Seventeen short years ago, a 238 page US Army manual began to circulate throughout the public sphere. The document, which outlined the operations of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, included instructions to prevent all prisoner access to the Red Cross, religious officials, and items such as sacred texts and prayer beads. In some instances, prisoners were not allowed any forms of human interaction.
This discovery came to light thanks to WikiLeaks, a website founded by Australian hacker Julian Assange dedicated to exposing unethical and secretive government practices through data leaks. Throughout its existence, the website uncovered many instances of government malpractice, including video evidence of Iraqi journalists and civilians murdered by the United States Army.
Now, after years of evading countless international intelligence agencies, he faces the possibility of extradition to the United States, where he would most likely be sentenced up to 175 years in prison for his actions. This decade-long legal manhunt uncovers a nasty truth that many Americans may not want to admit: the priority has never been the people.
Beginning at the age of 17, Assange found himself under close government surveillance by any means necessary. Wiretapping, home raids, and even CIA assassination plots — Assange found himself victim of it all. Now, in an ironic twist, is it the United States government accusing him of violating the 1917 Espionage Act.
Under this legislation, the guiltiness of Assange is indisputable. He would almost certainly be found guilty on 18 counts of publicizing classified documents. The motivations of this hunt, however, are nearly indefensible.
To begin, the Espionage Act itself is shrouded in muddy history. The order, passed just two months after the United States’ entry into World War I, was intended to prevent enemies such as Germany from accessing sensitive information on the United States.
Its actual use throughout history, however, has strayed far from this original goal. In his address proposing the order, the notoriously bigoted Woodrow Wilson intentionally targeted immigrant populations, stating “There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags…who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life.” Among those also targeted by the act have been political figures such as Eugene Debs, Edward Snowden, and Donald Trump.
Hilariously, the prosecution for the United States has claimed that Assange put “lives at risk” by not censoring the names of officials within documents and videos. Not only is it ingenuous to argue that this was the goal of Assange, but it is completely ignorant to find that the “lives at risk” were not in fact the victims of murder, abuse, and corruption evidenced within WikiLeaks various publications.
It is obvious that the prosecution of Assange is a thinly-veiled attempt at shielding the government from its past — and future — crimes against democracy. Not only has the Espionage Act become far too all-encompassing, it is a moral lie to claim that the practices exposed through WikiLeaks classify as “sensitive information” in the same sense as military strategic documents. They are sensitive not due to their importance to the United States, but because of their rage-inducing content. Exposing these wrongdoings of the government is something inherently American, not treasonous.
Not only is Assange neutral, having released documents belonging to various governments throughout the world, but his conviction would threaten to blur the lines between political journalism and espionage within the United States. This country was founded on the basic principle that the government is granted its power from the people. To the founders, this was not an optimistic hope, not a “maybe one day,” but a reality. It should be clear that, not only has Washington strayed so drastically from this original goal, but by doing so they have made our nation a divided house.
As subordinates of the American government, we owe Assange a thank you.
