In The New York Times today, Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins expose very
sensitive classified government secrets -- and not just routine secrets, but
high-level, imminent planning for American covert military action in a foreign
country:
Senior American military commanders
in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations
ground raids across the border into Pakistan's tribal areas, a risky
strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan's efforts to root
out militants there.
The proposal, described by
American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military
activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been
largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.
The plan has not yet been approved,
but military and political leaders say a renewed sense of urgency has taken
hold, as the deadline approaches for the Obama administration to begin
withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan.
America's clandestine war in
Pakistan has for the most part been carried out by armed drones operated by
the C.I.A. . . . But interviews in recent weeks revealed that on at least one
occasion, the Afghans went on the offensive and destroyed a militant weapons
cache.
The decision to expand American
military activity in Pakistan, which would almost certainly have to be
approved by President Obama himself, would amount to the opening of a new
front in the nine-year-old war, which has grown increasingly unpopular
among Americans. . . . [O]ne senior American officer said, "We've never been
as close as we are now to getting the go-ahead to go across."
- The officials who described the proposal
and the intelligence operations declined to be identified by name
discussing classified information.
Often in debates over the legitimacy of
publishing classified information, the one example typically cited as the
classic case of where publication of secrets is wrong is "imminent troop
movements." Even many defenders of leaks will concede it is wrong for
newspapers to divulge such information. That "troop-movement" example
serves the same role as the "screaming-fire-in-a-crowded-theater" example does
in free speech debates: it's the example everyone is supposed to concede
illustrates the limits on the liberty in question. While the ground
operations in Pakistan revealed by the NYT today don't quite reach
that level -- since there is not yet final presidential authorization for it --
these revelations by the NYT come quite close to that: "an
expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into
Pakistan's tribal areas."
Indeed, the NYT reporters
several times acknowledge that public awareness of these operations could
trigger serious harm ("inside Pakistan, [] the movement of American forces
has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash").
Note, too, that Mazzetti and Filkins did not acquire these government
secrets by just passively sitting around and having them delivered out of the
blue. To the contrary: they interviewed multiple officials both
in Washington and in Afghanistan, offered several of them anonymity to induce
them to reveal secrets, and even provoked officials to provide detailed accounts
of past secret actions in Pakistan, including CIA-directed attacks by Afghans
inside that country. Indeed, Mazzetti told me this
morning: "We've been working on this for a little while. . . . It's
been slow going. The release of the AfPak review gave a timeliness to the
story, but this has been in the works for several weeks."
In my view, the NYT article
represents exactly the kind of secret information journalists ought to be
revealing; it's a pure expression of why the First Amendment guarantees a
free press. There are few things more damaging to basic democratic values
than having the government conduct or escalate a secret war beyond public debate
or even awareness. By exposing these classified plans, Mazzetti and
Filkins did exactly what good journalists ought to do: inform the public
about important actions taken or being considered by their government which the
government is attempting to conceal.
I think he is a hero in his own
mind, which makes me pretty suspicious. ... We should not have freelancers
from other countries making a decision about what gets declassified by our
government. Our government should be better about it, but I don't want
random Australians deciding for me. [audience laughs and cheers
appreciatively].
On some perverse level, I at least respect
the intellectual consistency of those like Joe Lieberman, Rep. Pete King, and
multiple Bush officials and followers who not only demand that WikiLeaks
and Assange be prosecuted, but also that newspapers who do the same thing also
be similarly punished. That view is odious and dangerous, but it's the
only intellectually coherent position. By contrast, those who are cheering
while the Obama DOJ tries to imprison Assange -- without also demanding
that Mazzetti and Filkins occupy a cell next to him (and that their high-level
sources be found and punished the way Manning is) -- are advocating quite
incoherent and unprincipled positions and should ask themselves why that
is.
* * * * *
Most of the American left has made
a hero of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. For Assange's admirers,
the embarrassment that his publication of stolen government and corporate
documents produces for government policymakers, bankers or corporate
executives whom they dislike more than compensates for the theft of classified
or private information on a grand scale. The idea that the law in its majesty
is supposed to protect the bad as well as the good apparently is rejected by
those who celebrate information vandalism, as long as its victims are the
State Department or big banks.
UPDATE III: A
top aide to German Prime Minister Angela Merkel today
explained that Germany does not view WikiLeaks as
a threat at all. Indeed, the official, Interior Minister Thomas de
Maiziere, said that while WikiLeaks was "irritating and annoying," the true
threat comes from having governments be able to pressure private
corporations (such as MasterCard, Amazon, Paypal) to terminate
relationships with entities the government dislikes ("he said he was opposed to
financial entities cutting off payments to WikiLeaks under pressure from
Washington. 'If this occurs under pressure from the U.S. government, I
don't think it is acceptable'."). The statements from the German
government follow the praise for WikiLeaks and Assange previously voiced by
several world leaders, including
Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
That's how mature, non-hysterical, non-exploitative political leaders
respond to a disclosure group like WikiLeaks.
Published on Monday, December 20,
2010 by
CommonDreams.org
Wikimania and the First Amendment
by Ralph Nader
Thomas Blanton, the esteemed
director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University
described Washington's hyper-reaction to Wikileaks' transmission of information
to some major media in various countries as "Wikimania."
In testimony before the House
Judiciary Committee last Thursday, Blanton urged the Justice Department to cool
it. Wikileaks and newspapers like The New Yorks Times and London's Guardian, he
said, are publishers protected by the First Amendment. The disclosures are the
first small installment of a predicted much larger
forthcoming trove of non-public
information from both governments and global corporations.
The leakers inside these
organizations come under different legal restrictions that those who use their
freedom of speech rights to publish the leaked information.
The mad dog, homicidal demands to
destroy the leaders of Wikileaks by self-styled liberal Democrat and Fox
commentator, Bob Beckel, the radio and cable howlers and some members of
Congress, may be creating an atmosphere of panic at the politically sensitive
Justice Department. Attorney General Eric Holder has made very prejudicial
comments pursuant to his assertion that his lawyers considering how they may
prosecute Julian Assange, the Wikileaks leader.
Mr. Holder declared that both "the
national security of the United States" and "the American people have been put
at risk." This level of alarm was not shared by the public statements of defense
Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of States Hillary Clinton who downplayed
the impact of these disclosures.
The Attorney General, who should be
directing more of his resources to the corporate crime wave in all its
financial, economic and hazardous manifestations, is putting himself in a
bind.
If he goes after Wikileaks too
broadly using the notorious Espionage Act of 1917 and other vague laws, how is
he going to deal with The New York Times and other mass media that reported the
disclosures?
Consider what Harvard Law Professor
Jack Goldsmith, who was head of the Office of Legal Counsel in George W. Bush's
Justice Department just wrote:
"In Obama's Wars, Bob Woodward, with
the obvious assistance of many top Obama administration officials, disclosed
many details about top secret programs, code names, documents, meetings, and the
like. I have a hard time squaring the anger the government is directing towards
Wikileaks with its top officials openly violating classification rules and
opportunistically revealing without authorization top secret
information."
On the other hand, if Mr. Holder
goes the narrow route to obtain an indictment of Mr. Assange, he will risk a
public relations debacle by vindictively displaying prosecutorial abuse
(i.e. fixing the law around the enforcement bias.) Double standards have no
place in the Justice Department.
Wikileaks is also creating anxiety
in the corporate suites. A cover story in the December 20, 2010 issue of Forbes
magazine reports that early next year a large amount of embarrassing material
will be sent to the media by Wikileaks about a major U.S. bank, followed by
masses of exposé material on other global corporations.
Will these releases inform the
people about very bad activities by drug, oil, financial and other companies
along with corruption in various countries? If so, people may find this
information useful. We can only imagine what sleazy or illegal things our
government has been up to that have been covered up. Soon, people may reject the
those who would censor Wikileaks. Many people do want to size up what's going on
inside their government in their name and with their tax
dollars.
Wasn't it Jefferson who said that
"information is the currency of democracy" and that, given a choice between
government and a free press, he'll take the latter? Secrecy-keeping the people
and Congress in the dark-is the cancer eating at the vitals of
democracy.
What is remarkable about all the
official hullabaloo by government officials, who leak plenty themselves, is that
there never is any indictment or prosecution of government big wigs who
continually suppress facts and knowledge in order to carry out very devastating
actions like invading Iraq under false pretenses and covering up corporate
contractors abuses. The morbid and corporate-indentured secrecy of government
over the years has cost many American lives, sent Americans to illegal wars,
bilked consumers of billions of dollars and harmed the safety and economic
well-being of workers.
As Cong. Ron Paul said on the House
floor, why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our
government's failure to protect classified information? He asked his colleagues
which events caused more deaths, "Lying us into war, or the release of the
Wikileaks papers?"
Over-reaction by the Obama
administration could lead to censoring the Internet, undermining Secretary
Clinton's Internet Freedom initiative, which criticized China's controls and
lauded hacktivism in that country, and divert attention from the massive over
classification of documents by the Executive Branch.
A full throttle attack on Wikileaks
is what the government distracters want in order to take away the spotlight of
the disclosures on their misdeeds, their waste and their construction of an
authoritarian corporate state.
Professor and ex-Bushite Jack Goldsmith summed
up his thoughts this way: "The best thing to do....would be to ignore Assange
and fix the secrecy system so this does not happen again."
That presumably is some of what
Peter Zatko and his crew are now trying to do at the Pentagon's famed DARPA
unit. That secret initiative may ironically undermine the First Amendment should
they succeed too much in hamstringing the Internet earlier advanced by that same
Pentagon unit.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author.
His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction
is The Seventeen
Traditions.
Why Shouldn't Freedom of the
Press Apply to WikiLeaks?
You may not like Julian Assange,
but the campaign to silence WikiLeaks should appall you
Dan Kitwood/Getty
By Tim Dickinson
DECEMBER 15, 2010 5:07 PM
EDT
Here's a thought experiment:
Imagine for a moment that the quarter of a million secret government cables from
the State Department had been leaked, not to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, but to
Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York
Times.
First, let's state the obvious: The Timeswould never have
returned the confidential files to the Obama administration. Most likely, the
newspaper would have attempted to engage with State to try to scrub life- and
source- threatening details from the cables - as Assange and his lawyers
did.
And if the administration had refused to
participate in that effort -- as
it did with WikiLeaks?
The Times would have done what any serious news organization
has the imperative to do: It would have published, at a pacing of its own
choosing, any cable it deemed to be in the public interest. In this digital age,
it's likely the Times would have even created a massive
searchable database of the cables.
The optics of the information dump would likely
have been very different -- overlaid with the Times'
newspaper-of-record gravitas. But the effect would have been identical:
Information that the U.S. government finds embarrassing, damning, and even
damaging would have seen the light of day.
Now
let's extend the thought experiment:
How would
you react if top American conservatives were today baying for Bill Keller's blood? If Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had called on Keller to be prosecuted as a
"high-tech terrorist"? If Sarah Palin were demanding that Keller be hunted down
like a member of Al Qaeda? If Newt Gingrich were calling for
the Times editor to be assassinated as an "enemy
combatant."
What if Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security
Committee, had successfully pressured the Times' web hosting company
to boot the newspaper off its servers? What if Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal
suddenly stopped processing subscriptions for the paper?
Imagine that students at Columbia University's graduate school of
international affairs had been warned not to Tweet about the New York
Times if they had any hopes of ever working at the State
Department.
Imagine U.S. soldiers abroad being told that they'd
be breaking
the law if they read even other news
outlets' coverage of the Times' exclusives.
Imagine that the Library of Congress
had simply blocked
all access to the New York
Times site.
You can't imagine this actually happening to the New York
Times. Yet this has been has been exactly the federal and corporate response
to Assange and WikiLeaks.
The behavior is
outrageous on its face and totalitarian in its impulse. Indeed, we should all be
alarmed at the Orwellian coloring of the Obama administration's official
response to the publishing of the cables:
"President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government
at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs
counter to that goal."
Secrecy is openness. What the
fuck?!
Listen: You don't have to approve of
Assange or his political views; you can even believe he's a sex criminal. It
doesn't matter. What's at stake here isn't the right of one flouncy Australian
expat to embarrass a superpower. It's freedom of the press. And it's a dark day
for journalists everywhere when the imperatives of government secrecy begin to
triumph over our First Amendment.