A Criminal Walks While an Innocent Man is Tried.
Julian Assange, founder of the Wikileaks clearinghouse for espionage and whistleblowers has returned to Australia. After spending years as a fugitive and the past five in a London prison, a plea deal allowed him to walk free after a short guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information.
Assange has been in a legal battle with the United States after he conspired with US spy and criminal Chelsea Manning to leak classified documents. Assange maintained that he is a journalist and exercised freedom of speech to publish leaked information. The United States intelligence agencies thought differently.
It’s been some time since the 18-count indictment against Assange by the U.S. Department of Justice dropped in 2019. The indictment breaks down into three primary categories.
1. Conspiracy: Assange was charged with conspiring with Chelsea Manning to illegally access and disclose classified national defense information, including attempts to crack a Department of Defense computer password.
2. Espionage Charges: Assange faced multiple counts under the Espionage Act for the unauthorized receipt and dissemination of sensitive national defense documents, highlighting significant breaches in information security.
3. Other Issues: Additional charges included his role in encouraging illegal computer intrusions and attempts to obtain further classified information, showcasing a pattern of illicit activities targeting government data.
Meanwhile, Evan Gershkovich: A journalist for the Wall Street Journal went on trial in Russia for alleged espionage. Gershkovich has been detained in Russia since March 2023 and is the first American journalist charged with such offenses in Russia since the Cold War.
Gershkovich is on trial for allegedly gathering classified information on behalf of the U.S. government. Russian authorities claim he was caught "red-handed" while attempting to obtain state secrets. I believe a conviction is highly probable given the political nature of the case and the Russian judicial system's track record on espionage charges.
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It’s important to note that I believe Gershkovich to be completely innocent of these charges. Recall that former US Marine Paul Whelan has been in Russian prison since 2018 for similar false charges. Two administrations have since failed to bring him home.
I am often asked at keynotes and events whether I am concerned about Russian reciprocity for my role in capturing Robert Hanssen, Russia’s top American spy in the US intelligence community. While I do not fear a threat on US soil, my answer is always that I will never set foot in Russia or countries friendly to the former Soviet Union. Gershkovich’s case is precisely why. Russian intelligence arrests certain US citizens for bogus charges and holds circus-ring sham trials. I suspect that the end of Gershkovich’s Russian saga will be a prisoner swap and hopefully Putin does not once again get the better of us. Let’s hope Whelan returns as well.
What do you think about Julian Assange’s freedom? Was he a malicious spymaster, or an innocent journalist, or perhaps something in-between, a fellow traveler that helped anyone publish information, including spies? How do you see the balance between transparency and national security evolving in today's digital age?
What about Gershkovich? Does Biden have a duty to bring him home? And has the delay to bring Gershkovich and Whelan back to US soil indicate a failure of US diplomacy?
Feel free to share your thoughts and engage in the discussion on the implications of both cases.
#CyberSecurity #LegalUpdates #NationalSecurity #Transparency #istandwithEvan
If you're interested in learning more about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, we prepared this 20-question quiz about him and his organization: https://mastersoftrivia.com/en/all-quizzes/famous-people/history-makers/figures/julian-assange/
Thanks for sharing your opinion with us, Eric.
Attended University of Benin
5 个月Freedom for Assange is freedom for the oppressed, underprivileged, women and children in the world. Go on Julian ,we are standing with you always. My support is coming from Africa. You were borne for this purpose.
Customer-centric Solutions Architecture and Engineering
5 个月Like many things, Assange is complicated. I appreciate that he helped expose atrocities happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. However a true journalist would have taken appropriate measures in further leaks that exposed the names of innocent people and put them in danger. His seeking of notoriety led him to being blinded to being obviously used to launder the Clinton emails and many other items.
Connecting people to build stronger, more resilient organizations
5 个月The cases paint a portrait of how Russia has expertly synergized information warfare; in an Orwellian context. The narrative of Assange as a freedom fighter who was at risk of danger from the US government which prevailed in social media is undermined by the evidence of his complicity with hostile intelligence agencies and the fact (that like Manning) on the balance he received great leniency in his sentencing through the admission of guilt. By contrast people who have committed no apparent crime are tried without evidence by Russia to leverage the freedom of proven war criminals like in the Griner:Bout trade; and reflecting on this contrast in the treatment of Assange and Gershkovich. That the popular consciousness could even draw a parallel between these cases at all is a reflection on how effectively Russia has distorted the popular perception of reality; or perhaps instead, how unperceptive the average person is to facts by comparison with their receptiveness to social persuasion.?The surface perception of cryptocurrency as a liberating force in economics in the popular consciousness is similarly contrasted to the sub-surface connections to authoritarian regimes, and its specific attachment to Wikileaks in this context.