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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 4/12/19

The Julian Assange Case: Revealing War Crimes Is Not a Crime

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Message Bill Simpich

Scott Galindez and I covered the Manning trial on behalf of Reader Supported News for many days in 2013. It was clear that the prosecution was obsessed with any way they could find an angle to attack Julian Assange for working with Manning.

Army investigator David Shaver testified to the jury that an unknown user unsuccessfully attempted to reverse engineer a password. Mark Johnson, an expert witness, testified that of the purported Manning-Assange conversations he had heard, none of them contained solicitations for files. None of us at the trial thought they had anything substantive on Assange but it certainly wasn't for want of trying.

Private Manning was denied the right to present a whistleblower defense to the jury -- the right to argue that one's actions were justified in order to expose war crimes. The outcome was predictable. Manning was sentenced to 35 years, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. They even demoted Manning from Private First Class to Private.

The next day, Manning publicly announced her intention to be identified as a woman. She launched a path-breaking battle to force the military to honor her rights as a transgender woman while behind bars. She continued to win the respect of people throughout the world.

World opinion makes a difference. Just before he left office in 2017, President Obama commuted her sentence. Manning has continued to inspire people in the years since and especially in the last month, when she returned to prison rather than testify against Julian Assange to a federal grand jury.

Keep in mind that Manning has answered thousands of questions about Assange, every conceivable question has already been asked.

Manning refused to testify to the grand jury precisely because criminal grand juries are tools of repression and are not used by any civilized country other than the United States and Liberia.

In particular, grand juries are routinely used to harass dissidents. The primary approach is to force dissidents to testify against one another and weaken their political movements. No attorney is allowed to stand in the hearing room with the client. The purpose is to sow division and discord.

Chelsea Manning refused to comply for these principled reasons, and she will almost certainly remain in jail until the end of the Assange grand jury's term.

It should be said that a review of the indictment issued in late 2017 as the statute of limitations was running out indicates the possible weakness of the conspiracy case against Assange. The key language cited to support the conspiracy: "Manning told Assange that 'after this upload, that's all I really got left.' To which Assange replied, 'curious eyes never run dry in my experience.'"

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume a robust conspiracy. A situation where Assange actively encouraged Manning to provide additional files. For that matter, let's also assume that Assange assisted Manning to reverse-engineer a password to obtain the material.

Taking measured actions to bring the truth to light is what whistleblowers do. Whether these actions were reasonable is the role of the jury to decide.

The real question is: Will Assange be allowed to use a whistleblower defense to the jury in order to justify his actions? Will Ethan McCord be allowed to testify? Or the child that he helped save?

The real answer is: No. The European Court of Human Rights should step in and halt Assange's extradition. The government doesn't want a fair fight. In a fair fight, the government will lose.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney and an antiwar activist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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