The Wikileaks Cables: Worth the Ink?

The Wikileaks Cables: Worth the Ink?

This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on December 8, 2010.

In many of the roles I've played in the course of my life, including college student, journalist, history buff, and constitutional scholar, one mantra is common to them all: information wants to be free.

In each of these roles, only by having access to accurate information could I write a valid conclusion for a term paper; write a story that told my readers something important; or allowed me and others to analyze events and personalities to reach conclusions about the people who made and shaped our history.

Much of the information journalists and historians (and ultimately the public) need was secret at one point in its lifetime. One of the most famous examples is the Pentagon Papers, published in 1971 by the New York Times. The Papers were a classified history of United States-Vietnam relations, and revealed previously unknown or unsubstantiated facts about the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and Laos.

The Times was prosecuted for publishing the Papers, in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, a case which eventually found its way to the Supreme Court. The Court dismissed the case, but only by finding technical issues with the prosecution, and not with the Espionage Act itself.

It is under this Espionage Act that some pundits and politicians are contemplating prosecution of the Wikileaks site or its founder Julian Assange. Wikileaks has been in the news before. The site's raison d'etre is to be a safe place for whistle-blowers to release classified or secret information to the public.

The types of information released via Wikileaks includes documentation about government corruption in Kenya, assassination plans in Somalia, Scientology documents, and Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account contents. More recently Wikileaks is also responsible for the release of thousands of pages of secret diplomatic documents, known as cables.

The question that the U.S. government must now grapple with is if the publication of the so-called Wikileaks Cables constitute a violation of the law - and if so, what can be done about it?

To prevent itself from being the target of corporate and governmental retaliation for what it publishes, Wikileaks exists almost wholly as an Internet-only organization. This has its own problems - as of the writing of this column, for example, the main Wikileaks site cannot be accessed because of denial of service attacks and disputes with its hosting companies.

Though there may be no real "Wikileaks company" to go after, there is Assange, the organization's public face. During last Sunday's broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called for Assange to be prosecuted under U.S. law. With the release of the Cables, McConnell said, Assange has "done enormous damage to our country."

Though the Espionage Act can apply just as equally to those who publish classified information as to those who took it in the first place, those like McConnell who would prosecute Wikileaks or Assange could run into real trouble actually doing so.

Assange is neither a U.S. citizen nor a U.S. resident. Originally from Australia, Assange seems to constantly shift his location within Europe; reports have him currently living in England. If Assange cannot be brought to an American court, he cannot be tried - trial in absentia is illegal. He would, instead, have to be deported to the U.S. by a government that not only has him in their jurisdiction, but also has the same concerns about American diplomatic security as the U.S. might have.

It seems to me that prosecution of Assange is unlikely. That still leaves a key question, though. Given what I've already written, that information wants to be free, is the leaking of the Cables something I oppose?

The observations made in the Wikileaks Cables, frank statements of opinion by U.S. diplomatic staff and international leaders, are sometimes of no more value than any random story in the National Enquirer. It's not so much that I have a problem with the Cables being leaked as I have a problem that anyone cares about the contents of the Cables.

On the basis of the newly freed information that I've seen from the Cables, one thing is obvious: The Cables are no Pentagon Papers.

There is no revelation of corrupt ruling families or assassination plots. All we see is that diplomats are human and can speak with some crassness about each other. All we see is that governments don't trust each other.

In other words, we have been reminded of facts that we already knew.

Note: After press time, Assange turned himself in to English authorities because of an outstanding warrant from Sweden.