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Julian Assange: A Heroic Adversary to Power
Fabricated claims represent the latest chapter in America’s war on whistleblowers
On Saturday, we learned that a key witness in the U.S. Department of Justice’s case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange admitted to making up accusations in the indictment.
Assange was arrested in the spring of 2019 and charged with violating the Espionage Act — the same law used to indict Daniel Ellsberg for his release of the Pentagon Papers. Assange was stripped naked, spied on by the CIA, and denied case files for his hearings on extradition to the United States. Human rights organizations were barred from watching the extradition proceedings.
The Trump administration’s anti-press tactics were widespread and well-known, but its pursuit of Assange (led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo) may have been the most draconian.
Publishing classified information of public concern is called investigative journalism. Here are just some of the things we learned from Assange’s work over the years:
- The U.S. military killed Iraqi civilians at checkpoints and ignored cases of torture and rape by the Iraqi army. Over 15,000 previously unreported civilian casualties from 2004 to 2010 were exposed by Assange.
