One reason I joined the National Press Club in 1995 was that on various occasions before Hong Kong’s handover I’d darkened the door of the FCC. I hoped that the NPC’s substantial oblong bar might be cousin to the FCC’s main bar with diverse central casting characters including criminal barristers of the
Rumpole flavour, cargo shippers, pilots, politicians and others seeking what was in the wind as journalists’ tongues loosened, and vice versa.

Though the NPC I joined wasn’t quite as colorful as lingering old-timers described, it still offered intrigues and camaraderie. In The Reliable Source Bar & Grill, a plaque pays tribute to John Prokoff, a bartender before my time whose bone-dry quips included “Let’s get drunk and be somebody” and “Do you want separate glasses?” I did know the late barkeep John Kulawski. Whenever my young kids joined me, they left enriched with coins John fetched from their ears. John, gruff but erudite, turned the bar into a
continuing education.

The club occupies the top two floors of the 14-storey National Press Building in the epicentre of the US capital. When built in 1927 it was Washington’s largest private office building. The club once owned the whole place but lost it after a mismanagement scandal many years ago amid a major renovation. From the club windows one can glimpse the White House over the top of the US Treasury Department. Across the street is the Willard Hotel, to which President Ulysses S Grant, fleeing presidential pressures, strolled for drinks or a meal in the lobby, where he was bedeviled by favor-seekers. Hence, “lobbyist.”

Plenty of lobbyists, with their cousins in public/media relations, haunt the NPC nowadays, a large swathe of the membership. Their higher dues, and the tables they buy out when bosses or clients or officials they’d like to influence address the club as ballroom luncheon speakers, help pay the freight. Speaker line-ups seem to trend more per establishment than when I joined and participated.

Burgers and Bangers

Bangers and mash is not on the bar’s menu. I’ll suggest it when I run into the club’s incoming executive director, Didier Saugy. Previously, we did have the Alferd Packer Burger, named for a cannibal who was the lone survivor of six prospectors trapped by Colorado’s brutal 1873-74 winter. I don’t mean to make too much of this, but Alferd is no longer on the menu, having been replaced by the more homogenised Angus. The loss of Alferd in one’s gullet seems a bellwether for trends impacting the NPC and journalism generally.

Lately, I’ve viewed journalism through the prism of the activist Julian Assange – a media Rorschach test. Many Washingtonians, including journalists, are surprised to hear that Assange has languished for four years in solitary in Belmarsh Prison in London, following seven years of confining asylum in Ecuador’s embassy there. Nils Melzer, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, says the treatment of Assange, who is on the autism spectrum, amounts to straightforward torture.

While he was in the Ecuadorean embassy, US intelligence minions spied on Assange, his family, friends and lawyers, and visiting journalists. Mike Pompeo, Koch Industries’ man in Washington who went from Congress representing my home state of Kansas to becoming CIA Director and then Trump’s Secretary of State (and until recently a presidential aspirant), plotted to kidnap or assassinate Assange after Wikileaks revealed the CIA’s goals of controlling people’s smart TVs, browsers, phones and cars. Orwell, anyone?

The Biden Administration’s Department of Justice has continued the Trump Administration’s quest to extradite and prosecute Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, which was designed to target German operatives during World War I, with a side job of quashing dissent. This is the first time it’s been trained on a journalist or publisher, let alone an Australian who wasn’t even in the US. This prosecution is perilous to domestic and foreign journalists everywhere. Hypocrisy blows Biden’s credibility on press freedom off the moral high ground, which authoritarians eagerly note. For more detail, search “Belmarsh Tribunals”.

Venerable Dan Ellsberg, who during the Vietnam War stunned the world by leaking the Pentagon Papers, told me that prosecuting Assange is the US government’s plan for introducing a UK-style Official Secrets Act, under which journalists could be prosecuted for simply receiving classified information. James Goodale, who ably defended The New York Times in that case, told me the same. It would quash journalists’ attempts to reveal the truth.

Envy and Resentment?

It seems to me that many journalists nowadays can’t identify with this concern. Most will never break a story of that sort, never depend on whistle-blowers that the government seeks to crush. Envy? Resentment? Perhaps. Meanwhile, there’s no end of over-classification by officials to muddy transparency and avoid accountability.

So are there constant drumbeats on mainstream editorial pages and elsewhere? No. On Assange, the NPC – a frequent commenter on foreign oppression of the press – keeps its head insistently sanded. Having pushed the club on this matter for years, I’ve usually encountered a cone of silence. I’ve heard comments from those who should know better such as “What if Assange is a Russian spy?”, or falsehoods repeated with certainty like an unredacted document dump.

Often, the fanciful assertion that Assange isn’t a journalist is trundled out, never mind his stunning record of journalism awards. Brilliantly, Wikileaks enabled his revelations via technical innovations including an electronic dropbox to obtain information anonymously, which is then vetted. My definition of a journalist is simple: anyone who truthfully informs the public of matters impacting their lives. Wikileaks never had to retract anything as untrue.

Caustic attitudes pay testimony to successful propaganda vilifying Assange. It ramped up in 2010 when I saw Assange step into the cross-hairs of fame at a news conference in the club. He presented the shocking Collateral Murder Tape. A helicopter snuff film of a dozen or so Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters employees and a Good Samaritan ad hoc ambulance driver, whose kids were in tow, with a chilling soundtrack by gleeful pilots. It crystallised government lies on war crimes and the conduct of the Forever Wars. Nobody responsible for the attack or the cover-up has been prosecuted.

Political propaganda poured with perpetuity when Wikileaks published (true) emails revealing that Hillary Clinton spoke out of both sides of her mouth regarding Wall Street benefactors, and that the Democratic National Committee undermined democracy, rigging the 2016 primaries against Bernie Sanders.

Some information gatekeepers have judged public enlightenment non-newsworthy if not in service of a higher purpose: say, the election of Hillary. And while avoiding criticism of favoured administrations or political parties, many in journalism otherwise cheer them like high school football teams. Some seem to be self-appointed auxiliary spokespeople for government, aka stenographers. Assange is emblematic of what the mainstream downplays or ignores to avoid roughing up pet political and media narratives.

Assange is bad for business. The Forever Wars confirmed Washington as a company town for the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned of back in 1960. That influence cannot be overstated, including the weapons advertising largesse that many publications enjoy. It’s the same when it comes to media ownership. For example Jeff Bezos, of Amazon notoriety and owner of The Washington Post, is in hot pursuit of government contracts to manage clouds for intelligence and military agencies.

As the NPC emerges from a long, costly pandemic coma, public trust in media scrapes the shoals. Journalism sinks amid collapsed business models and layoffs. Understandably insecure journalists eye laterals, perhaps PR in arenas that they report on. Many now interpreting the world for us were children or teens during the invasion of Iraq. Most weren’t born until after the Vietnam War. Institutional memory is shot. We’re all cannibals now.

As I write this in May, steadfast NPC obtuseness on Assange remains. Perhaps by publication date that might change. It would be a pleasant, if astonishing surprise.

(This essay first appeared in the July issue of The Correspondent, the quarterly put out by the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club)

(Note, bangers and mash is a HKFCC staple sustaining many scribes, Didier is the former manager of the HKFCC and new exec. dir. at the NPC, hence the reference).

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The morning of April 5th, 2010, I attended the Wikileaks news conference at the National Press Club. Afterwards, my stomach felt like a lead ball. Assange presented the July 12, 2007 attack by two US Apache helicopters, firing 30mm cannon on civilians in an Iraqi suburb, most clearly unarmed and exhibiting no hostilities. Dead included two Reuter’s journalists. One clearly carried a camera. Unarmed men were killed trying to rescue a seriously wounded Reuter’s employee. A slain rescuer’s two children in their destroyed van were grievously wounded. The cavalier comments of the pilots as they filmed are terrifying. How many they killed is unclear because families lived in a building targeted when unarmed men entered it. Estimates range from 12 to over 18. The Army’s story to Reuters was less than candid. Reality descended when Chelsea Manning provided Wikileaks with the tape.

Millions viewed the “Collateral Murder Tape“as well as interviews with one of the soldiers who rescued the children – Ethan McCord recounts how it impacted him, and the wider PTSD forever wars inflict on our soldiers. In our fog of war reliable count of the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan remains elusive. Those who prefer such dark reveals remain buried see Assange as someone to destroy.

US military budgets remain on crescendo. The world’s top five arms dealers, and twelve of the top twenty-five, are American. Assange is bad for business.

“Someone’s not going to like this” was predictable. Assange stepped into the crosshairs of fame, targeted by powerful disinformation systems. Politicians and media pundits, some of the latter still joined at the hip with America’s military/intelligence/industrial complex, chimed in. Some called Assange a traitor – never mind he’s Australian – and high-tech terrorist, even calling for his assassination. So dark was the picture painted that even sympathetic writers feel obliged to begin with “Whatever you think of Assange…”

When Wikileaks revealed the DNC gamed the 2016 Democratic Party primaries, the punditry judged democratic derailments not newsworthy when the higher good was resistance to Trump.

Distortions linger. How many know Assange sought Pentagon and State Department help in redacting sensitive information, and was refused? That he worked diligently with newspapers to determine information that should be held back, until a newspaper editor published an access password that let everyone pull everything? Or that Robert Mueller found no evidence connecting Assange and Russia? That Paul Manafort never met with Assange in Ecuador’s embassy in London? Or that no harm was caused to anyone in other countries who was working with the US government? Media ran faster with narratives ripping Assange than questioning or correcting them.

Claiming Assange is outside publishing boundaries is a conceit that who, what, when, where, why and how requires formal training, or an official imprimatur. Never mind the international journalism awards Wikileaks quickly garnered, the uncovered bedrock for important stories that enabled accolades to news organizations building on Wikileaks revelations.

A decade ago Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed government lies about the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers, told me government’s objective going after him was a UK-styled Official Secrets Act that undermines First Amendment protections. Beyond criminalizing leaking classified materials, it would criminalize seeking and publishing them.

I recently asked James C. Goodale, who defended the NY Times in that case, if that’s still the aim. “Yes,” Goodale says, “closing the circle, prosecuting those who receive and publish leaks. The wild over-classification of documents systematically confuses confidentiality with national security, deterring finding out and revealing what government does. It’s already put a chill on journalists covering the military establishment, and leaks are drying up. Assange engaged in journalistic endeavors.” Goodale is alarmed that despite overwhelming recognition of this by international journalist and human rights organizations, American media remains mostly comatose regarding the peril.

It remains illegal to classify information “to conceal inefficiency, violations of law, or administrative error; to prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.” Presumably that includes war crimes. Yet the secretive among us are classifying tens of millions of items a year, a perpetual fog machine.

Despite the Obama Administration’s unprecedented pillorying of whistleblowers who revealed government wrongdoing, including CIA torture, it chose not to pursue Assange because of challenges disentangling him from papers like the NY Times that used his revelations. The Trump Administration jumped that line. The Biden Administration follows.

Relevance is constantly refreshed, such as by all the noble pronouncements on protecting journalism and freedom of expression, including from the Biden Administration, on World Press Freedom Day, ignoring applicability to Assange. And now there is the bellwether of government secretly obtaining reporters’ cell phone records, presumably to determine sources. Another, in May drone whistleblower Daniel Hale was jailed months ahead of his July sentencing. Grind the sources down.

The importance of Assange’s effort to inform the public of what the powerful in government and commerce choose to keep hidden from them is underscored by trends in media ownership. With the purchase of Tribune Publishing by Alden Global Capital, hedge funds now control half of American daily local newspaper circulation. The vultures among them shrivel staff and investigative resources.

When media companies throw down partisan preferences, they ignore, minimize or spin stories that don’t support their narratives. They avoid ruffling the stove-piped consumers they cultivate. They are bipartisan in one regard, being ever mindful of the industries that advertise heavily with them, or in which they have financial interests.

Corporate investors and board members often have multiple interests beyond enlightening the public. Take BlackRock, one of the Wall Street outfits that own large swaths of the NY Times. It’s heavily invested in defense companies, and has increasing interests abroad, including China and Saudi Arabia. Many owners certainly have reasons not to antagonize government. Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, has been seeking Pentagon contracts for Amazon worth billions. He now seeks a $10 billion dollar bailout for his Blue Origin space company.

Not that journalists laboring in a wobbling, insecure industry pay close attention to the interests of those buttering their bread when deciding what ink to spill. Just that Assange is handy for bringing important stories to media that might get them the attention that should be paid.

Pursuing Assange demonstrates collapsing ideals of justice. There is the specter of government attorneys claiming the First Amendment doesn’t apply to foreign journalists and non-US citizens. Authoritarian regimes oppressing journalists applaud when America dissipates protection of speech.

London’s long extradition hearing gave Assange the Hannibal Lecter treatment. He was in a glass cage, often incommunicado with his lawyers. Assange is on the autism spectrum. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, says what Assange endures is psychological torture.

“Violations of due process revealed by hearing testimony, including spying on Assange’s meetings with his lawyers and journalists by a security firm working with US intelligence officials, even discussing kidnapping or poisoning Assange, should shock any judicial conscience,” says Goodale. It is inescapable that some prefer Assange dead. “Why?” ought to occupy the minds of investigative journalists.

The hearing’s January outcome echoes nightmares of Orwell and Kafka. The British judge said nothing protecting press freedom. Instead, she refused extradition because Assange might commit suicide in draconian US prisons. Then she put him not in house arrest but back in isolation in Prison Belmarsh, notorious for brutality and suicide. There Assange sits, as he has for two years, as the U.S appeals.

President Biden seeks to end decades of war in Afghanistan. Chances of success there were dashed by the horrid aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Though Biden’s been mercurial describing his support of that invasion, it’s hard to imagine regret doesn’t weigh heavy. Consider that had Wikileaks been operable prior to the invasion, lies about WMD’s and Al-Qaeda alliances might have been exposed, preventing that tragic opening of Pandora’s Box.

If America truly values an informed public, the persecution of Julian Assange must end.

Note:

The essay above is an expanded version of one in the (hyperlink ‘LA Progressive‘. That publication belongs to a ‘Assange defense coalition‘ which with the ‘Courage Foundation‘ is supportive of Julian Assange and of the current month-long US tour by Assange’s father and brother, John and Gabriel Shipton. Related panel discussions, with an impressive diversity of knowledgeable participants across eighteen cities, can be followed here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd_E8AUuP7bYlYt6gkVgkraCjqH99o2kc and also at ‘Consortium News‘. Those wishing to understand the issues surrounding the Assange case, unfiltered by often conflicted media organizations, should indulge in at least one of the tour offerings.

I attended one of the informative June 13th ‘panels in Washington, DC‘, ably moderated by Marianne Williamson, (tech problems end about 18 minutes in). Despite the relevance to all things Washington, local media like the Washington Post managed to avert their gaze.

A quick hit, a letter to President Biden’s Dept. of Justice from two dozen international journalism and human rights organizations can be seen (hyperlink: “freedom press“. Let me also recommend this recent interview of the always agile Daniel Ellsberg on (hyperlink: “Democracy Now“, one of three intriguing segments, including a great refresher on the Pentagon Papers case. That’s a saga that much of media appears to have tossed into a memory hole, next to a recognition of the danger the Assange prosecution poses for journalism and our democracy.

END

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