{"id":273638,"date":"2024-09-16T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=273638"},"modified":"2024-09-13T09:22:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T08:22:37","slug":"fbi-sued-for-withholding-files-on-assange-and-wikileaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/09\/fbi-sued-for-withholding-files-on-assange-and-wikileaks\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI Sued for Withholding Files on Assange and WikiLeaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWith the legal persecution of Julian Assange finally over, the FBI must come clean.”<\/em>
\n— Chip Gibbons, policy director for Defending Rights & Dissent<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

12 Sep 2024 <\/em>– The civil liberties organization Defending Rights and Dissent sued the FBI and United States Justice Department for withholding records on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor nearly a decade and a half, we\u2019ve been trying to get at the truth about the U.S. government\u2019s war on WikiLeaks<\/a>,\u201d declared Chip Gibbons, the policy director for Defending Rights and Dissent.<\/p>\n

Gibbons added, \u201cWith the legal persecution of Julian Assange finally over, the FBI must come clean to the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

On June 25, 2024, U.S. government attorneys submitted a plea agreement [PDF<\/a>] in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands after Assange\u00a0agreed<\/a>\u00a0to plead guilty to one conspiracy charge under the U.S. Espionage Act.<\/p>\n

Assange was\u00a0released on bail<\/a>\u00a0from London\u2019s Belmarsh prison, where he had been jailed for over five years while fighting a U.S. extradition request. He flew on a charter flight to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory where a plea hearing was held.<\/p>\n

The plea agreement marked the end of a U.S. campaign to target and suppress Assange and WikiLeaks that spanned 14 years and first intensified after WikiLeaks published documents from U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning that exposed crimes committed in U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as U.S. complicity in human rights abuses in dozens of countries around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as we began publishing newsworthy stories about US war crimes in 2010, we know the US government responded to what was one of most consequential journalistic revelations of the 21st century by spying on and trying to criminalize First Amendment-protected journalism,\u201d stated WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.<\/p>\n

Hrafnsson continued, \u201cWhile WikiLeaks has fought for transparency, the U.S. government has cloaked its war on journalism in secrecy. That\u2019s why Defending Rights & Dissent\u2019s lawsuit is so important, as it will help unmask the FBI\u2019s efforts to criminalize journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

On June 27, Defending Rights and Dissent requested [PDF<\/a>] \u201call records created, maintained, or in the custody of the FBI that mention or reference: WikiLeaks; Julian Assange.”<\/p>\n

The FBI separated the request into two requests\u2014one for files mentioning \u201cWikiLeaks,\u201d one for files mentioning Julian Assange. And by August 19, the organization was informed by the FBI that it would take around five and a half years (2,010 days) to \u201ccomplete action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously, on June 22, 2021, Defending Rights and Dissent submitted<\/a> a nearly identical request. It took the FBI two years to respond and notify the organization that the documents could not be provided because there was a \u201claw enforcement” proceeding that was pending against Assange.<\/p>\n

The FBI became involved in pursuing an investigation against Assange and WikiLeaks in December 2010.<\/p>\n

In 2011, FBI agents and prosecutors flew to Iceland to investigate what they claimed was a cyber attack against Iceland\u2019s government systems. But as Iceland Interior Minister \u00d6gmundur J\u00f3nasson told the Associated Press in 2013, it became clear that the FBI agents and prosecutors came to Iceland to \u201cframe\u201d Assange and WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n

The FBI was interested in interviewing Sigurdur Thordarson, a serial liar and sociopath who embezzled funds from the WikiLeaks store and sexually preyed on underage boys. As I recount in my book \u201cGuilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange<\/a>,\u201d Thordarson subsequently became an FBI informant or cooperating witness.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I learned about it, I demanded that Icelandic police cease all cooperation and made it clear that people interviewed or interrogated in Iceland should be interrogated by Icelandic police,\u201d J\u00f3nasson added.<\/p>\n

A little more than a year before the U.S. government\u2019s prosecution against Assange collapsed<\/a>, the FBI approached<\/a> three journalists who had worked with Assange but had a falling-out with him. Each refused to help U.S. prosecutors further their attack on journalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision to respond to reporting on U.S. war crimes with foreign counterintelligence investigations, criminal prosecutions, and dirty tricks continues to cast a dark shadow over our First Amendment right to press freedom,\u201d Gibbons said.<\/p>\n

Gibbons concluded, \u201cWe will work tirelessly to see that all files documenting how the FBI criminalized and investigated journalism are made available to the public.”<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of<\/em> Shadowproof, host of the<\/em> Dissenter Weekly, co-host of the podcast<\/em> Unauthorized Disclosure, and member of Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thedissenter.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Sep 2024 – The civil liberties organization Defending Rights and Dissent sued the FBI and US Justice Department for withholding records on WikiLeaks and Assange. \u201cWith the legal persecution of Julian Assange finally over, the FBI must come clean.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":265598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[918,2163,1563,2574,378,651,234,2571,70,921,113],"class_list":["post-273638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-justice","tag-assange","tag-collateral-damage","tag-expose","tag-fbi","tag-journalism","tag-justice","tag-media","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-usa","tag-whistleblowing","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273640,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273638\/revisions\/273640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}