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17th May 2014 from TwitLonger

ABC The Drum: Glenn Greenwald discusses why Julian Assange has good reason to fear US extradition

Steve Cannane: In your book you published a document that shows that Julian Assange was placed on an NSA 'manhunting timeline'. Can you explain to us what this means and what the NSA wanted other countries to do with Assange?

Glenn Greenwald: That manhunting timeline is remarkable because it essentially contains a comprehensive list of all of the people around the world whom the United States Government wants either to kill or to detain without charges or to prosecute. So Julian Assange's inclusion on that list by itself is fairly remarkable, but what that document described is a conserted campaign on the part of the US Government not only to target Assange, and not even only to target WikiLeaks, but to target, as that document put it, 'the human network that supports WikiLeaks'. And what they were specifically trying to do at that time in 2010, right after the Afghanistan War Logs had been published, was to pressure and coerce their allies who had troops in Afghanistan to criminally prosecute Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and then to go after the human network that supports that organization.

Steve Cannane: Julian Assange has now been in the Ecuadorian Embassy for nearly two years. He fears extradition to the US and it seems potential charges under the Espionage Act. Do you think he has good reason to fear extradition?

Glenn Greenwald: Definitely. I mean, there are leading American media figures who have called not only for Julian Assange's prosecution but for his murder, y'know, by drone or by other means. There's obviously a grand jury investigation secretly pending in the United States with regard to the attempt to criminally prosecute WikiLeaks. I think the only reason he hasn't been prosecuted yet is because they're satisfied with his current situation and how many limitations it places on him. But there's all kinds of evidence including lots of cables and the like that have been published by Australian newspapers that make very clear that the idea of the United States Government very much is to neutralize him however they have to including through criminally prosecuting him even though what Julian Assange did, which is receive classified information from a government source and then publish it, is what newspapers all over the world do every single day. And it's what I've done at the Guardian as well.

Steve Cannane: Well on that point, as a publisher, would he not be protected under the Supreme Court judgment of 1971 which allowed the New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers?

Gleen Greenwald: Well that actually was a very limited ruling. What that ruling was actually about was that the Nixon Administration wanted to constrain the New York Times in advance from publishing the Pentagon Papers, what's called 'prior restraint'. They wanted a court order barring the New York Times from publishing that. And what the Supreme Court said was prior restraint is one of the most extreme remedies possible, it's an infringement of a free press, and therefore, y'know, it may be that the New York Times ends up committing crimes for which you can prosecute them, but we're not going to constrain them in advance. So that actually didn't answer the question about whether or not journalists can be prosecuted for publishing Top Secret documents under the First Amendment. That question has actually never been tested because the US Government hasn't ever prosecuted journalists for doing that, and that would be the sort of test case if they tried to do it against Julian Assange. And they would make the argument, as corrupted as it is, that he's not actually a journalist, that he's not engaged in a journalistic venture, he's just leaking information indiscriminately. And even though that's not true, courts might be sympathetic to that claim.

Steve Cannane: You recently returned to the US for the first time in a long time when your work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Were you concerned that you would be arrested?

Glenn Greenwald: I was. Y'know, and the reason was that all kinds of senior officials in the US Government, senior national security officials, had for many months been both publicly and privately arguing that what I was doing was criminal and that I ought to be arrested and prosecuted. They deliberately created this environment in which that threat was very real. On top of which we had lawyers speaking with the Justice Department trying to get assurances that I could return safely to the US and wouldn't be arrested. The Justice Department refused to give any information at all about their intentions. My partner, of course, was detained at Heathrow Airport under a Terroism Law. The UK Government's position is that there is still an active criminal investigation pending against not only him but myself and the other journalist involved. So there's clearly been an attempt to cultivate this kind of environment in which they wanted us to be worried and concerned about the legal consequences for continuing the journalism. So it was definitely uncertain what would happen when I returned.

Steve Cannane: Okay, so the fact that you were not arrested, and I presume there were fears that perhaps you could have been charged with aiding and abetting the escape of Edward Snowden, does that mean that Julian Assange is safer than he may think?

Glenn Greenwald: No, I don't think so. I think there's a huge difference. Y'know, the jorunalism that I was doing was with an internationally recognized, very large newspaper and media organizations around the world. I'm an American citizen. I think that I'm perceived as being more of a traditional journalist in the way that it would cause a huge black eye for the United States if they were to try and do something to me in the middle of this story. By contrast, Julian is more easily demonizable in America. He doesn't work for a traditional media outlet. He's not an American citizen. He doesn't have a history of working as a journalist. And so I think how that would be perceived is much different in terms of the effect on the United States than how it would be perceived if they did things to journalists working on this case.


source: http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-16/journalist-glenn-greenwald-says-there-is-zero/5458794

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