What Kamala Harris Really Thinks of WikiLeaks
August 13, 2020
Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris wants a "bright" line
separating WikiLeaks from big media, but there is only a political one, says
Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
During a September 2017 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee debate on an
intelligence bill a line was inserted that said WikiLeaks "resembles a
non-state hostile intelligence service" and that the U.S. "should treat it
as such."
"This language would help investigators secure the authorization needed to
surveil those U.S. citizens thought to be associated with WikiLeaks," a
McClatchy report quoted a government lawyer as saying.
""You need to show that someone is an agent of a foreign power," said the
lawyer, Robert Deitz, who held senior legal positions at the Pentagon, the
CIA and the National Security Agency.
"It's possible that Assange has colleagues in this country that they need to
focus on," McClatchy quoted Deitz as saying, "noting that such action can
only be done under court order."
The non-state hostile agency phrase was directly lifted from a scurrilous
speech by Mike Pompeo in his first address as CIA director.
The language survived the committee and made it into the bill voted on by
the full Senate. But before it did two senators raised objections to it. One
was Ron Wyden of Oregon.
The other was Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the presumptive Democratic
vice presidential candidate in November's election.
According to the McClatchy report,
"Harris declared that she is 'no supporter of WikiLeaks,' which she said had
done 'considerable harm' to the United States. But the clause on the group
is 'dangerous' because it 'fails to draw a bright line between WikiLeaks and
legitimate news organizations that play a vital role in our democracy,'
according to her remarks for the record."
Harris left no doubt that she is an enemy of WikiLeaks, as is her running
mate, Joe Biden, who agreed it was more like a high-tech terrorist
organization that Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers.
Harris made clear she cared only about establishment media (which almost
universally undergirds aggressive U.S. foreign policy) and was worried about
it getting caught up in a WikiLeaks dragnet.
She said she wants a "bright line" between publications such as The New York
Times and WikiLeaks.
Except, there can be no such legal line drawn as both establishment papers,
like the Times, and WikiLeaks have done the exact same thing: possessed and
published classified material.
Because there is no legal distinction, the Obama administration, which
desperately wanted to indict WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, backed away
citing its "New York Times problem." The Trump administration had no such
qualms and had Assange arrested in April 2019 and indicted on conspiracy to
commit computer intrusion and 17 counts of the Espionage Act.
The only bright line that can be drawn is political: a decision by the
Department of Justice to not prosecute big media but to prosecute WikiLeaks
for the same "crime", which conflicts with First Amendment press freedoms.
This is what Harris was calling for: Protect the state-managed corporate
media but go after a serious publication that dares to reveal crimes of the
U.S. government, which Harris wants to protect. In other words, for the
same activity, the Times is afforded First Amendment protections, but
WikiLeaks is not.
In an answer last year to this question from The New York Times about the
Trump administration's prosecution of Assange: "Are these charges
constitutional? Would your administration continue the Espionage Act part of
the case against Assange?" Harris said:
"The Justice Department should make independent decisions about prosecutions
based on facts and the law. I would restore an independent DOJ and would not
dictate or direct prosecutions."
If she stuck to that, it would mean Harris would be in favor of also
prosecuting the "facts and the law" as it applies to the Times for
publishing the Iraq War Diaries, just as WikiLeaks did, and for which its
founder faces 175 years-the rest of his life-in a U.S. super-max prison.
That it was a political decision by the Trump administration, and not a
legal one, to go after Assange but not the Times, further bolsters the
argument of Assange's lawyers that the U.S. extradition request is for a
political offense, and thus forbidden by the U.S.-UK Extradition Treaty of
2006.
Not that his extradition for a political offense would much bother Kamala
Harris, judging from her remarks.