About that Wikileaks business
Posted By Russ Emerson on July 29, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Being known to my relatives and friends as a person with actual experience (albeit many years ago) in the field of military intelligence, I often get asked for my opinion when intel-related matters pop up in the news. Not that my opinion is any more valid than anyone else’s, usually, but I do get asked.
First, I’d say that it’s hard to imagine an alternate reality in which I could do better than Tunku Varadarajan in describing Wikileaks proprietor Julian Assange.* He concludes:
Unless there is evidence that Assange conspired with employees of the military to procure these leaked materials, there is no scope in the law to take action against him. But let us put the law to one side. Our aversion to Assange and his ways — to his posturing, gaudy psuedo-insurgency — need not be expressed in ways prosecutorial. Let us, instead, shower him with our most basic contempt, and dismiss him as the fraud that he is. WikiLeaks is a brothel of self-promotion, Assange its puffed-up pimp.
I don’t think Varadarajan goes far enough. If Wikileaks is acting as a de facto intelligence gathering and dissemination service for al Qaeda and our other enemies — and I think it is — then rather than showering Assange with mere contempt, we ought to consider having a Predator drone shower him with a Hellfire missile.
Assange seems to think he’s playing some sort of game. Not so. Real lives are at stake, and he’s put many of those lives at risk. He ought to be prepared to pay with his own.
(John Hawkins has similar thoughts.)
The same applies to the “leaker” of the information in question, PFC Bradley Manning. If proven to be the source, then he is no mere “leaker” — he’s a traitor.
Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution sets a properly high bar for Treason:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The “two witnesses” requirement might be hard to meet; I don’t know what would count in this instance. If the charge can be sustained, however, it ought to be pursued.
(See also Mike’s views on this at the aptly named Cold Fury.)
Not that I have any confidence in the current administration to do so. The Bush administration was, in my opinion, far too lax in hunting and prosecuting leakers, and I don’t see the Obama administration being any better; there are too many “fellow travelers” therein, people who, during the previous administration, would have cheered Manning and Assange, and loudly criticized their prosecution.
There’s one caveat to that, of course: Obama has to occasionally appear to be tough to appease his critics, and there’s no one he won’t discard for the sake of political gain** — the fate of some PFC matters not a whit to him.
Even if it’s purely for personal political gain, the Obama administration would be doing the right thing by taking the infowar fight to the enemy.
* One might be forgiven for thinking that “-ange” is, in this case, pronounced “-hole.”
** See how I didn’t say “throw under the bus” there?