Why Julian Assange Is Unlikely to Find Refuge in the Supreme Court.
Washington Post, Jul 7, 2019: Julian Assange last month ended his seven-year stay at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge from prosecution in Sweden and the United States. The British government has since ordered that he be extradited to the United States, where he may be charged under the U.S. Espionage Act.
In his role as founder and chief disseminator of WikiLeaks, Assange came under scrutiny in 2010 for publishing 250,000 classified American documents related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including information on an arguably indiscriminate airstrike by the American military that became known as the “Collateral Murder video.”
WikiLeaks’ notoriety continued to grow after it leaked private documents from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign with the aid of the Russians.
Observers were quick to draw comparisons between Assange’s work and the 1971 decision by the New York Times and The Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers, which detailed the U.S. government’s top-secret actions in Vietnam. In response, the Nixon administration filed for prior restraint, the ability to censor such material before publication.
HuffPost noted strong parallels between Assange and Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, proclaiming “another courageous ‘national security leaker’ has stepped forward and now is facing retaliation similar to what the U.S. government tried to inflict on Ellsberg.” Alan Dershowitz concurred: “I believed then, and still believe now, that there is no constitutional difference between WikiLeaks and the New York Times.”
Is such a parallel apt?
Not exactly. People misremember the Supreme Court decision in the Pentagon Papers cases that gave the Times the right to publish the documents. The court did not find a sacrosanct freedom of the press. It merely allowed for the continued publication. Indeed, the justices’ split decision pointed in the other direction: that in matters of “mortal danger,” journalists have a legal responsibility not to publish…
(Photo Credit: Frank Augstein/AP)