- This week, Senators Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein
engaged in acts of serious aggression against their own constituents, and
the American people in general. They both invoked the 1917
Espionage Act and urged its use in going after Julian Assange. For
good measure, Lieberman extended his invocation of the Espionage Act to
include a call to use it to investigate the New York Times, which
published WikiLeaks' diplomatic cables. Reports yesterday suggest that
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder may seek to invoke the Espionage Act
against Assange.
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- These two Senators, and the rest of the Congressional
and White House leadership who are coming forward in support of this appalling
development, are cynically counting on Americans' ignorance of their own
history -- an ignorance that is stoked and manipulated by those who wish
to strip rights and freedoms from the American people. They are manipulatively
counting on Americans to have no knowledge or memory of the dark history
of the Espionage Act -- a history that should alert us all at once to the
fact that this Act has only ever been used -- was designed deliberately
to be used -- specifically and viciously to silence people like you and
me.
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- The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 -- because President
Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment,
wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World
War One, there were many ordinary citizens -- educators, journalists, publishers,
civil rights leaders, union activists -- who were speaking out against
US involvement in the war.
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- The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens
by the thousands for the newly minted 'crime' of their exercising their
First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in
a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in
World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and
the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in
a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the 'crime' of saying
that he did not hate Germans.
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- Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of
the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition
of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions
without due process; some, in Connecticut -- Lieberman's home state --
were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings
were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who
would otherwise speak out.
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- Presidential candidate Eugene Debs received a ten-year
prison sentence in 1918 under the Espionage Act for daring to read the
First Amendment in public. The roundup of ordinary citizens -- charged
with the Espionage Act -- who were jailed for daring to criticize the government
was so effective in deterring others from speaking up that the Act silenced
dissent in this country for a decade. In the wake of this traumatic history,
it was left untouched -- until those who wish the same outcome began to
try to reanimate it again starting five years ago, and once again, now.
Seeing the Espionage Act rise up again is, for anyone who knows a thing
about it, like seeing the end of a horror movie in which the zombie that
has enslaved the village just won't die.
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- I predicted in 2006 that the forces that wish to strip
American citizens of their freedoms, so as to benefit from a profitable
and endless state of war -- forces that are still powerful in the Obama
years, and even more powerful now that the Supreme Court decision striking
down limits on corporate contributions to our leaders has taken effect
-- would pressure Congress and the White House to try to breathe new life
yet again into the terrifying Espionage Act in order to silence dissent.
In 2005, Bush tried this when the New York Times ran its exposé
of Bush's illegal surveillance of banking records -- the SWIFT program.
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- This report was based, as is the WikiLeaks publication,
on classified information. Then, as now, White House officials tried to
invoke the Espionage Act against the New York Times. Talking heads
on the right used language such as 'espioinage' and 'treason' to describe
the Times' release of the story, and urged that Bill Keller be
tried for treason and, if found guilty, executed. It didn't stick the first
time; but, as I warned, since this tactic is such a standard part of the
tool-kit for closing an open society -- 'Step Ten' of the 'Ten Steps' to
a closed society: 'Rename Dissent 'Espionage' and Criticism of Government,
'Treason' -- I knew, based on my study of closing societies, that this
tactic would resurface.
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- Let me explain clearly why activating -- rather than
abolishing -- the Espionage Act is an act of profound aggression against
the American people. We are all Julian Assange. Serious reporters discuss
classified information every day -- go to any Washington or New York dinner
party where real journalists are present, and you will hear discussion
of leaked or classified information. That is journalists' job in
a free society. The White House, too, is continually classifying and declassifying
information.
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- As I noted in The End of America, if you prosecute
journalists -- and Assange, let us remember, is the New York Times in
the parallel case of the Pentagon Papers, not Daniel Ellsberg; he is the
publisher, not the one who revealed the classified information -- then
any outlet, any citizen, who discusses or addresses 'classified' information
can be arrested on 'national security' grounds.
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- If Assange can be prosecuted under the Espionage Act,
then so can the New York Times; and the producers of Parker Spitzer,
who discussed the WikiLeaks material two nights ago; and the people who
posted a mirror WikiLeaks site on my Facebook 'fan' page; and Fox News
producers, who addressed the leak and summarized the content of the classified
information; and every one of you who may have downloaded information about
it; and so on. That is why prosecution via the Espionage Act is so dangerous
-- not for Assange alone, but for every one of us, regardless of our political
views.
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- This is far from a feverish projection: if you study
the history of closing societies, as I have, you see that every closing
society creates a kind of 'third rail' of material, with legislation that
proliferates around it. The goal of the legislation is to call those who
criticize the government 'spies', 'traitors', enemies of the state' and
so on. Alwaysthe issue of national security is invoked as the reason
for this proliferating legislation. The outcome?
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- A hydra that breeds fear. Under similar laws in Germany
in the early thirties, it became a form of 'espionage' and 'treason' to
criticize the Nazi party, to listen to British radio programs, to joke
about the fuhrer, or to read cartoons that mocked the government. Communist
Russia in the 30's, East Germany in the 50's, and China today all use parallel
legislation to call criticism of the government -- or whistleblowing --
'espionage' and 'treason', and 'legally' imprison or even execute journalists,
editors, and human rights activists accordingly.
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- _______________
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- Comment
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- Ilene Proctor
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- I call on all American citizens to rise up and insist
on repeal of the Espionage Act immediately. We have little time to waste.
The Assange assault is theater of a particularly deadly kind, and America
will not recover from the use of the Espionage Act as a cudgel to threaten
journalists, editors and news outlets with.
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- I call on major funders of Feinstein's and Lieberman;s
campaigns to put their donations in escrow accounts and notify the staffers
of those Senators that the funds willonly be released if they drop their
traitorous invocation of the Espionage Act.
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- I call on all Americans to understand once for all: this
is not about Julian Assange. This, my fellow citizens, is about you.
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- Those calling for Julian Assange's criminalization include:
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- 1. Rep. Candice Miller
- 2. Jonah Goldberg, Journalist
- 3. Christian Whiton, Journalist
- 4. Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Journalist
- 5. Sarah Palin, Member of the Republican Party, former
candidate
- 6. Mike Huckabee, Politician
- 8. Prof. Tom Flanagan
- 9. Rep. Peter King
- 10. Tony Shaffer
- 11. Rick Santorum
- 12. Rep. Dan Lugren
- 13. Jeffrey T. Kuhner, Journalist The Washington
Times
- 14. Rep. Virginia Foxx
- 15. Sen. Kit Bond, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee
- 16. Sen. Joe Liberman
- 17. Sen. Charles Schumer
- 18. Marc Thiessen, Columnist
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