Letter to President Biden Affirming Support for Julian Assange and Journalism
February 1, 2024
Dear President Biden,
This month marks the last chance for Julian Assange. On February 20, the founder of Wikileaks will go before London’s High Court to argue the injustice of his extradition to the United States, which Britain has approved.
What is the trial of Assange all about? Legally speaking, it’s about 18 charges for allegedly transmitting classified documents to the public. Practically speaking, it’s about making courageous journalism a crime and silencing dissent. The prosecution of Assange, according to Georgetown Law professor Jonathan Turley, may be “the most important press freedom case in the US in 300 years.”
Turley is not the only expert alarmed by your Justice Department’s prosecution of this journalist. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur, Nils Melzer, has argued that the conduct by both Presidents Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden in this case amounts to “torture,” and represents a gross violation of human rights, as highlighted by a Doctors for Assange article in the Lancet. The New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El País, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have all spoken up in solidarity on Assange’s behalf, as have United States presidential candidates Cornel West, Marianne Williamson, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As Kennedy wrote in March 2023, “There’s no America without a free press. There’s no free press without a free Julian Assange.”
This growing chorus of voices wants to end what amounts to a cruel charade. But justice can’t be served without a true movement from the American people. Why should Main Street America care about the fate of this Australian journalist and the media organization Assange founded in Iceland, Mr. President? Because Assange risked his life to defend endangered Americans.
A decade before the death of your son, Beau, and so many other American soldiers who lost their lives due to toxic exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan, Assange and Wikileaks released a 2006 United States Air Force memo documenting the toxic effects of the burn pits, the open-air waste facilities that have been the Agent Orange of the Forever War generation. The government estimates that as many as 3.5 million American veterans (to say nothing of Afghans and Iraqis) were exposed to this “silent killer,” or what the scholar Rob Nixon calls “slow violence.”
Reporting from Haditha in 2008, I was one of those Americans exposed to the burn pits. Assange’s journalism has saved lives and altered discourse. Assange has courageously demanded accountability for corporations (such as Monsanto and Kellogg, Brown, Root who manned the Haditha burn pits) by calling attention to their actions in public via Wikileaks. It was not just the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay or the murder of foreign journalists in Iraq that Assange spoke up for through the releases of Wikileaks. Assange risked his life to speak up for the Americans who are, to this day, still dying from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Matthew Hoh, a Global War on Terrorism veteran, and a 2022 North Carolina Senate candidate, argues that “The ‘crime’ committed by Edward Snowden and Julian Assange was letting the people know what our government was doing. Their ongoing persecution is a national disgrace.” Snowden himself has argued for Assange’s release, claiming that this case marks a “dark moment” in the history of the United States, as reported by Reuters.
But the accord in the veteran community does not just echo from the Forever War generation. The Vietnam veteran and film director, Oliver Stone, has also spoken up for Assange, writing, “I am Julian Assange because I could be next and you could too. Do you want your government telling journalists anywhere in the world what they can and can’t publish?”
The legendary Vietnam War whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, echoes Stone’s call for Americans to identify with the cancellation, defamation, persecution, prosecution, and torture of Assange. For Ellsberg, who recently died and was also charged under the controversial 1917 Espionage Act, Assange’s freedom was one of his final wishes.
“I am Assange,” Ellsberg said in the last year of his life, as reported by Newsweek. He joined Stone’s Spartacus call, and amplified Kennedy’s argument that the torture of Assange is equivalent to the destruction of the First Amendment and the abuse of all Americans who cherish the Constitution.
Therefore, in unison with Ellsberg, Stone, Snowden, Hoh, Kennedy, Gabbard, Ramaswamy, Williamson, West, Rashida Tlaib, Rand Paul, Ilhan Omar, Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, Matt Taibbi, Alice Walker, John Malkovich, John Cusack, Jeffrey Sterling, Terry Albury, Joe Rogan, Pamela Anderson, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, Tucker Carlson, Tom Morello, New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El País, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and so many others, Honest Media asks President Biden and the Department of Justice to restore the American Constitution and free the most consequential and innovative journalist of the twenty-first century.
Free Julian Assange, Mr. President.
For more information on this case, follow the activism and journalism of Julian’s wife, Stella Assange, and please tune into the 24 hour countdown to the hearing on Stella’s YouTube channel @StellaAssange:
https://substack.com/@stellaassangesubstack
http://www.StellaAssange.com
#FreeAssange
It's rare that you see such a multi-partisan coalition demanding the same thing. Amy Goodman and Tucker Carlson on the same side? Wow!