Rep. McDermott: Could WikiLeaks Have Prevented 9/11?


Jesse Freeston of The Real News joined us on the Stakeout this weekend, asking Congressman McDermott (D-Wash.) his views on WikiLeaks. The Congressman couldn’t speak to the specific nature of the cables Freeston pointed out, but expressed a general sense of openness to the idea that the cables and WikiLeaks work would likely benefit the public. McDermott referenced an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by Coleen Rowley and Bogdan Dzakovic, endorsing the idea that had there been an entity like WikiLeaks in the past, public whistleblowing that might have prevented 9/11 would have been more readily facilitated.

“I don’t know the facts — the legal facts — but I know the information that’s coming out is very important. I read an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, about the fact that had we had WikiLeaks in 2001, we may well not have had 9/11 occur.”

Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002.

McDermott continued: “The American people have the right to know. The most important of our freedoms is free speech. The First Amendment is what makes a democracy work. If the public doen’t know what’s going on, then they can’t vote intelligently and when the government wants to hide stuff, then the people are cut off from information.”

“…I certainly don’t think that they [WikiLeaks] were wrong until I hear the evidence and see what’s going on. I really think that people ought to be very careful on what they make as a judgment now.”

“I’m old enough to remember something called the Pentagon Papers, and those papers told us what was going on in Vietnam and why it never should have occurred or it should have ended.”

With these statements McDermott apparently became only the second U.S. government official to be positive about WikiLeaks’ disclosure of diplomatic cables, the other being Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx), see and read his speech on the House floor.

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Dec. 12, 2010; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]

Rep. Van Hollen: Wikileaks “Reckless and Irresponsible”


This morning, we asked Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD): “Do you think that Julianne Assange of WikiLeaks should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act or some other action that the Justice Department seems to be contemplating?”

Van Hollen replied: “If indeed he violated the law, if there’s that kind of determination, then prosecution should go forward, but there’s obviously a very serious question as to whether or not there was any violation of the law.”

Indeed, as McClatchy reports, the Justice Department is having a difficult time linking Bradley Manning, accused of conveying the leaked documents, to Assange in a criminal way. They also report that “the State Department didn’t respond to several requests from Assange to work out which documents threatened national security.”

Van Hollen continued: “Regardless of the legal standing, it was reckless and irresponsible to leak all these cables. I do think it has the potential not only to jeopardize some very sensitive issues with respect to national security and foreign policy but you always run the risk when you do this of literally putting people’s lives in danger.”

Our attempted follow-up, “What about the New York Times and so on?” was rebuffed as Van Hollen departed Fox’s studios. The New York Times and other papers are also making leaked cables public, so why is the administration only threatening WikiLeaks with criminal prosecution? U.S. officials concede they can’t point to a single case of a document released by WikiLeaks having led to anyone’s death. First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, speaking to Time Magazine, says stretching the law to target WikiLeaks would threaten freedom of the press.

Perhaps more significantly, the issue should not simply be the possibility that a collaborator or such could be killed from a leak or WikiLeaks’ alleged violations of law. It should be killings resulting from government policy and violations of law by the U.S. government exposed in the cables and as part of its reaction to their release. Glenn Greenwald has written about aspects of this; strong interview on FAIR’s CounterSpin.

[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Dec. 12, 2010; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]

Durbin, invoking WikiLeaks Backer Ellsberg, Attacks Wikileaks...

If you go to Daniel Ellsberg's web page -- http://www.ellsberg.net -- or his Twitter feed -- http://twitter.com/#!/danielellsberg -- it is virtually wall-to-wall an ardent defense of WikiLeaks, most recently ditching and attacking Amazon following their pulling the plug on WikiLeaks. Yet, this morning on CBS's (Viacom) Face the Nation, Sen. Dick Durbin cited the nobility of Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers as a contrast to the hideous actions of Julian Assange.

Like many, I've for several years been lulled into watching The Daily Show and Colbert Report (both also Viacom, btw) as a less painful way of following what the establishment media are doing. Humor was supposed to make it all go down easier. But change is overdue. This is far funnier than Stewart and Colbert's "intentional humor" (there's also their unintentional humor), and with Schieffer and Kyl a nice microcosm of the media insanity over WikiLeaks, emphasis added in bold:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah. I want to ask both of you about this whole WikiLeaks mess. I mean, we’ve had another huge dump of information, these confidential--some of it classified information that’s been made public by this group called WikiLeaks headed by this man named Julius-- Julian Assange. What-- what’s going on here? How bad is this, or is it something we ought not to be worried about? And why aren’t we trying to find this guy or are we?
SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN: Well, I think we are trying to find him and a lot of-- lot of people are. He has criminal charges pending in Sweden, if I’m not mistaken. And I’m told that some hundred and eighty nations now would honor those charges if they discovered him.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think he’s damaged national security? SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN: I do.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You do?

SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN: I do. And I’ll tell you I come from an era where I think Daniel Ellsberg situation with the Pentagon papers was a clear contrast. Here was the disclosure of classified information in the midst of a war that brought out some things that were not well known, not public and might have changed I think the course of history.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN: In this case, Mister Assange is doing a dump of information across a broad spectrum of things. It is not about any particular issue and whether you agree with Ellsberg or not, his is a much different case. First question is, how did he ever get access to so much--

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Yeah. SENATOR RICHARD DURBIN: --information? BOB SCHIEFFER: So what-- what’s you take?

SENATOR JON KYL (overlapping): And-- and we need to find that out because this is very damaging. What troubles me is this is the third dump. And the administration didn’t seem too concerned about the first two dumps. It’s only when it starts to embarrass the State Department, because they have cables that are very relieving-- excuse me, revealing about what some of our diplomats have said about other world leaders that we appear to be all that exercised about it. This-- this guy could have been, it seems to me, we could have gone after him a long time ago.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you think as a terrorist, could he be charged with espionage? I mean what-- what do you think he’s up to here?

SENATOR JON KYL: Well, he’s up to publicity and I presume making money as to the exact statute under which he can be charged I’m not sure that-- that gets into a very complicated-- Dick and I serve on the same committee. We had a hearing about exactly what kind of statutory framework we need for this kind of phenomenon in the future. And Ben Cardin and I are going to be working up some legislation, I think that would enable us to more broadly be able to charge people even if they’re not handing over information to a -- to an enemy, for example.