Erring on the Side of Enlightenment

Julian Assange isn’t Osama bin Laden. If the hackers had uncovered a conspiracy against the United States, they would be heroes. The rabble-rousing against them is damned reminiscent of the McCarthy era.

I couldn’t wait for the latest WikiLeaks revelations. Of course they weren’t totally new: Everyone familiar with Afghanistan knows that corruption is in full bloom in the Karzai government; the fact that members of the Afghan government had smuggled suitcases full of money out of the country had already been reported by newspapers.

But when the U.S. Embassy, citing a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report to the State Department, reported that the vice president of Afghanistan had funneled $52 million in cash to Saudi Arabia while on a visit there, that was indeed important information. And, according to embassy reports, that Arab potentates had regularly encouraged the United States to wage war against Iran and assassinate Iran’s president, a man whom they had just recently received with honors and publicly embraced, was not even new or necessarily interesting.

It’s all about enlightenment

The people of this nation have a right to know how they are being systematically lied to, and they also have a right to know just how the Afghan vice president came by that much money. Such information not only serves to educate and form the basis for public opinion in the Arab world or Afghanistan, but it also does the same for the people here in Europe as well. The bottom line is that we have a lot at stake there, and not just financially.

It may well be that those who were named in those leaked reports now find it hard to explain their words. But I have yet to hear any statements, whether from the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. government or any presidents or sheiks, that what was leaked was untrue. And no one here or in the United States came up with the idea of threatening punishment for anyone leaking confidential diplomatic cables from other countries criticizing the United States and calling for military attacks against it. People in other countries who exposed such information would presumably be praised as courageous pioneers working to prevent armed conflict or to combat corruption.

Undiplomatic comments by politicians, government employees and leaders of other nations may sometimes be uncalled for or perhaps even enraging. But the princess of Monaco or any of the princes in Buckingham Palace have to put up with far more, including the leaking of their intimate telephone conversations. The leaking of personal information is one of the costs of a free press. The first many people learn of something is when they read it in the papers. WikiLeaks and its founder can rely on freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Germany. And the Internet belongs to the modern media. They enjoy that constitutional protection, as does every local newspaper. There’s really no question about that.

WikiLeaks operates legally

In the discussion of who is actually a journalist and is thereby entitled to protections afforded journalists and private sources, new definitions have been in effect since 2002 regarding the new media forms: “People who work for or are involved in the preparation, production and dissemination of printed material, radio broadcasts, film reports and those professionally involved in information or the exchange of opinion are entitled to refuse to testify in legal proceedings. This applies if they prepared or contributed information, communications and materials for editorial content or editorial information and communications services.” We extracted this from Article 5 of the German Basic Federal Law concerning freedom of the press as it is expressed in federal law.

WikiLeaks vets documents prior to public release. Some are never released; some are edited to avoid disclosure of names or faces. I know of no case where anyone’s basic privacy was compromised or anyone was acutely endangered by such a release. In that regard, WikiLeaks bears the same responsibilities as German newspapers and newsmagazines when they publish details of German intelligence agencies or classified NATO reports concerning bombardments in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province.

What we need to know

The question often arises in public discussion as to who controls what WikiLeaks chooses to release. Nobody does, of course. The staff decides between informational necessity and protection of the private sphere or dangers to individuals affected by the disclosure of a scandal. And they are held responsible for their own actions just as other journalists are. Perhaps they’re not answerable to a press council, or at least not yet. But the law does set limits on the Fourth Estate as well. The courts oversee compliance just as in the case of any newspaper, magazine or television broadcaster.

The current American hysteria to persecute Assange and anyone supporting, defending or even reading WikiLeaks is damned reminiscent of the accusations made by the House Un-American Activities under McCarthy, that master of character assassination during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s. Sarah Palin wants them hunted down as if they were al-Qaida terrorists. Anyone who talks like Palin or Senator Lieberman should just be ignored because Julian Assange isn’t Osama bin Laden, and WikiLeaks isn’t part of the Axis of Evil. When the entire United States government, with the support of its extensive legal staff, spends weeks searching in vain for some law Assange may have broken, it most likely doesn’t exist.

Unfortunately, German politicians — especially those who weren’t mentioned in the leaked U.S. diplomatic reports — as well as many German media personalities are again playing that sort of conformist role exactly as scripted by the United States.

According to WikiLeaks documents, the United States used diplomatic pressure in 2007 to prevent the issuance of arrest warrants against those who kidnapped the German citizen El Masri. There’s still a great deal to be brought to light in that scandal. And that’s not the only thing I anxiously await in the next release of 250,000 new documents.