 It is with my great pleasure to introduce our moderator, Ron Reidenauer, who is a veteran anti-war and civil rights activist journalist and author. Our first speaker is Joe Lauria, who has led a lifetime of journalism. He took over as editor-in-chief of Consortium News following the death of its creator, Bob Perry. Consortium News Live is also a co-sponsor and is broadcasting this event simultaneously. CN's coverage of the extradition hearings was the most extensive and comprehensive of all media. Joe and his staff, along with contributors, just celebrated 25 years reporting real journalism and revealing fake news fomented by the establishment's political parties and corporate media. Joe tell us about WikiLeaks, some of its history and some of the aspects of the extradition hearings. Well, thank you, Ron. And thank you for that introduction about Consortium News. We did indeed celebrate our 25th anniversary. So I'm gonna spend five or 10 minutes, if that's okay, to provide what I've been asked to provide, which is a short history of WikiLeaks and a detailed account of what happened during these four weeks of hearings in Old Bailey in London. Julian Assange, of course, is integral to the history of WikiLeaks. He was born in Queensland, Australia in 1971, which happened to be the same year that Danielsburg leaked the Pentagon papers. In 1991, he was charged with hacking into a Pentagon computer and uncovered evidence of a US attack on civilians in a shelter during the first Gulf War. He was arrested, but as a youthful offender, he was giving a minimal punishment. But that has created the stigma of Assange being a hacker, which is very important when we get to the charges against him. In fact, the US has tried to revive this idea that Assange is a hacker, but this happened many, many years ago. He started WikiLeaks in December 2006, a site to obtain and publish sensitive information. Of course, he first collaborated, and this is important with The Guardian. In 2007, on documents about the McKinnon president, Daniel Armoire, his corruption, he also began releasing his first documents on Guantanamo detention camp and did a series on Scientology to threaten to sue. In 2008, Assange won his first media award from The Economist Magazine. Many, many more would come. Many is 30, including the Walkley Award in Australia, which is their equivalent of their Pulitzer. And 2010 is the really key year in the history. Of WikiLeaks, it was their most consequential year in terms of their releases, and it's also what the indictment focuses on, not anything after that, including the 2016 election. It started in April 5 of that year, 2010, that the collateral murder video was released. This is probably the best-known release of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of documents that WikiLeaks and Assange released over the years. The collateral murder video showed from the viewpoint of pilots on block of helicopter shooting down into a Baghdad street, killing and injuring many civilians. It was clear at a certain point then that these war civilians are not insurgents and they continued to shoot anyway into a van that had come by to try to attend and pick up the wounded and the wounded children that were in the van. It was a hideous video. It also was horrible to hear the American pilots laughing and joking and blaming the people below them. It was a shock, but it was quickly forgotten and did not lead to any kind of charges or investigation into those pilots whatsoever. What it did lead to was the arrest of the source of that video and all these major files of 2010. And that was Chelsea Manning, who was a private with security clearance as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. And she could not bear to keep this secret. She went to the Washington Post in the New York Times with Norder and then went to WikiLeaks. Following on that was the Afghan files in the Iraq war logs, but they came out after May 26th, just six weeks after the collateral murder video of Chelsea Manning was arrested for unauthorized dissemination of these classified documents. Actually, the collateral murder video was not classified, but certainly many of the Afghan files in July 2010 and the Iraq war logs of July of that year, sorry, of October, October was Iraq, July, Afghanistan. Those were revealed many other crimes and corruption that took place in those two wars. In then in November were the diplomatic cables also from Chelsea Manning. And that revealed many, many internal documents from the US State Department and their embassies. And we learned of many things around the world. And most consequential probably was that it led many people believe to the uprising in Tunisia, what was revealed about the Tunisian government. And that of course spread across Arab countries in 2011 and the very well-known uprisings. Some people credit WikiLeaks for that. Muhammad did Muammar Gaddafi blamed WikiLeaks. He said, don't be fooled by WikiLeaks with the publisher's information written by lying ambassadors in order to create chaos. So he was reacting to what happened in Tunisia. The reaction back in the US to all of these releases was fierce, Mitch McConnell's Senate Majority Leader was on Meet the Press and he called Julian Assange a high tech terrorist. Senator Joe Biden, then Senator Joe Biden was asked on Meet the Press whether he agreed with that. And his response was that he was more like Assange, more like a high tech terrorist than what happened in the Pentagon fakers. The Obama administration and paneled a grand jury and they wanted very much to prosecute WikiLeaks and Assange for these releases. But they came upon what they, what the holder, Eric Holder, the head of the Attorney General under Obama at the time, called their New York Times problem. What's that? Well, the New York Times along with the Guardian, Der Spiegel, El Paese in Spain, Le Monde published many of the same documents that WikiLeaks did working in conjunction as partners with WikiLeaks. So if they were going to, Obama administration was going to indict Assange, how could they argue they wouldn't also have to indict the New York Times? So they dropped it. Of course, that changed when the Trump administration came in. But before that, in the same year, December 2010, Assange was arrested in Britain. And that was because of manipulated sex crime allegations. Neither woman ever charged rape. There were never any charges against Assange. These were only allegations. Many people say they were charges, they were not. Assange was given permission to leave Sweden after this initial talk with the police. And he went to the United Kingdom where he shortly after he arrived, he was hit with a European arrest warrant that was arranged and issued by a prosecutor, not a judge. The law was changed after that because a judge now should be issuing arrest warrants, not a prosecutor. Assange fought the extradition to Sweden in the UK courts and he got to the Supreme Court and he lost, and that's when he went and received asylum in the Ecuador embassy. The UK would not let Assange leave that embassy for medical treatment. He had various elements. If they said he'd be left, he would be arrested. What was he wanted for at that time? Just bail skipping. He was wanted for bail because he went into the embassy rather than face extradition to Sweden. And at the time, he and his lawyer said they didn't believe it was extradition to Sweden. They were fearful that Sweden would extradite him onto the United States. People ridiculed him for that at the time, but of course he's been proven right. It was about a US extradition all along. Within the embassy, he continued to run WikiLeaks. There were many other revelations. The most important one after that was probably the 2016 US election in which WikiLeaks published, leaked DNC, Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They're totally accurate emails. They revealed corruption in the Democratic Party. It led to the resignation of five member, high-ranking members, including the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. Liberals and liberal media in the US turned against the son of them. They had pretty much liked him because he'd revealed Bush administration crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. But when it came to the selection, they turned against him, somehow blaming him for Trump. Even though the documents were completely accurate, they were true. Talking about the emails, it didn't really matter who the source was, whether it was Russia or not. And Robert Mueller, the unredacted pages came out on the eve of just November 2nd right now, just before this US election, showing that Assange had no idea who he was talking with. So if it were the Russians, Assange didn't know what Mueller's report said that. It was redacted originally. And oddly, on the eve of the US election, the unredacted came out. So we knew that's why he could not charge Assange, although Mueller did want to. He never interviewed Assange, by the way, in the embassy about what happened. The documents are true, as I say, it doesn't matter. And this is borne out by the fact that WikiLeaks is the one that pioneered anonymous drop boxes, which is a source can give documents to WikiLeaks. And they don't even, he really doesn't even want to know who the source is. If they can verify the documents accurate and they're newsworthy, they will publish it. Well, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, and 60 major news organizations now use anonymous drop boxes. So they don't know who's giving them stuff. If it checks out, that's what's important with documents, not who the source is. I mean, Russia could drop something in CNN's box. CNN could run the story and never know who the source was. It's not important when the documents are verified. After Trump was elected, there was a very major release. Well, seven, it reveals CIA cyber tools, things like turning your Samsung TV at home into a spine device, even though you think it's off. And many other things about what the CIA does, although WikiLeaks did not release tools that could be used by others. So they were important to remember that they redacted things. Nonetheless, that infuriated Mike Pompeo, who in his very first speech as a newly appointed CIA director called WikiLeaks, a hostile non-state intelligence service. And he called the Sandra Coward, and a narcissist. So revealing crimes and corruption of a government and government officials is gonna get them very upset, although they couch it in national security. It's very often their own security, their own skins that they're worried about. So a new government then was elected in Ecuador in May of 2017. And after two years, Mike Pence going down to Keto and U.S. generals. Finally, the Ecuadorian government got something in return for this wonderful prize that they had Julian Assange and their embassy that the U.S. desperately wanted. And it was an IMF loan that was arranged and approved. And Ecuador allowed the British police into the embassy, even though he had asylum and he had Ecuador and citizenship until that point, allowing the British police to drag him out, as we've all seen in April of 2019. He was thrown into Belmont, in prison where he's been ever since. The indictment was unveiled by the U.S. 17 Charters on the Espionage Act, one on conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The Espionage Act is the most important. Of course, James Lewis, the prosecutor for the U.S. government, the British lawyer, on the very first day of the resumed hearing in September, addressed the press box and said, this is not about you. He said, it's not about publishing and we're not after the press. This is about Assange revealing the names of informants. And this kind of floored everyone. For the one thing, revealing informants was never, is not in the statute of U.S. law and is not named in the indictment. It's him having violated this. The indictment is also about Assange passively receiving and possessing documents, unauthorized possession of documents. And the government tried to say it wasn't about that, but many defense witnesses pointed out by literally reading from the government's own indictment. Later in the four-week process in this hearing, the government, James Lewis, changed this idea. By first saying Assange was not a journalist, it's not about journalists, we're not going after the press. We're going after this horrible guy with real names of informants. And they eventually said in the hearing that yes, it was about journalists and he was a journalist and journalists can be charged. And technically they're right about that because a section of the SBNR Jack says any person who has unauthorized possession and who then unauthorized dissemination of that is liable under the SBNR Jack to be prosecuted. There is no carve out for journalists, although Rokana and Tulsi Gabbard and the US House of Representatives are trying to write a bill that would amend the SBNR Jack particularly because of the Assange case that would make an exception for journalists. But as it is now, the government's right, they could get them on this. It is in the view of many people and I'm really interested in what Marjorie says, that this is unconstitutional as it runs up against the First Amendment. There's a conflict there and if that bill doesn't get through, one would hope if Assange is extradited to the US and of course, those of us who understand this case hope that he isn't, that his lawyers would challenge this as an unconstitutional law. So many witnesses were brought on, defense witnesses who explained that Assange was actually engaged in journalistic activity, protecting sources, asking for more information. This is what the indictment says. The indictment actually described a journalistic activity. Bob Perry who founded Consortium News in 2010 during this whole period back then when those documents were being released, saying that he did the same thing as an investigative reporter known for breaking the biggest Iran-contrast scandals that he would even encourage his sources to break a small law in order to prevent a larger one. So, and Dan Ellsberg gave great testimony on those aspects of that aspect of the case. The informants again became the major focus of the government and they used as their main source a book by Guardian reporters David Lee and Luke Harding in which they're quoting Assange saying things like he didn't care if people died, it was their fault for collaborating with the United States, et cetera. Now, the fact is there was a Der Spiegel journalist present at one of these meetings at a restaurant in London in which Assange was alleged to have said I don't care if they died, they deserve it. The informants, Gertz was on the witness stand but Vanessa Bereta, the magistrate running this court would not allow him to testify to that occasion. We were all waiting for him to say that and put it in the record and he was not allowed to do that. In fact, an Australian journalist, Mark Davis, had said at a meeting in Sydney last year, I believe that he was there in the bunker with the Guardian and he saw Assange stay up all night the Friday before Sunday publication, redacting the names because he felt he said that the Guardian editors went off to have a weekend and they didn't care. This is what he says. The New York Times actually first published these diplomatic cables on a day before Weekly's did but they were trying, but they published in this story that Weekly said published first because that was the arrangement. Weekly's had a technical problem, the Times went first but their article still says that Weekly's published first. Why is that important? Well, if these are classified information if the government should go after them, who published first? Well, we learned in the court later on that when David Lee and Luke Harding in their book, in the book, I'm forgetting the title, they put the password to the unredacted cables which had the names of the informants. They put out the password when it became known and it was starting to be published and krypton.org published it first then Assange had to publish it as well. He said to try to inform these informants to get the safety, but Krypton was never charged. John Young, who's the founder and still runs it, put an affidavit into the courtroom saying that he was never questioned by the police at all about this, even though he published it first. And this is the unredacted cables with the informants name. Like I said, this is the main thrust of the US case. Now the big bomb show, we also heard a lot about the health of Julian Assange. Many details were asked not to report and we didn't but essentially he's on the autistic spectrum. He is suicidal. Many, many medical experts said if you were an extradited to the US, you would very likely commit suicide. And we also heard a lot about the condition of US prisons that he would be in isolation, most likely in a prison in Colorado. And the predictive conditions were horrific. The way they were described, nothing that could compare in a British prison and that's important because it has to be dual criminality here by the way. That's another issue about whether what Assange is being charged for is also a crime in the United Kingdom. So the big bombshell though in the testimony was that two anonymous witnesses from a case going on in Spain against David Morales, the CEO of a company called UC Global, they were allowed to testify in the British court written. Their names were not known. What they said was that Morales, the CEO of UC Global spied on Julian Assange for US intelligence agency and unspecified intelligence agency. They spied on his privileged conversations with his attorneys and doctors. And the US then discussed possibly kidnapping or poisoning Assange. This was testimony in the court. They put in cameras with audio. They tried to set up a 24-7 stream so that US intelligence could watch everything that was going on and the instructions were especially the privileged conversations with his attorneys. So here we have the intelligence armor prosecuting government spying on the defense preparations, eavesdropping on the defense preparations of the very hearing that then took place in September and any other case this would be thrown out immediately. In fact, when I reported this, Dan Osberg got very excited and he tweeted and wrote to me that this is how he got off and that he expected that this could happen for Julian this was his best chance. Of course, we all know what happened in Dan's case that the government tried to bribe the judge with the FBI directorship and also of course broke into a psychiatrist's office and tapped his phones. So Dan said what they did to Assange was even works what they did to him. We also got testimony from Cassandra Fairbanks, the journalist who said that Trump ordered Assange's arrest. That would be useful to the defense to prove it's a political case which violates the US extradition treaty. The computer intrusion charge is all based on a jabber chat, a encrypted chat between someone named nobody who we later learned was Chelsea Manning and someone called Nathaniel Frank. Now, many people assume Nathaniel Frank was doing Assange, that's never been proven and it's not proven in this hearing yet. So in order for them to charge Assange, I have to first say that he, Assange was in conversation with Manning, the indictment says that he tried to sign, he tried to get help Chelsea break a password that she could sign in under an administrative password to hide her identity, which again is journalistic practice, normal routine journalistic practice to hide the identity of an anonymous source. It also says the indictment that Manning had legal access to all these classified documents. So we heard an expert testimony saying that we couldn't even prove what they were trying to break into and that it could have been as the fact that Chelsea Manning was also downloading videos, music videos and video games because they are forbidden to active service personnel in the military so she was getting them for her, the soldiers. So this is very cloudy this whole thing. Now there was a superseding indictment that was only accepted by Berets on the day the court began. Wikileaks lawyers tried to delay the opening of the hearing, she refused. The indictment, superseding indictment just adds some more details to this computer intrusion, charge mostly from details from two FBI informants who ratted on Assange back in, when he was in RecuVec at that time. So the superseding indictment said he spoke at a conference and asked for people to hack things and get stuff but it doesn't say he hacked anything. It's never really charged with hacking at all in any of these charges. Now the closing, I'm closing my submission here by mentioning the closing arguments. On November 16, five days ago, the defense was to have given their final submissions what we call in the US closing arguments. We have not seen them but it's only in writing. The government in another week will be submitting the US government their final argument. Again, written and we're supposed to see them public and we haven't yet. Judgment is coming on January 4th, 2021. Appeals are likely, this is the case of government officials trying to get punish a journalist who revealed their crimes and other wrongdoing. And for decades, media has covered up a lot of these crimes that Julian Assange has revealed and that's one reason the media is against it and certainly why the government wants him extradited to the United States. Thank you very much, Joe. You mentioned Pompeya and I can't avoid reminding our audience, probably everyone has seen this, a great YouTube of this Pompeya speaking last year to AMN University in which he said when I was a cadet at West Point, becoming an officer, our motto was you will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. And then when I became a CI director, I learned that we lie, we cheat and we steal. Now, of course, he didn't say that we also murder but he did say that this is like, we take training courses, it reminds you of the glory of the American experiment. Now, I think that that is just about American exceptionalism, you know, that America is known by its leaders as being a liar, a cheater and a stealer, a thief. Marjorie Cohn has been an activist lawyer for the underdog, a professor of law, author and prolific commentator on the side of the people for many alternative and professional media. Marjorie, tell us something pertinent legal issues about this case and how Assange is doing and what you expect will be happening. Thank you. Thank you, Ron. I think it's important for people to understand that the reason that he is being indicted is because WikiLeaks published evidence of war crimes by the Bush administration. And in addition to the collateral murder video, there were the Iraq war logs, the Afghan war logs and Guantanamo files. In the collateral murder video that Joe talked about, there was evidence of three different crimes under the Geneva Convention at war crimes. First of all, targeting civilians. Secondly, targeting the rescuers of the civilians because after these 18 people were murdered, unarmed civilians, the rescuers were then fired upon by the US soldiers in the Apache helicopter. And then one of the dead bodies was defaced and mutilated when a US Army Jeep drove over it and cut it in half. And that's evidence of three separate war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. In addition to the collateral murder video, we have the Afghan war logs which showed a greater number of civilian casualties than the US military had copped to. The Iraq war logs, which showed more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians and the systematic murder, torture and rape by the Iraqi Army and the Guantanamo files that documented the abuse and torture of men and boys in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. And Joe talked about the redaction issue and one of the things you see in the indictment against Julian Assange is that he endangered Iraqi and Afghan informants by publishing their names. But John Getz, an investigative reporter from Der Spiegel testified at the extradition hearing that Assange took great pains to redact out the names of US informants. He said that Julian Assange went through a very rigorous redaction process repeatedly reminding his media partners to use encryption and that Assange actually tried to stop Der Freitag from publishing material that could result in the release of unredacted information. Moreover, and this is something we don't hear much about, WikiLeaks revelations actually saved lives. After WikiLeaks published evidence of Iraqi torture centers, the US had established the Iraqi government refused Obama's request to extend immunity to US soldiers who commit criminal and civil offenses. And as a result, Obama had to withdraw US troops from Iraq. Now, one of the things that Joe mentioned was that Julian Assange is accused of being a hacker and the US government is trying to stress that because they have had so much criticism for punishing him and indicting him for practicing journalism. And so they're accusing him of conspiring with Chelsea Manning who turned over these leaked documents to WikiLeaks, conspiring with her to break in to a government computer to steal government documents in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But a digital forensic expert testified at Assange's extradition hearing that the attempted cracking of the password hash was not technologically possible in 2010 when the conversation between Assange and Manning occurred. And even if it were feasible, the purpose would not have been to conceal Manning's identity and it would not have given Manning any increased access to government databases. Now, under the extradition hearing between the United Kingdom and the United States which is the basis for this hearing, this four week hearing in the UK in London, trying the Trump administration, trying to get Julian Assange extradited to the US for trial. And he's facing 175 years in prison. The UK US Extradition Treaty specifically forbids the extradition of a person for a political offense. The treaty doesn't define political offense, but it generally includes espionage, treason, sedition and crimes against state power. Trump is asking the UK to extradite Assange for exposing war crimes. That's a classic political offense. And he's charged under the Espionage Act and espionage constitutes a political offense as well. No media outlet or journalist has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing truthful information because that's protected by the First Amendment. Journalists are allowed to publish material that was illegally obtained by a third person if it's a matter of public concern. And the US government has never prosecuted a journalist or a newspaper for publishing classified information which is an essential tool of journalism. And as Joe said, Obama who actually indicted and went after a record number of journalists refrained from inditing Julian Assange and they considered it and refrained from doing it because then they would have to go after the New York Times, Der Spiegel, LeMonde, et cetera. But Trump, who is furious at anything Obama did and is out to cut that off, was very, very upset when Obama commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence as he was leaving office. She was sentenced to 35 years after serving seven years, Obama commuted the rest of her sentence and that infuriated Donald Trump. Now, there's another reason that Julian Assange should not be extradited under the law, extradited to the United States. And that is the convention against torture which is a treaty the U.S. and the UK have ratified that makes it part of the U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. And the convention against torture has a provision called non-réformant. And that forbids extradition to a country where there is substantial grounds to believe the person would be endangered of being tortured. Now, when Chelsea Manning was in custody in the U.S., she was held in solitary confinement for 11 months. That constitutes torture. And Julian Assange's health has severely deteriorated because of the UK government's refusal to allow him medical attention while he was under a grant of asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. And Niles Meltzer, a UN special rapporteur on torture, examined Assange and in May of 2019, confirmed that Assange exhibited signs of prolonged exposure to psychological torture. And as Joe said, he is also a risk for suicide. If he were sent to the United States, if he's extradited to the United States, and by the way, after Beretser makes her decision on January 4th, and she has granted extradition in 96% of the cases that have come before her, and she even tipped her hand saying there was a high likelihood that he would be extradited. Then there will be several levels of appeal in the UK courts and eventually an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. But if he is sent to the United States, if he is extradited to the United States, and that won't be probably for a couple of years if it does happen, he would be held in a supermax prison, and there was testimony in the extradition hearing about this, in solitary confinement under special administrative measures, denied meaningful contact with his lawyers, and given the torture that he has experienced, his severe health issues, which make him at particularly high risk for the coronavirus, and the fact that he's a suicide risk would be devastating. And it would be very difficult for him to get a fair trial in the United States because the US press is likely to jump on board and talk about these discredited allegations. They weren't even allegations. They were, there was talk in Sweden investigating him for sexual assault. Later, the complainers recanted and they dropped the investigation. But also the case is filed in the Fourth Circuit, US Court of Appeals in Virginia, which is where the so-called warrant error cases were filed. It's a very right-wing court. The media has vilified him. He'd be put in solitary confinement. He'd be denied meaningful contact with his attorneys. And so it would be very, very difficult for Julian Assange to get a fair trial. But the bottom line is that he is being prosecuted for revealing war crimes. And we have to keep that firmly in mind, regardless of what WikiLeaks did or didn't do before after that's what the indictment is all about. It's about revealing war crimes in Iraq, in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo Bay, and the CIA black sites. And if Julian Assange is extradited and indicted, and he is indicted and tried and convicted and sentenced, this will send a message to journalists all over the world. You publish material critical of the US government at your own peril. It will chill the First Amendment freedom of the press and it will be a blow straight to the heart of journalism and of media and the public's right to know. It's an extremely important case and the fact that the corporate media in this country has engaged in a virtual blackout of news. You have to get it from the alternative media, from places like consortium news, from sites that I write on from other places like this webinar is an outrage. And so we really have to do everything we can to free Julian Assange and prevent him from being locked up for 175 years for practicing journalism. Thank you. Thank you very much, Marjorie. I, it's just dreadful, right? In introducing our next speaker, it gives us an occasion to salute whistleblowers around the world. Since Daniel Ellsberg came out with the Pentagon papers almost a half a century ago, we've seen hundreds of whistleblowers, insiders come over to the people. And I want to just mention three or four names out of these hundreds. I think Chelsea Manning has already been mentioned. I just think that it's very important for us to honor her, for her tenacity, her bravery and standing so solidly with the principle of not revealing anything that she may or may not know about Julian Assange. She has just done a fantastic service to humanity. I think we need also to recognize William Benet and Edward Snowden, who've revealed so much about the omnipresent global surveillance by the United States' so-called National Security Agency. And they of course, especially Edward Snowden was very much assisted by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange personally. Also, Catherine Gunn, a British woman who revealed many of the US and UK war crimes against Iraq. Mordechai Vanuunu, this is an Israeli who spent 20 years in prison because he revealed Israel's secret nuclear bombs which are there illegally. Of course, all nuclear bombs should be illegal, but, and there are so many more wonderful humans who have come out against our oppressors. I thank you one and all. Daniel has not only been a whistleblower and a sterling author, his last book, Doomsday Machine is a must read, but he's also been an anti-war activist and I think he still is. And this is how we met in Los Angeles during the Vietnam War resistance. Daniel, give us some of your words. If Julian Assange is successfully extradited to the United States on these charges, no journalist in the world who presents information that has been stamped classified by the United States that has been given to her or him by any means, whatever, will be free of the danger of being extradited to the United States and is effectively kidnapped from any country that has an extradition treaty with the US. And in the US itself, the very prosecution of Julian Assange would be unprecedented as a journalist, a publisher. That has always been regarded as a violation any such proposed prosecution and there have been considerations of such prosecutions before and they've always been rejected by the Department of Justice on the grounds that it would be a blatant violation of the First Amendment, the freedom of the press in our country. They were considered the New York Times reporters to whom I gave the Pentagon Papers back in 1971 were in fact subject to a grand jury at that time which was dropped mainly I think because of the fact that they were subject to the same kind of illegal surveillance that was exposed in my trial which led to the dropping of charges on me. Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith were actually under investigation and as was Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn to academics to whom I'd given parts of the Pentagon Papers and again when they asked whether they had been subject to warrantless wiretaps to illegal wiretapping they weren't further called to the grand jury but they might well have been indicted anyway if had the charges not been dropped because of the revelation by whistleblowers in effect some within the government and out of the illegal surveillance in my case. Now I do think the press at that time and ever since and we're talking that was 49 years ago have always in my opinion neglected to face up to the legal and constitutional aspects of these prosecutions, mine and all of the one since or in two ways. They've never really addressed the fact that charges under the Espionage Act do not allow the defendant to justify her his actions in terms of motives impact, potential impact, the benefit to the country that is hoped for by the leaker let's say and what actual impact has had whether they've had any harm, actual harm or not. I was not allowed to answer the question why did you copy the Pentagon Papers? It was held to be irrelevant by the prosecutor upheld by the judge and that has been true in every one of the cases since then of people who were sources like me or like Chelsea Manning, Tom Drake and others who had been officials and who realized that they had been wrong or would be wrong in continuing to withhold from the public information that had been wrongfully withheld from them and where the secrecy and the lies that maintained it had led to the death of very many people or as in the case of its Snowden's revelations amounted to a abrogation of the Fourth Amendment and other aspects of the Bill of Rights and of our constitutional system in general. The wording of the Espionage Act, as I see on the one hand doesn't allow for discussion of motives as in most cases it's what's called a strict liability offense in which motivation is not an element of the offense or defense either and that means that it's impossible for a whistleblower who is trying to serve the interests of the United States of his country and or uphold the constitutional to reveal lies or crimes cannot be discussed at all which means the possibility of a fair trial is precluded. None of these people have had fair trials or could have a fair trial and that's true as well of Jolene Assange but it's also the case that even the Obama administration which had prosecuted nine such cases of whistleblowers or leakers classified information which was three times a small number that had been prosecuted before only three had been prosecuted starting with me the reason that was so low was that it was understood on the whole by lawyers in the defense in the Justice Department that it was against the First Amendment even to prosecute under the Espionage Act sources like me who had signed a non-disclosure agreement which we were violating because it needed to be violated at that point in the interest of the Constitution as officials we had all taken oaths to protect to defend and support the Constitution of the United States and the crimes and unconstitutional actions that were being protected by classification were clearly violations of that oath if we continued to be silent about them but it was clear that the language of the Espionage Act which had not been written to cover whistleblowers or people who disclosed information to the American public it was meant for spies but nevertheless the drafting of that act and its amendments as later enacted was so broad that it obviously could cover not only journalists and publishers but even readers of what they published anyone who had unauthorized access to that information from New York Times might have labeled classified which they often did that's why we're not telling the source that they would say because this information is classified knowing that a person reading it and giving it to their spouse their children or anybody else would be distributing that information rather than and holding it maintaining it rather than giving it to the proper authorities whatever that might mean in the case of a newspaper well the journalists took the attitude they'll never apply that to readers and that hasn't yet been done but the language is there what's more serious though is that that language very clearly referred could cover the journalists now clearly the First Amendment freedom of the press was meant to allow journalists to inform the public of what was newsworthy what they needed to know to fulfill their obligations as citizens actually to hold the government accountable and to choose among their representatives but the journalists said well it's never happened to us and it only applies to these sources and I can say as a source not only in that occasion but on others sources can't expect much respect from the journalists they deal with they may expect something different but they will be disappointed Julian Assange a little Chelsea Manning Snowden Julian Assange I think all experienced great contempt from the other journalists that they dealt with one of those was a journalist Julian but they all got profiles as I did actually from the New York Times that were extremely not just condescending falsely virtually slanderous that's a little surprising people don't know that I can say that from experience but it's very good for a journalist actually to be in the position of being interviewed or being a source something and have the experience of being misquoted it's very healthy for them in a way to discover the journalist aspect as Julian is facing directly cuts at the notion of a free press and actually a free press is the heart of a republic as I've said on some occasions unauthorized disclosures disclosures other than handouts information that the government has not chosen to put out freely about what they've done that might condemn their actions as criminal or deceptive unconstitutional unauthorized disclosures the life-splot of a republic without it with only government handouts essentially which is what every administration really secretly wants they haven't all taken his blatant efforts to suppress that as the Obama administration did followed now by the Trump administration which has indicted even more people than the eight years of the Obama administration but let's say now the new one not only the source but the journalist themselves and they're holding this information they're acquiring it as well as they're publishing it would put us in the hands of a state that can't really be called democratic certainly with respect to foreign policy or what's called national security in a very broad sense much of which actually impairs our true national security but anyway military matters the military budget and the threats that are posed by the very possession of some of our weapons so there's a great deal of stake here and as I say the press as a whole has failed to inform themselves on the constitutional issues here I know that because I read the articles on this by legal scholars actually was of my own concern in this case and my continuing concern about the need for whistleblowing and I found that journalists almost entirely are ignorant of these issues and they remain so even now when at last a case is being held against I would like to say one of their own one of them but very not coincidentally the case of course is being brought against someone that they can choose to recognize as not being one of them as being something other something that hasn't yet reached them or confronted them with a real challenge so they want to say that journalists not really journalists these are absurd positions basically and is a very unpopular figure in many ways and for a reason by the way that I'll just mention briefly not for what he did in 2010 or 2013 when he helped Edward Snowden get out of Hong Kong actually with the help of his assistant Sarah Harrison a community of Damascus but 2015 and 2016 when he's perceived very widely and with some reason as having deserved the election campaign of Hillary Clinton and that made him very unpopular among my friends shall I say liberals people who did not vote for Donald Trump the fact is 63 million people did vote for Donald Trump and Julie was not unpopular with them however following actually that doesn't bode well for the treatment he can expect from the administration of Joe Biden who's Vice President at that time Hillary Clinton has been mentioned even as a possible official in the Biden administration there's no question that she at that time and as has been quoted by Joe Luria Biden as well were extremely hostile so on the one hand we have the fact that the Obama administration the Obama Biden administration did choose not to prosecute Julie and that was absolutely right in turn constitutional terms that they could not prosecute him without prosecuting the New York Times as well they didn't want to do that in rule either one would be blatantly unconstitutional so that would seem to be very promising then that administration can be appealed to and you see you had it right that time now you're the president rather than the vice president your department of justice should reach the same conclusion but there's one thing that stands in the way they reached those judgments back in 2013 and around then even 2015 2016 gave them a very different feeling about Julian Assange the way these things go back and forth Trump the one who eventually indicted Julian was saying in 2016 I love WikiLeaks but once you get in office the perspective changes I think now that we have a president's elect actually I can't count at all that they will not choose to press this case against the decision of the prior law administration because of their feelings about 2016 now as Joe Laurier brought out in his very comprehensive discussion of the case it has been revealed now that the any evidentiary hearing about extradition there was sensational revelations sensational except ignored by the press amazingly enough except by a brief AP story that I'm aware of that Julian had been subject to crimes by an American intelligence agency almost surely the CIA conceivably NSA national security agency but probably the CIA that he had been overheard even more extensively than I was on unwarranted wiretaps in his case he was surveilled every moment of the day and night including in the women's bathroom lavatory in the Ecuador embassy to which he had gone with his lawyers to speak in suspicion that he might be under surveillance otherwise and not being apparently sufficiently suspicious of the reality which was that there were wiretaps there were microphones under the fire extinguisher and elsewhere in the plugs in the women's bathroom every inch of the place was surveilled but everything that his doctors found in discussion but everything that he said with his lawyers including their documents was in the hands of American intelligence as arranged by them at their request actually now in my case when it came out that I had been overheard on warrantless wiretaps and that no record of this which had been testified to could be found in the FBI files because it was so clearly criminal that it had been moved to the White House the evidence for this to get it out of the FBI files and that there had been efforts to incapacitate me Daniel Ellsberg totally those were the words incapacitate Ellsberg totally on the steps of the Capitol at one point attempted assault or murder and that was the words these were among the things that came out amazingly enough the very same discussion was taking place is testified to by the people who had been working for this global surveillance center that was based in Spain actually but had the security contract with the Ecuadorian Embassy and they had discussed poisoning children's massage actually in other words the same things that were revealed in my case and the revelation of which led to this missile of charges against me with the judge saying that the totality of the circumstances the bizarre circumstances he put it offends a sense of justice and made it impossible to try me fairly and my co-defendant Tony Russo and charges were dropped and much more importantly these actions once revealed figured in a major way in the impeachment hearings of Richard Nixon which led to his resignation and in that case made the war endable at that point the war the Vietnam War now these crimes certainly approved at the highest level would be certainly worthy of being regarded as high crimes and misdemeanors as in the Nixon case worthy of impeachment of a president who has now though he's refusing to admit it has just been deposed by an election but had he not in fact won as he's claiming these would have been appropriate charges to bring against him the immediate point is though it would be ridiculous to extradite to the United States an Australian citizen and Ecuadorian citizen under the US who not only could not be tried fairly in the US even if these acts had not occurred but against whom these crimes had been committed and specifically not only with discussions of killing him but with total discussion of his knowledge of his discussions with his lawyers it's absurd for him to be in prison and as we've just learned in the last few days locked down in a prison that has had in his own cell block several COVID cases and so for his own security everybody has been locked down in there he's been in effect in isolation now for more than a year in this in very bad health so the whole thing is a travesty from start to finish both in the charges against him and in the unfairness the injustice of it and the danger the physical danger that he's in really now is not just by the other people but in the larger context even more seriously this is a danger not just to Julian Assange or injustice to Julian Assange it amounts to the withdrawal of our basic freedom of a Democratic Republic in this ability to get the information that has been wrongfully withheld by the government and it's something that the press should be regarding as a direct attack on their foundational purpose for being on their functions and being concerned by Congress as to their ability to get information as an independent branch of government this needless to say it's not happening it is a great failure of our media so far people like Consortium News Joloria, Kevin Gustola Shadow I think it's called did very good reporting on this and Craig Marie, former ambassador wrote things but it was to them somebody else pointed that the worldwide socialist web I've seen one or two of their pieces was covering this pretty well these are not what we call mainstream media most people in states remain entirely that this is happening what the facts are or what the issues are what the risks are for American democracy what the constitutional issue and unfortunately to this day that's true of most of the press so there's still time for that to be remedied it needs very much to be remedied and I'm very appreciative of programs like this or events like this that enable us to alert others the problem thank you Daniel as activists often say in Latin American countries Somos todos Assange and the media the mass media should recall this and say to themselves we are all Julian Assange thank you very much speakers and we now have about 10 minutes we have 17 questions I'm picking some and we'll after our 10 minute interchange here start to call on them or I'll read them up to specific speakers do the three of you have anything you'd like to say given what others have said or something that you forgot to say let's take about 10 minutes with that and then we'll have a half an hour discussion I would just briefly say that I left out an important part of the hearing which was Jen Robinson one of Assange's lawyers her testimony was read in which she talked about a meeting with Dana Rohrbacker who was a U.S. congressman at the time she said was sent by Trump to the Ecuadorian embassy for a deal of pardon if he revealed who the source was of the VNC emails and Assange refused sticking with the principle of not giving up the sources however this was important from the defense's point of view because it showed the political nature again of this and some theorize that Trump was furious that Assange wouldn't try to clear him from the Russia gate burden that he was under and that's one reason he sent he wanted him and died and arrested and in fact as I said Cassandra Fairbax testified that Trump ordered this arrest I just wanted to thank Marjorie and Dan for what they said about our coverage we were one of the few media outlets who were able to get access to the courtroom remotely we saw every minute on the screen and there was one other thing about the title of the book which was WikiLeaks Guardian's book that's all I wanted to add about the fact how can an Australian journalist working outside the United States be indicted by the Espionage Act because of a 1961 amendment to the Espionage Act that allowed universal jurisdiction before 61 Assange could not have been charged under this and that came out of a case of an American diplomat in the embassy in Warsaw who was caught in bed with another woman and the public security services got a photograph they blackmailed him to get classified documents he took him out of the embassy and no longer on West Territory one of the post territory some congressman got crazy about that and had this amendment put in that's how Assange could be charged Thank you Joe you've actually answered a couple of questions that have been asked is anyone else Marjorie or Daniel have something you'd like to add or exchange that others have said I see one question here questions has the Espionage Act been challenged in the Supreme Court could question the answer is no the one person who brought this up to the Supreme Court Morrison who was the second person after me to be charged with this about 10 years after my case brought it up to the Supreme Court but they denied they denied hearing it so it has never been addressed in the Supreme Court to this day actually the constitutional issues and if we go back 49 years the chances the legal basis of it the chances even my conviction being overturned that is the Espionage Act being overturned on constitutional grounds were quite good at that point that can't be said today there's been enough changes we've seen in the Supreme Court even before Trump so we can't at all be confident that the current a five majority justices will notice that there are extreme constitutional violations going on here but in any case they haven't ever yet addressed it right we're going to get into the questions in just a couple minutes is there anything else that you three would like to say regarding something that Marjorie yes in 1919 there was a prosecution that went all the way to the Supreme Court Shank v. US Shank was a socialist he was an official in the National Socialist Party was an anti-war activist and he was charged under the Espionage Act and convicted and the Supreme Court upheld his conviction against a First Amendment challenge saying that by distributing flyers against the draft he created a clear and present danger to the United States and therefore the First Amendment didn't stop his prosecution under the Espionage Act and about the same time another socialist Eugene Debs was tried and convicted under the Espionage Act his conviction went all the way to the Supreme Court he gave an anti-war speech and his conviction was also affirmed by the Supreme Court well okay if you don't have any more to say to each other let's open up to the questions I think I'll take the opportunity to select some we have 22 questions and Anne Batista maybe I'm not pronouncing your last name very well but she's asked several questions I'll pick a couple and I think one should go to Joe she's asked about Vault 7 and she says something about you perhaps did not say that Assange or rather the Democratic National Committee's emails were leaked rather than hacked we're talking about not Vault 7 but the DNC as she also mentioned Vault 7 I don't know if you could take both those questions okay well I'm not sure what you're talking about the DNC emails and the Podesta emails well the DNC hired a company called Crowdstrike to examine their servers and they came up with statements that Russia had hacked them but in closed door testimony that only became revealed this year with Sean Henry who was the president of Crowdstrike he said they had no evidence of any information from the servers so there was no proof of any hack let alone by Russia that's what the head of Crowdstrike said so of course there are those like the veterans intelligence professionals for sanity who published a consortium news who have argued even earlier that this was an internal leak that it couldn't have been transferred overseas because of the speed rates etc my point before was it didn't matter to me who got the emails so I'm not saying was Russia I'm not saying was anybody else I don't know I'm saying it's relevant from the point of view of journalism who the source was if the documents are verified and accurate I'm not talking about oral statements in an interview with a source I'm talking about documents so that's what the position is again I don't think it's relevant but Sean Henry said that there was no exfiltration that they had evidence even though they'd made statements all along that those indictments that the 12 GRU agents were responsible for but I know about Vault 7 I'm not sure what the question is I can mention Vault 7 if you want me to Can I make a point here please even to break in I think we should all recognize these issues have nothing to do with the case brought against literally nothing to do we're talking about a hypothetical prosecution which has not been brought about events that took place after 2010 they have no bearing on the charges or the issues, the constitutional issues at all so we could just as well argue we could talk about Breitbart we could talk about any journalism you want in some other case but whatever Julian did after 2010 I don't know if any of these charges go to 2011 but there may be no bearing on this case am I wrong? I think that's correct that's correct Okay Yukari has asked and I think this could be for anyone given as it has just been mentioned Daniel thank you for saying that this COVID has now come to the cell block where Assange is someone has asked Yukari can't there be some emergency available to the public or lawyers that to stop this horrendous treatment of him now isn't this an extra motivation that can be used somehow? Julian Assange's defense team has argued to judge Barrester in the London court that he is at particular risk for the coronavirus because of his pulmonary weaknesses and pre-existing condition as a result of medical treatment that was denied him when he was in the Ecuadorian embassy by the UK government and there had been I believe even then even a few months ago cases of the coronavirus in Belmarsh prison which is where Julian Assange is being held and yet she denied that request by his lawyers so he is in danger, he is in jeopardy of contracting the coronavirus and if he does it would be devastating to him and her ruling cannot be challenged at this point by a higher court? I think they could have taken a writ to a higher court I don't know if they did on that particular issue we have the same situation in the United States where prisons are basically incubators for the COVID-19 and those challenges don't go anywhere people who are incarcerated have many fewer rights than people on the outside One more question to you Marjorie the fact that there has been disallowed normal oral closing remarks and apparently I don't know but it sounds like the public will never know what the closing remarks are is this really legal? I mean how can she get away with this? Well I don't know what her justification was she might be talking about national security and I think extensive I think 200 or 300 pages of closing submissions by the defense and the prosecution and I think that was November 10th if I'm not mistaken and then I think the prosecution has two weeks that would be the 20 right okay so it was the 16th plus 14 is what? I'm not a great mathematician and the prosecution will give its closing submissions they're extensive they're in writing but they for some reason they're not being released to the public Well I mean how can we be sure that she's going to read 200 pages? We can never be sure that any judge is going to read anything Okay Dennis asks why is the government what is the government's legal rationale for indicting a non-U.S. citizen under this espionage act who allegedly committed crimes outside of the U.S. territory I mean he's never lived in the United States I mean how can this happen? I think I answered that before by talking about that 1961 amendment Oh yes they can pick up any journalist anywhere in the world if they feel the U.S. government that they broke U.S. law technically he did if you look at that section of the espionage act which is on constitutional most reason people would say that they have a universal jurisdiction in the espionage act Right Trump has it's been said that Trump intervened here with a another politician and the question goes out does this mean that the president could individually drop the charges and if that's the case could Bidden drop the charges and if that's the case can we not put pressure can there not be put pressure by the public to do this This really goes to the whole issue of the independence of the department of justice by the attorney general and the attorney general is not the president's personal lawyer the attorney general is the attorney general of the United States but Trump has made it very clear that he considers the attorney general to be his personal lawyer and he fired Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Mueller investigation and now has his lackey in place but Biden has made it very clear Joe Biden has made it very clear that he wants the department of justice to be independent in fact he has said when asked about whether or not he would pursue or stand in the way of the indictment of Donald Trump for the many crimes that he has clearly committed he said that he is going to remain he wants to look forward not backward exactly what Barack Obama said about prosecuting the torturers from the Bush administration was a big mistake but Biden has said many times that he wants the attorney general and the department of justice to be independent that said Barack Obama certainly had close communication with Eric Holder his attorney general and so I think that Biden if there is pressure put on Biden he is not going to do things without pressure that is what I am writing about as we speak then perhaps he could be persuaded in Barack Obama's example following Barack Obama's example of not indicting Julian Assange because of the New York Times problem that is an interesting point Marjorie this came out in the hearing the politicization of the department of justice and the defense to try to show this is a political case and we heard that Barr the attorney general actually believes in this cockamani unitary executive idea and he believes and he said in speeches this year Barr that the president should be the one to determine who is indicted or not as if he were a king so Barr is a big part of the problem too not just Trump as you pointed out but that came out in the hearing that is an interesting point you made Marjorie Biden if you wanted to go back to the rationale that the Obama administration had for not inditing could use this that would be great Trump also could pardon Assange some people saying that he might pardon Assange and Snowden just out of thumbing his nose at the establishment someone has asked that you said that Julian would be handed over regarding the request by Sweden the second time to ask Assange to come to Sweden to be asked once again about this sexual claim how did this come out that this would be the case that if he would be handed over to the US if he did come to Sweden how did this come to light well this is what his lawyers and he said at the time that he went into the embassy that he could not afford to go back to Sweden because he felt he would be unwiddly extradited to the United States and that we now know that that's what the US wanted to happen so that's what that was about there was another point was the Stefania Morizzi the town journalist in her great work in getting foyers was able to show the British Crown Prosecution Service enormous pressure on the Swedish government not to interview Assange via video which Sweden had apparently done in other cases with someone they needed to interview abroad so the British government all along did not want Assange to go to Sweden and they wanted him to leave the embassy and go to Sweden and once he stepped out of the embassy they could have arrested him for bail skipping and then they could have started then the US could have unveiled the indictment if it was ready well burning bomb administration would not have happened but the Swedish issue was dropped four times we have to keep in mind four different times I believe three times okay three times that's enough that case was dropped and he he feared he didn't fear that case as much as being sent to the United States if he'd gone back to Sweden okay regarding the espionage act do you know if there's any are any treaties the fact that the espionage act allows journalists to be picked up anywhere in the world are there any international treaties or treaties with the United States that prohibits such a thing well as I said the extradition if he is extradited to the United States the extradition treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States is going to be determinative and that extradition treaty prohibits the extradition of someone for a political offense and exposing war crimes which is what WikiLeaks and Julian Assange did in 2010-2011 is a classic political offense so just under that extradition treaty that would prevent his extradition and one of the grounds for extradition is espionage he's not charged with espionage he's charged under the espionage act so that's another ground to show that the extradition is being requested for a political offense and a reason that the judge should deny extradition and if she doesn't if she grants extradition then as I said there would be several levels of appeal and eventually it would get to the European Court of Human Rights and they would assess the legalities under this extradition treaty in the United States and the United Kingdom.