WikiLeaks matters

By Joel Thurtell

I’m not completely comfortable with the mass dispersion of documents undertaken by WikiLeaks and the site’s creator, Julian Assange.

How would I react if someone hacked into my blog or e-mail, ripped off my private ruminations and missives and published them for the world to see?

Vitally important professional and financial data lie within anyone’s e-mail files, and publication could lead to theft of personal property — MY property.

That was my personal reaction.

My reaction as a reporter was simply that WikiLeaks is doing what good journalists do: Publishing government records completely and without censorship.

Unlike my private documents, public records, even secret ones, are not copyrighted. Even secret government records are construed to belong to the people.

So I debated the issue with myself. Until I read today’s (December 16, 2010) New York Times article, “U.S. Tries to Build a Case Against WikiLeaks Leader.”

And then I got pissed off.

Our government doesn’t like what this Austrailian free-speecher has done by publshing a huge trove of what they thought were their exclusively private government cables.

Our government wants to make sure their clubhouse isn’t busted open again.

No other wholesale posting of private government documents, by WikiLeaks or by anyone else, must ever happen.

So the feds are working overtime now to hoke up phony charges that they can lay against Assange and WikiLeaks.

They have a big problem: It’s called the First Amendment.

Our country’s Constitution makes it very difficult for government to prosecute someone who passively receives a document.

So Heller and his subordinate lawyers are searching for evidence that Assange somehow helped the actual document thief, Private Manning, to steal government records and upload them to WikiLeaks’ server.

The government is looking for evidence that Assange somehow “encouraged” Manning in his task.

This is the point where any aggressive journalist has to pause and consider whether the government’s witch hunt might not have been aimed at him or her.

I’m addressing reporters now: Have you ever gotten a call from someone who claimed to have access to documents whose contents, if published, might prove inflammatory?

As good journalists, we don’t burgle. We don’t break and enter. We don’t play sticky fingers when some official isn’t looking and steal records.

But if someone with access to those records offers to give you copies, would you decline?

I recall a story early in my career when a government employee offered me records, even though it was a misdemeanor for this person to breach the documents’ confidentiality.

Did I say “no”?

Hell, no!

I took the documents and wrote a story partly based on those records that was a bombshell.

And yes, there was a threat of prosecution. But a newspaper attorney looked into the case and told me that while my anonymous source might have been prosecuted, I was safe. I could not be charged for publishing contents of a purloined record.

But what I did — basing a story on a confidential government record — is pretty much what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks did.

By not saying “no,” by accepting the papers, did I “encourage” my source in his illegal act of leaking?

If the government can find a way to prosecute WikiLeaks, it could also prosecute reporters like you and me who write stories based on records the government doesn’t want the public to see.

See what I mean?

We could kiss good, hard-hitting investigative journalism goodbye.

Every journalist worth a damn has an interest in the WikiLeaks case.

We should oppose this infantile attempt to punish the messenger.

Here’s what I think could happen if President Obama and Attorney General Heller unwisely pursue this case to court.

They may well get a conviction of Assange.

But WikiLeaks is not going away.

It will be back, though its name may be different.

As journalists become engaged, every move the government makes to persecute Assange will be reported.

Inevitably, somebody else within government or with a good government faucet will open the flow of embarrassing records.

Meanwhile, Obama and Heller will feel like that Dutch kid who stuck his finger in the dike, only to behold many more holes than his hands had fingers.

WikiLeaks — or whatever its future name — is a blazing fire.