Freedom, Democracy and Accountability

Peter Hitchens writes:

Mean and narrow minds quickly sought to moan today about the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from his long cruel years in his Belmarsh dungeon.

That is only reasonable, given the huge amounts of official time and money this country has devoted to making his existence a misery. As the WikiLeaks founder began his journey towards a free life in Australia, joy was not as universal as you might have expected. Lord Hague spoke for the establishment, delivering his verdict on Times Radio this morning.

Hague, whom I remember long ago as a witty, irreverent and thoughtful person, now gargles reliably in the conventional wisdom choir. He grumbled that he did not see Julian Assange ‘as any kind of hero’, nor as ‘somebody you want around’. And he regurgitated the standard case against Mr Assange that he leaked national security secrets ‘of the free societies he’s always taken advantage of’.

Then he recalled Mr Assange’s period in the Ecuadorean embassy ‘where, after a few years, they wondered how on earth they were going to get him out’.

Yes, it was inconvenient that Ecuador had offered him asylum and then, after a change of government, went back on its promise. But the rescuer who then throws the man he has rescued back to the sharks is bound to feel a little annoyed with the person he has treated so badly. It is only human, and so much more comforting than feeling bad about yourself.

I am no friend of Julian Assange. If the intolerant, cruel behaviour of the American government, and the pathetic poodling to Washington of the British state had not brought us together, we would remain foes to this day.

We differ especially on the subject of drugs — about which we once had a severe public disagreement. But I was brought up to think that an Englishman stands up for liberty in all cases, especially if the person whose freedom is threatened is somebody he does not much like.

And I came to the conclusion that most of what was being said about Julian Assange by the governments in Washington and London was bilge. The secrets he published (which he obtained as journalists do, from a source) were the sort which embarrass politicians.

This was especially the case with his revelations about the appalling attack on innocent civilians by a US helicopter hovering over Baghdad. Far from being an intelligence loss to the USA, it was a gain for freedom, democracy and accountability.

The WikiLeaks trove of documents was profoundly awkward for a government that had engaged in catastrophic and ill-advised adventures in Iraq and elsewhere.

It most closely resembled a similar event 50 years ago when the courageous Daniel Ellsberg published the ‘Pentagon Papers’. These revealed that President Lyndon Johnson’s White House had systematically lied its head off about the Vietnam war.

Mr Ellsberg became a national hero after the US government responded by trying to smear and then jail him. And until his recent death he was one of Julian Assange’s most fervent defenders. The sad truth is that newspapers were bigger and stronger, and judges perhaps braver, in those times.

Many attempts have been made to suggest that Mr Assange was rash about what he released. Well, his supporters insist, with credible evidence, that in fact he was very careful, and strove to redact potentially dangerous material.

It is ceaselessly alleged that he endangered US government servants. But I have yet to see any evidence that this ever happened.

It is lucky for the British Government that the complex (and not fully disclosed) deal between Australia, the US and (presumably) the UK has now led to Mr Assange’s release from HMP Belmarsh. It gets them off a nasty hook.

Mr Assange should never have been prosecuted or imprisoned in the first place. As the US Justice Department more or less admitted in the Obama era, he was protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. This absolutely guarantees freedom of the press.

But the weird swirling politics of the Trump White House changed all that. Mike Pompeo, when he was President Trump’s CIA chief, declared: ‘Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms.’

Mr Pompeo also made a personal denunciation of Mr Assange and WikiLeaks. And this behaviour (by itself) made it quite clear that Washington’s pursuit of Mr Assange was political.

Yet, though the notoriously unequal extradition treaty between Britain and the USA specifically prohibits political extraditions, neither our courts nor any of the Home Secretaries involved ordered the cruel procedure to stop. And it was cruel.

Mr Assange was imprisoned for years in the forbidding Belmarsh jail, in whose grim precincts his wife and small children were allowed to visit him.

I’ve seen inside enough prisons to be able to guess how horrible, humiliating and distressing this must have been for that small family, compelled to try to act as normal, kindly humans amid a concrete and steel fortress designed to hold gangland murderers, armed robbers and terrorists.

I could never find out what the justification was for this, as there are other prisons in the London area which are quite secure, but nothing like as severe as Belmarsh. I can only conclude that it was spite, made worse by our Government’s pathetic toadying to our mighty ally.

Good heavens, I would not even want an ally so subservient and sycophantic. Surely, you want a bit of spirit among your friends, or they won’t be much use to you if it comes to a fight.

There’s another worrying part of all this, which is that the deal appears to involve Mr Assange pleading guilty to one charge under the notorious US Espionage Act. Horribly, this may be some sort of precedent.

I think anyone on the dangerous edge of journalism, the bit where people send you secret documents to expose wrongdoings, will now be haunted by the fear that they are in danger of the worst the US Federal prison system can throw at them.

Well, this chapter is over now, though no doubt there will be others. I can stop my futile efforts to get other media commentators to join me in trying to rescue Mr Assange.

And I can pay tribute to my Daily Mail colleague Andrew Neil for bravely taking the right side in this, where so many others hesitated and mumbled. He needed no encouragement from me to do so. As a proper journalist, he knew in his bones that the treatment of Assange was wrong.

Will we learn anything from all this? Probably not. In every generation these battles must be fought over again, and each time the side of freedom loses, things will get worse.

I wish Stella Assange a joyful reunion, in freedom, with her husband. Her bearing in this ordeal has been wholly admirable and rather inspiring. That at least is an unmixed delight.