Newsletter
Enter your email address here to receive updates from the team.
Jobs
Policy | Charity & Fundraising | Research | Education | Executive | Media | Social Care | Communications
User login
Why WikiLeaks must be protected
The case of the Afghanistan war logs and the hounding of Julian Assange prove that there’s never bee
By John Pilger Published 19 August 2010
On 26 July, WikiLeaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. WikiLeaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing in both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian are a fraction.
There is understandably hysteria on high, with demands that the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, be "hunted down" and "rendered". In Washington, I interviewed a senior official in the defence department and asked: "Can you give a guarantee that the editors of WikiLeaks and the editor-in-chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?" He replied: "It's not my position to give guarantees on anything."
He referred me to the "ongoing criminal investigation" of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to "fatally marginalise" WikiLeaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.
The Pentagon line
On 31 July, the American celebrity reporter Christiane Amanpour interviewed the US secretary of defence, Robert Gates, on the ABC network. She invited him to describe to her viewers his "anger" at WikiLeaks. She echoed the Pentagon line that "this leak has blood on its hands", cueing Gates to find WikiLeaks "guilty" of "moral culpability". Such hypocrisy coming from a regime drenched in the blood of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq - as its own files make clear - is apparently not for journalistic inquiry. This is hardly surprising now that a new and fearless form of public accountability, which WikiLeaks represents, threatens not only the warmakers but also their apologists.
Their current propaganda is that WikiLeaks is "irresponsible". Earlier this year, before it released the cockpit video of a US Apache gunship killing 19 civilians in Iraq, including journalists and children, WikiLeaks sent people to Baghdad to find the victims' families in order to prepare them. Before the release of last month's Afghanistan war logs, WikiLeaks wrote to the White House asking that it identify Afghan names that might draw reprisals. There was no reply. More than 15,000 files were withheld and these, Assange says, will not be released until they have been scrutinised "line by line" so that the names of those at risk can be deleted.
The pressure on Assange himself seems unrelenting. In his homeland, Australia, the shadow foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has said that if her right-wing coalition wins the general election on 21 August, "appropriate action" will be taken "if an Australian citizen has deliberately undertaken an activity that could put at risk the lives of Australian forces in Afghanistan or undermine our operations in any way". The Australian role in Afghanistan, which is in effect mercenary to Washington, has produced two striking results: the massacre of five children at a village in Uruzgan Province and the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of Australians.
Last May, following the release of the Apache footage, Assange had his passport temporarily confiscated when he returned home. The Labor government in Canberra denies it has received requests from Washington to detain him and spy on the WikiLeaks network. The Cameron government also denies this. They would, wouldn't they? Assange, who came to London last month to work on exposing the war logs, has now had to leave the country hastily for, as he puts it, "safer climes".
A duty to publish
On 16 August, the Guardian, citing Daniel Ellsberg, described the great Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu as "the pre-eminent hero
of the nuclear age". Vanunu, who alerted the world to Israel's secret nuclear weapons, was kidnapped by the Israelis and incarcerated for 18 years after he was left unprotected by the Sunday Times, which had published the documents he supplied. In 1983, another heroic whistleblower, Sarah Tisdall, a Foreign Office clerical officer, sent documents to the Guardian disclosing how the Thatcher government planned to spin the arrival of US cruise missiles in Britain. The Guardian complied with a court order to hand over the documents, and Tisdall went to prison.
The WikiLeaks revelations shame the dominant section of journalism, devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it. This is state stenography, not journalism. Look on the WikiLeaks site and read a Ministry of Defence document that describes the "threat" of real journalism. And so it should be a threat. Having skilfully published the WikiLeaks exposé of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as important as any in my lifetime.
I like Julian Assange's dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult to publish information in Britain, with its draconian secrecy laws, he replied: "We haven't found a problem. When we look at Official Secrets Act labelled documents, we see that they state it is an offence to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome is to publish the information."
Tags: wikileaks
Related articles
-
03 January -
11 December -
17 October -
21 June
John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism's top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John Pilger," wrote Harold Pinter, "unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him."
From the magazine
-
Ian Mulheirn -
Robert Skidelsky -
Felix Martin -
New Statesman -
Rafael Behr -
Ryan Gilbey -
Laurie Penny -
Alice O'Keeffe -
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Latest tweets
More from New Statesman
- Online writers:
- Steven Baxter
- Rowenna Davis
- David Allen Green
- Mehdi Hasan
- Nelson Jones
- Gavin Kelly
- Helen Lewis
- Laurie Penny
- The V Spot
- Alex Hern
- Martha Gill
- Alan White
- Samira Shackle
- Alex Andreou
- Nicky Woolf in America
- Bim Adewunmi
- Glosswitch
- Kate Mossman on pop
- Ryan Gilbey on Film
- Martin Robbins
- Rafael Behr
- Eleanor Margolis
- Tools and services:
- Polls
- Predictions
- Archive
- Magazine
- PDF edition
- RSS feeds
- Advertising
- Subscribe
- Special supplements
- Stockists
68 comments
@Steve
Wow, you are mind blowingly stupid.
You refuse to accept that these people are actually trying to be honest because they haven't revealed all of your pet conspiracy theories to be true? You know, it is possible that no one has proof on these theories because they are simply not true.
You need to wake up from the fantasy world that you know all the truth in the world and judge the world based on that. You know, maybe everyone of your theories is completely true. You can't decide that though without evidence, real evidence!
That is the problem with conspiracy nuts. You get all but hurt because the world isn't exactly the way you want it, and then you come up with some vast conspiracy designed to make your life suck. Seriously, just get over yourself.
@D'n, could everyone stop saying "conspiracy theory/nut". The police arrest people all the time for CONSPIRACY to commit murder, to kidnap, blackmail, steal, etc. Anyway, Steve said the documents could be Pentagon fed, not that Assange is working for the CIA.
Julian, himself, said governments feed them information all the time in the hope of misleading the public, but WikiLeaks makes sure those documents are filtered out.
@Steve, documents must be leaked by someone a) with a strong conscience; and b) willing to take a huge risk. Bradley Manning allegedly leaked video footage of Iraqi civilians being killed. He's now facing up to 52 years in jail.
The more deadly a leak is to a government, the harder it is going to be to find someone who knows anything about it. The worst crimes are committed by just a handful in government, a small clique. Criminals usually don't brag about their crimes.
Read "Spider's Web" by Alan Friedman to see how we found out that the US and Britain were secretly arming Iraq in the 1980s, and why it can be so difficult expose what is going on.
As for waking the public up: blame the public for requiring sensational leaks. WikiLeaks wasn't set up to compete with "American Idol" or "Britain's Got Talent".
Finally, if anyone feels so inclined, they can make a donation to help fund a legal team for Bradley Manning: www dot bradleymanning dot org.
The US kills its own women and children. Why should they care about a few from another country? The corruption in the police and courts is at such levels, that no one is immune.
So many of us have the evidence of the corruption and the violations of the laws and human rights within our own country. Reporting it to the Federal Government means you are marked and put on a watch list, when all you attempted to do was protect the public from the corruption. It is nothing more than a bunch of thugs running our government.
If anyone wants to actually look, the evidence is here.
@ james, dwatkins & d'n
Ignorance is bliss and unfortunately a percentage of the world population dont follow your sentiments as they are not hynotised by the establishment's deception and lies, that you take as truth. I'm sure you believe that the world is a safer place through murder and bloodshed. Unfortunately your ego's words ring empty due to a lack of experience ie. obliviously ignorant! Media information is owned by 4 people on this planet, and they only publish what benefits their own agenda, hence the reason for Wikileaks morals to seek truth. Truth will always reveal itself, no matter how long it takes. It can't be silenced as that contradicts the laws of the universe. Therefore, the USA will establish an assualt on Mr Assange's image, not the information revealed, to curtail damage limitation of their intentions! Maybe, a little research to fill the empty craniums would be a good start and even a topic on google like the Freemassons and the Illuminati will help you think outside your low vibrational state of existance.
May Wikileaks forever prosper in exposing the puppet masters of the secret societies who enslave the human minds through media manipulation! Wake up or shut up!
Looks like Steve and Veritas either are, or have fallen for "cointelpro" . . . . . and, if the latter, then, irony of ironies, they are doing the cia's work for them . . . Straight out of Frank Herbert's imagination . . . . .
" Charlie Tame
19 August 2010 at 16:06
If Governments and the Corporations and Banks that really control things didn't persistently lie about shit they wouldn't have to worry about leaks - of course I don;t expect any politicians here to be smart enough to figure that simple fact out."
You must look beyond these institutions to see who controls them. It is all lawyers. They are the law makers, the law enforcers, they sit on the boards of the corporations and banks. They control the world. It is this control that must be taken from them. They are the true organized crime.
What I find funny in these comments are the ones calling us idiots while believing the dribble they read from the Washington Post and the Pentagon.
Democracy? you ARE worse than Iran.
I have one word for you, retarded.
Guardian: WikiLeaks war logs posting 'will lead to free speech ruling' US supreme court likely to have to rule on issue of balancing national security and freedom of speech, says judge
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/27/wikileaks-war-logs-free-spee...
Just like predicted... by the wisest of the left only, who saw through this deception from the start. Wikileaks is just cointelpro, nothing more, and the believers sucked it all. Problem (leaks) - reaction (we kiss a**) - solution (end free internet and free speech).
No? Keep dreaming.........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Hidden Intelligence Operation Behind the Wikileaks Release of "Secret"
Documents?
The real story of Wikileaks has clearly not yet been told.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20580
The Political Spinning of the WikiLeaks Release: Anti-war Whistleblowing
or War Propaganda
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20357
The people who are most predisposed NOT to believe in wikileak as cointel-pro are both the left and the right; most newspapers. To the left Assange is a hero (if only he had been genuine) and to the right he is a threat.
Cause THIS is exactly how they manipulate; they get a reaction from the left think to it is a good thing and the right to think it is a bad thing.
The THIRD narrative (Wikileak as cointelpro/psyops operation) does not even EXIST on the map of these naive papers and journalists, and therefore they become the useful idiots for the manipulated agenda, just the way the cointelpro operation wants them, along with the manipulated readers of this wrong official narrative.
I say: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
It is a LEGIMATE thing to question wikileaks, especially if one knows the history and modus operandi of historical cointelpro, CIA, etc.
WHY is it cointelpro??? The first indication in deep politics analysis:
A common theme has emerged from the revelations brought forth by the Afghan War Logs, a theme that does more good than harm to the government
its supposed to be exposing.
Sources of Intel Hub radio and website (The Intel Hub has had guests on the show such as former black OPS, whistleblowers, etc.) concur with Wayne Madsen's analysis (ex-National Security Agency whistleblower) that the group is a CIA front, not surprising conidering the leader's Australian citizenship and its giant CIA secret base.
Be open to the hidden narrative that FEW people are aware of and with GOOD reason - first, here is Intelhub:
Wikileaks, Legitimate Whistleblowers or CointelPro?
http://theintelhub.com/2010/08/07/wikileaks-whistleblowers-cointelpro/
This one has facebook share function:
Wikileaks Cointelpro Wizard of Oz or 'Whistleblower'?
http://www.examiner.com/x-10438-Human-Rights-Examiner~y2010m8d7-Wikileak...
Of course John Pilger is not naive, but a great great journalist. In time he will see that Wikileaks is cointelpro, just like he eventually saw through Obama (and implied that Obama was a CIA-asset and a marketing creation)
Wikileaks are partners with the Open Society Institute, a George Soros funded operation!
People such as Wayne Madsen and John Young have already attempted to expose Wikileaks as a front organization. When contacted for this article, John Young, the founder of Cryptome, had this to say:
“The principal deficiency of Wikileaks is its lack of transparency about its operators and funds, characteristics of spies and secret
societies up to no good and whose main purpose is to hide from public accountability and conceal corruption and criminality.
Such organizations always use a noble purpose and claim secrecy is needed to protect supporters. In practice the secrecy protects the principal beneficiaries, the operators and sources of funds, and
supporters are sacrificed to protect the continuation of the enterprise.
Wikileaks has followed the lucrative model of the cult of national security, the largest world’s secret enterprise, composed of selected elements of governments, military, intelligence, NGOs, contractors, lobbyists and supporters, identified by their clearance for access to classified information.
The release of the Afghan war logs have done nothing to expose the NWO, what they have done is strengthen the calls for tough retaliation against legitimate whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are an integral part of this infowar, without them, we the people have no way to know what our government is doing, legal or illegal. Its even conceivable that Bradley Manning, who from all indications is a true patriot, was set up by the government in order to be used as a scapegoat for this whole fiasco, as well as to weed out another patriots from the ranks of intelligence.
http://theintelhub.com/2010/08/07/wikileaks-whistleblowers-cointelpro/
WAKE UP people, from your pristine conditioned comfort zone.