all things good, Woodrow Wilson, he signed this espionage act and it says in there in language broad enough to include you, my friend, that disclosing classified information is against the law, is a felony.
And I my understanding is that the tradition has been that once the secret is leaked to the paper, then it's fair game and they can't stop the paper from publishing.
That was the tradition.
And then I guess the Supreme Court ruled during the Pentagon papers that there can be no prior restraint on publication.
But I guess I don't know all the ins and outs of those kinds of rulings and and what all that's supposed to mean.
But it sounds like it's like maybe the door is open for them, you know, legally speaking, to prosecute Assange or to prosecute Greenwald or to prosecute James Risen of The New York Times for publishing classified information if they want to.
There's no controlling precedent stopping them from doing that under the law at this point.
Am I wrong?
Tell me I'm wrong.
I would rather be wrong.
No, I wish you were wrong.
But that's essentially the situation we find ourselves in.
You know, if you just go by the letter of the law, the way the Espionage Act is written, you know, not only are The New York Times, The Washington Post and everybody else violating it almost daily by publishing classified information, but you and me and everybody else who's listening to this radio show just by reading those papers are potentially violating the act.
And the reason that there is this, you know, so-called tradition or norm of the Justice Department not going after publishers under the Espionage Act is partly due to the fact that if they were to bring a prosecution like this, it would likely be unconstitutional.
You know, there's broad feeling among First Amendment lawyers that this act is totally unconstitutional and the reason that they don't is because they know it'll get struck down.
However, you know, that's not a guarantee.
And certainly if you're talking about a radical and extreme attorney general like Jeff Sessions, he might roll the dice and decide, yeah, actually, I'm going to try to prosecute someone under the Espionage Act and see if we can get a favorable ruling.
And just by going through those motions, it could chill a lot of journalism that's incredibly important.
And so, you know, despite the fact that so many people think that it's unconstitutional on its face, it is a huge worry because, you know, ultimately we don't want to take that chance.
All right.
Now, this is something that we've seen for years and years now, where New York Times reporters and Washington Post reporters and NBC, et cetera, types, I don't want to name, you know, name specifically because I don't know off the top of my head right now.
But overall, these legacy journalistic institutions in America have been perfectly happy to throw Julian Assange under the bus and say, yeah, no, the government is right.
What he is doing, it does amount to having blood on his hands, that publishing all these documents all at once like this, why that's a horrible sort of document dump that we would never do.
And that is not journalism.
And then so.
But your headline here says, oh, yeah, you better look out because the future of what you guys are doing would be put in jeopardy if you climb on this bandwagon and allow Assange to be sacrificed.
You know, first they come for the WikiLeaks and then I guess then Scott Horton dot org and only then the Washington Post, you know.
Yeah, I mean, that's why this is so incredibly short sighted by a lot of journalists.
Certainly Assange has pissed off a lot of people over the years and people just don't like him personally.
But people are letting those feelings cloud their judgment about what a precedent that this could set would do to all journalists.
And that's why it's important for so many people to set aside their feelings about Julian Assange personally or even, you know, how WikiLeaks conducts themselves as an organization and condemn this in the loudest terms, because it really is going to be everyone else next on the chopping block.
And it's really disconcerting that that not a lot of people are seeing that clearly.
Yeah, you know, I mean, this should not be an ideological position.
This is just kindergarten Americanism 101.
If they can do it to them, they can do it to you.
And that's why we are all jealous of each other's liberties, too.
We want to all I mean that in the in the right way.
I get upset if somebody violates your rights because, hey, that's my rights, too.
If they can do it to you, they can do it to me.
We ought to all understand that.
Why does anybody have to be taught that and especially journalists, for Christ's sake?
And just because what he's got white hair and, you know, he's he's arrogant in the way he talks and whatever.
How does how is he any more of a villain than the average reporter for The Washington Post?
Tell me that, you know, on the face of it, he seems heroic compared to them.
Most of the time when they're they're toe in the government line rather than exposing what they're up to and contradicting their storyline the way WikiLeaks does, which I guess sort of brings us to our next topic, which is the heroic Chelsea Manning.
And you know, the sexuality thing, I guess, is important to people who are really interested in in those issues.
But to me, it seems like it sadly overshadows the importance of the actual leak and the great motives, the very obviously public spirited Jeffersonian even motives behind the leak that Manning had in the first place.
But I think people forget.
Now, it just goes out saying you read articles all the time, Trevor, that say, according to WikiLeaks, back in 2006, blah, blah, blah.
Well, how do we know all this stuff?
There must be 10,000 articles that say that.
And it's because and not necessarily exclusives that were based just on those things.
But we're one important paragraph reference, some old State Department documents.
I mean, there must be thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of important stories have been published all around the world based on those State Department cables and the Iraq and Afghan war logs.
And that stuff is just absolutely huge.
And this is where Julian Assange got his horrible reputation, I guess, besides the the sex charges in Sweden.
We can talk about that if you want.
But this is where he really got his bad reputation that him and Manning, they're traitors.
They have blood on their hands, blood on their hands.
They cried.
This is the worst attack against America since 9-11, when in fact, it was absolutely heroic level leaking.
And who knows, I don't know how many prizes have been won by journalists writing based on those documents.
And this is something that our entire understanding, the Iraq war and the Afghan war, and a lot of the Bush and Obama eras of State Department, early Obama years anyway, of State Department business have been shown and just seems like that's kind of the basis of his villainy was this heroic thing where this hero Manning leaked this stuff.
And then this hero Assange posted online where we could all see it.
And it was the greatest thing that happened in the year 2010.
And it's the thing that everybody hates him the most for, I guess, or at least it's what got the ball rolling on that, you know, on the demonization that this is some enemy of America trying to destroy our country or something.
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, so much has happened since 2010.
We forget just how incredible the information that Chelsea gave the world really is.
I mean, as you said, there are thousands and thousands of articles that have cited the cables that she leaked that has given journalists and historians and activists and just the American public just an incredible view in how our government and governments around the world operate.
And it was an incredible gift for the public and has really taught us so much about how government works.
And, you know, she is really the whistleblower in the classical sense.
And you know, what the U.S. government essentially tried to do was totally discredit her and WikiLeaks at the time and the information that she released by, you know, as you said, saying that they would have blood on their hands, that people were at risk.
But it turns out that even in Chelsea Manning's trial, the U.S. government was forced to admit that nobody was was killed or harmed because of the information that she leaked.
And this is what happens over and over again when leaks come out in the media is that the U.S. government tries to claim that the sky is falling, that this is going to be a disaster for national security.
And what ends up happening over and over again is we find out that their predictions are overwrought or that they're exaggerating on purpose or that they're outright lying.
And, you know, Chelsea Manning is case number one and her example number one in that regard.
Yeah, absolutely.
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You know that the whole thing in court, I remember learning as a little kid on, you know, watching Matlock or Perry Mason or whichever about you swear to tell the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth when you're sworn in to testify because a partial truth can be really deceptive.
And yet think about the lie by omission.
When TV never told the American people that Manning ever told Lambo the rat in the chats, the guy that turned him into the FBI, turned her into the FBI, that Manning had written that, oh, no, there's terrible things are going on.
Laws are being broken.
The people need to know.
And so that there can be reforms and all these things like he's talking.
This is straight out of your most idealistic government teacher from high school or something.
Right.
About how things are supposed to work, that we have this free market of information and ideas so that the grown rational adults of our free society can decide what best to do through our democracy and all this kind of stuff.
It's just absolutely straight out of the textbook.
I want to help the American people know the truth better so that they can do the right thing and stop things that are wrong.
And this is from someone who had been made to participate in the booking, basically, in the arrest of, I guess, quite a few innocent people, but including one that Manning talked about in the chat logs, who was being arrested and presumably taken off to be tortured for the crime of writing an article critical of Nouri al-Maliki, America and Iran's sock puppet dictator of Iraq at the time.
Yeah, I mean, you know, people, you know, often talk about checks and balances, you know, in the U.S. government that the Congress and the courts are supposed to keep an eye on the executive and vice versa.
But, you know, as we've seen, at least over the past 15 years, those checks and balances often break down, if not partially, totally, completely.
And, you know, a perfect example of that is right now what's going on with the Trump administration.
The fact that the Republicans control both houses of Congress don't seem or are dragging their feet into any sort of investigation into any wrongdoing that the Trump administration had and that the courts can potentially protect Trump even over the long, at least over the long term, when he gets to nominate so many different judges to so many different benches.
And really, the ultimate check and balance is the First Amendment.
That is the safety valve of our democracy.
The fact that when these checks and balances that are delineated in the Constitution break down, it is the journalists and the whistleblowers who can come forward and really tell the public what is going on.
And, you know, Chelsea Manning and what she released is a classic example of that.
And, you know, it's important that we sustain and defend and support that right and make it stronger and not weaker.
And what the Trump administration is trying to do right now is essentially destroy that that safety valve in democracy.
Well, and on the level of this particular story, they try to blank that part out of Manning's motive and say, well, here's a person who had these identity issues and was in the middle of some kind of nervous breakdown and so did this horrible thing, which completely takes the, you know, just, you know, again, it's a lie by omission and outright ignores the fact that Manning was being made to participate in things that were wrong.
And, you know, there's an article by Peter Van Buren that's republished at Antiwar.com and The Nation and a couple other places today that ask the question of how much moral injury has to do with Manning's leak in the first place, feelings of guilt about being made to participate in doing the wrong thing and processing these arrested Iraqis for free speech crimes that they had committed there in their own country.
And how much of this leak was an attempt to try to make up for that, to try to hail Mary or something?
How do I help me out here?
Trevor, the words are failing me, but you know what I mean?
Well, to try to compensate for for being for going along with being made to do the wrong thing.
Yeah, I mean, with with Manning, they use their classic playbook of trying to attack the messenger rather than confronting what she actually released and revealed.
And this is what they do over and over again, what they did with Daniel Ellsberg.
They tried to attack his character.
They tried to say he's unstable with Manning.
They were talking about her emotional problems and her identity issues and tried their absolute hardest to make it so that nobody would pay attention to what she leaked and instead pay attention to her.
And, you know, similar to what they did with Snowden, and I'm sure they'll do it with all future whistleblowers, is try to hide the ball.
And, you know, for at least a little while, it seemed to have worked with Chelsea Manning because they also held her incommunicado so we couldn't hear her voice and hear her true motivation.
But, you know, as we've seen, you know, especially over the past few years, there is a lot of love for Chelsea Manning in the world.
And she is, you know, leaving prison this week as a hero to many people.
And so, you know, as much as as much pain as she endured in prison when she was literally tortured and the mental anguish, you know, I hope that she realizes all the good that she did in the world and that hopefully she'll be able to feel that love as she comes out over the next coming weeks and months.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, no doubt about that.
And I think that just from all the letters and all the everything, all detractors notwithstanding, I think Manning must know all the support out there she has, all the people out there who appreciate the sacrifice.
Not that she signed up to be tortured or anything, but just, you know, she did sign up to go to prison, you know, basically for doing what she did.
And the fact that they took that far beyond what was reasonable as a separate issue.
But as far as as the sacrifice, you know, this is something that I talked about with Daniel Ellsberg on the show for many years was when it come and this was actually at the time we were quite a few whistleblowers short.
We've had quite a few heroes come out since then.
But, you know, it always seemed like a pretty stark comparison when you look at privates and specialists and sergeants over there getting their legs blown off, getting their heads blown off, getting killed, killing people, make it losing their very best friends in the world, making the ultimate sacrifices.
And at least, you know, in context, displays of courage.
And yet all these officers with all this access to all this truth about what is being done, that's wrong.
Again, not not spilling secrets to try to benefit our enemies or anything to try to help the American people do the right thing as far as reigning in our government, making it obey the law and the Constitution.
Where's their courage?
Where's their willingness?
This guy's willing to get his legs blown off.
Where's your willingness to go sit in prison for a couple of years to bring the truth to the American people?
And I think, you know, there are more and more people who really are proven that they do have that courage.
People like Snowden and Drake and others.
Yeah, the call is still going out because there's there's still a lot going on that whistles need to be blown about, of course.
Yeah, I mean, I think that certainly it's still rare, but we've seen more and more over the past few years.
And I hope that part of that reason is that people were inspired by Chelsea Manning and now can be inspired by Edward Snowden, especially Edward Snowden, given that he has kind of been able to, you know, since he he conducted his leak, he's been able to participate in the conversation and get his voice out there and explain exactly what he's been able to do.
And, you know, I think that a lot of the millions and millions of people within the government need these inspirations because there is so much pressure on them to not do this.
You know, you know, Daniel Ellsberg has talked about this a lot.
The fact that people's entire careers and livelihoods are are tied up in having a security clearance and the fact that that the social pressure on them, that they could lose all of their friends, they can lose their job, that their family can be destroyed and they could go bankrupt, you know, putting aside even the long prison terms they may be able to that the government may be able to get against them.
This is this prevents many people who should be coming forward from coming forward.
And, you know, it's really up to us to make it make it known that there is a better way and that people will be supported if they do so.
And, you know, I think we're seeing that with Chelsea right now.
Mm hmm.
Well, yeah, I mean, sorry to scare them all again, but getting back to Assange here, am I right that it's known or it's reported credibly that there is a federal grand jury and they do want to prosecute this guy for espionage?
Oh, I mean, you know, the Justice Department came out a couple of weeks ago and openly admitted it, that they want to seek charges against them.
You know, for a while they want to or that they already do have a grand jury.
Do you know?
Well, you know, they definitely have a grand jury.
But, you know, that they want to actually get the charges, you know, for years and years.
There was a grand jury under the Obama administration, which they kept open and which they they totally should have closed.
But, you know, to their credit, they ultimately admitted to newspapers, at least, you know, through anonymous sourcing, that they knew that they couldn't charge WikiLeaks because they knew that as soon as they did, they would have to prosecute all these other reporters and journalists as well.
But, you know, the Trump administration is in power now and so all bets are off.
And it seems like, you know, they really want an avenue to charge other journalists.
And so this is the perfect way to do it.
You know, go after the person that's not popular.
What a disaster.
All right.
So now Sweden drops Assange's rape allegation, but Britain says WikiLeaks founder still faces arrest.
That's the news today in The Washington Post.
The Swedes have said basically there's nothing more they can do with this case at this point.
I'm not sure why.
If it's a time limit, they ran out of statute of limitations or something like that.
But the Brits are, I guess, I don't know if they're saying that they will arrest him for sure.
Certainly they're refusing to say that there is not an extradition request from the Americans or that they would refuse to honor it.
Is that right?
Do you know?
Right.
We don't know if there's an extradition request or not, but we do know that the UK would probably arrest Assange anyways, not necessarily because of anything that happened in the US, but just because that he, you know, basically escaped bail when he moved to the embassy.
And so the British government thinks that that is a minor, at least a minor crime in their country.
And so that they said that they will still seek his arrest for that if he does get out.
But they have also said that they're going to stop, you know, using, you know, an incredible amount of resources to watch the embassy 24 hours a day and spending millions and millions of dollars watching Julian Assange.
And so, you know, I think that the end game is still very unclear for Assange and how and when he gets out of the embassy.
But, you know, we're going to be able to see exactly what the US is going to try to do now, because I think that they, you know, for the last few years have been relying on Sweden and the unrelated case there to kind of keep Assange at bay.
And so now the question is what the US government will do.
Yeah, man, this is just I mean, what a pretext, you know, we skip bail to go hide out at the embassy.
I mean, come on, this is politics here.
This isn't about bail and somebody can overrule that.
Some magistrate or somebody over there can say, yeah, yeah, yeah, come on and cancel that.
And that's clearly a loophole, right?
An avenue that a way that they're trying to exploit the law in order to persecute this guy.
And it's not even really ironic, but it should be ironic.
Trevor, I insist it should be ironic that we're talking about the governments of Britain and America here, which of all the governments in the world are at least traditionally the most free speechiest ones.
And yet, yeah, it's looking pretty bad.
And I guess, as you're saying, I think I think you must be right that they're kind of lollygagging around a little bit in the Obama years and that the reason Trump is doing this is because he wants that precedent and his Justice Department wants that precedent.
They're willing to gamble and go to the Supreme Court and see just how much of a persecution and a prosecution of a reporter or two they can get away with and see how far they can push that.
And again, it's brilliant to start with Assange, you know, especially when all of Trump's opponents right now are, well, not all of them, but the great bulk of his opponents are the liberals who are all mad at Assange for hurting Hillary last summer.
So he makes a great scapegoat, a great whipping boy for the First Amendment here, doesn't he?
Yeah, of course.
I mean, every time that the government wants to restrict citizens' rights, they go with incredibly unpopular defendants.
It's often, you know, when we're talking about the Fourth Amendment, searches and seizures, often they start with alleged terrorists and then they move to alleged drug dealers.
And then all of a sudden these rules apply to everybody.
And so, you know, with Assange right now, they see him as basically the most unpopular publisher that exists today and that they maybe feel like if they can get away with this, where they couldn't get away with it at first with The New York Times or other papers.
But then once the precedent is set, all they have to do is apply that to everybody else that they want to prosecute.
And, you know, we're in a situation where essentially the First Amendment has been eviscerated.
And so it's an incredible worry.
And like I said before, I really hope that more people start standing up about this because it is incredibly worrying.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
Well, thanks so much for coming back on the show.
It's great to talk to you again.
And thanks for your great work on all these issues, Trevor.
Appreciate it.
Yeah, I love coming on.
I'll talk to you soon.
OK, good deal.
All right, you guys, that is the great Trevor Tim.
He is at Freedom.press.
Freedom.press, that's the website for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
He is the co-founder and the executive director of it.
And you can find all of his great articles also at TheGuardian.com.
And here's to the Trump news you missed.
He asked Comey to jail journalists and a WikiLeaks prosecution would endanger the future of U.S. journalism.
That's Scott Horton Show.
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