Today on Meet the Press General David Petraeus blasted the release of secret Afghan war documents, calling it “reprehensible.” Two weeks ago Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Wikileaks was at least “morally guilty” for the disclosures. So I thought I would begin this discussion of Julian Assange and his organization by quoting an American public official who had an even higher rank than four-star general or SecDef. For it was President John F. Kennedy himself who said:
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
Of course in the age of terror, Kennedy’s words seem almost quaint. Since 9/11 secrecy has become one of the supreme goals of American military policy – including secret killing of our opponents. Before 9/11 targeted assassination was strictly verboten; afterwards, no one even thought to question it, and our government is currently secretly killing Afghanis who are on the “enemies list.” .
But enemy soldiers and combatants are not the only individuals that our government is secretly killing in Afghanistan. They are also secretly killing Afghani civilians – a shocking number of them, perhaps the most significant revelation in the Wikileaks documents.
Secretary Gates said that Wikileaks “put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences.” This is true in the sense that Julian Assange put the material out without any regard whatsoever for the CONSEQUENCES FOR HIM PERSONALLY. He has taken on the Russian mafia and African kleptocrats. He knows some very serious people want him silenced. But he will not be silent.
But in the larger sense in which Secretary Gates meant his remark, it was utterly false. Assange was in fact very much interested in the consequences of the leaks – but the consequence he was interested in was informing the American people and their allies of the terrible dark side of the war, of the secret killing of innocent civilians, of policies that are going desperately wrong.
Gates of course meant that Assange had no regard for the consequences of his actions for the American war efforts – just as Dr. Daniel Ellsberg showed a similar lack of regard for the consequences for the American war machine of releasing the Pentagon Papers almost four decades ago.
Ellsberg went public shortly after the recent leaks and made a number of comments that put the current revelations in proper context. He said that “it’s the first really big unauthorized disclosure in the last 39 years.”
When asked point blank what he thought of Wikileaks he said:
I'm very impressed by them. They caught my attention with the video of the Apache helicopter assault in Iraq…. I would've thought that the National Security Agency could penetrate them and keep them from giving anonymity to leakers. We pay an awful lot to the NSA to spy on us—since 9/11—and on other people, and I supposed they were up to the task of denying secure communications to Wikileaks…. From what we’ve seen so far, Assange has shown much better judgment with respect to what he has revealed than the people who kept those items secret inside the government.
What makes Assange’s disclosures in some ways even more important than Ellsberg’s is how the media has changed in the interim. Instead of the press penetrating “All the President’s Men” as Woodward and Bernstein did, we now have a press that seldom transcends sycophancy. One recent example: the New York Times had a story on NSA warrantless wiretaps BEFORE the 2004 election. They held onto it for a year.
Without individuals like Julian Assange what hope would there be that truth would penetrate secrecy? How else would we know the extent to which our government is recklessly slaughtering civilians? For me personally, Julian Assange is a true hero, one who puts aside considerations of his personal safety to perform the greatest task in a democracy: giving people the truth about their government. What do you think about Julian Assange?