Mixed Opinion: is Julian Assange a hero?

     Candidate Trump: "Wikileaks. I love Wikileaks. I have learned so much from Wikileaks"

               

Politicians and journalists are in a quandary. Is Assange a hero of whistleblowing and the public's need to know, or is he a threat to national security?  

It depends on whose secrets he is revealing. 

Mike Pence, trying to explain Trump.

Julian Assange has been arrested, on the orders of the United States Department of Justice. Trump's DOJ. 

Fox News, as of today, is quite sure who the bad guys are. Geraldo Rivera this morning on Fox and Friends called Assange a disgusting threat to American security. 

Lindsey Graham said "I am glad the wheels of justice are turning on Julian Assange. I've never been a fan. I think what he did was despicable and dangerous."

Ted Cruz said "I'm glad he was arrested. Hacking, stealing American secrets endangers the safety and security of American soldiers." 

Reactions are so confused that when a Democratic senator, Richard Blumenthal, a former prosecutor, agreed with the GOP senators who had just spoken, saying "Julian Assange has to face justice here. The American people have a right to see him in court facing charges" the Fox News host couldn't bear it.

"Oh, put a sock in it," she said, shaking her head.  Click for the video

Meanwhile, poor Mike Pence tried to parse the difference between Donald Trump saying repeatedly in October, 2016 that he loved Wikileaks and that they were doing a great service for Americans with the new position. Now Trump says he has barely heard of them, that Wikileaks wasn't his thing, and that whatever it did impacted no voters.

Meanwhile, journalists generally found that Julian Assange was a hero. 
Glenn Greenwald wrote that the Government indictment of Assange posed a grave threat to press freedoms. The politically progressive The Nation, which might have reason to side against Assange based on his help for Trump, voted their industry rather than their politics: supporting Assange.  

The ACLU supports Assange, citing freedom of the press. 

I asked two readers of this blog to provide insights. Frequent Guest Post author Thad Guyer sided with whistleblowers, a position not surprising to me since his work consists of defending whistleblowing employees. It won't be surprising to close readers of this blog that he points out hypocrisy from the left.

Thad Guyer wrote:

     "In my opinion, Assange, Manning, and Snowden who put their entire freedom on the line to expose American corruption and war crimes, are heroes.  

     All have been indicted. Manning and Assange are both in jail today for the criminal act of hacking and releasing incredibly important information to the world press and the voting public worldwide. Democrats used to respect these whistleblowers. Obama rode a wave to commute Manning's prison sentence.  

     But when Assange hacked the email of Hillary Clinton, not just a candidate but the recent former Secretary of State, who was involved in maintaining our horrific wars, Bengazi, etc, and Assange released not false, but actual authentic emails to the voting public, Democratic opinion turned to wanting Assange to rot in hell. We can be sure that any hackers, whistleblowers or leakers who release anything damaging to the press, whether the New York Times or Fox News or the voting public, about the Democratic nominee will be vilified and applauded when thrown behind bars. Any such hacking or releases of true documents about Trump will be heralded as acts of courage and dignity--by Democrats.  

     Process and access to the truth are now completely partisan issues. Like Obama judges vs. Trump judges, the fate of my clients will depend on whether the truth helps or hurts Democrats. 

     It is a bad situation for journalism and speech and anti-corruption."

Then I heard from Philip Arnold, a retired Oregon judge, who responded to Guyer. Arnold began his legal career as a civil rights litigator in the South, then a legal aid attorney, then an attorney in private practice, and then a judge. Arnold made this informal response: 

     "I’m at the same conclusion, if in a less dogmatic way.  He appears to be like many who occupied heroic roles:  An unpleasant fellow, but having held the right convictions on an important issue. Ernesto Miranda comes to mind.  

     Certainly Assange can be prosecuted in Sweden for crimes there. To me he’s still in the unsavory category for having helped the Russians to elect Trump but that doesn’t take him out of his principled status on first amendment and right to know issues. 

    I did like Daniel Ellsberg better because he was both a hero and a likable person."

It may get more tangled, and hero and villain roles may switch yet again.  Assange is now in a real lockup, and not just holed up in a foreign embassy. What does he have to say, and will he say anything?

Who does he help, Democrats or Republicans? Is he a public interest crusader or a self-interested publicity seeker and thief?

Currently he can stand as a hero for journalism, but one element of journalistic ethics is preserving secret sources when one promised secrecy. Depending on what he might di ir say, everything might switch. Perhaps his silence will protect Trump, and it might become understood that the secrets he is keeping involve Russian or other foreign arrangements with Trump's campaign. 

Or it might go the opposite way. 

If Assange starts revealing secret sources and if he has a story of Trump collusion, journalists might back off support, and Democrats might decide he's a flawed journalist but a great whistleblower, heroic because he is willing to testify to Trump coordination with foreign interests. 

Click

Or yet another way. 

Maybe Assange will offer testimony that the investigation of Trump was based on totally false or corrupt premises, and it will reveal something embarrassing about Democrats. That is what Rudolph Giuliani is hoping for.

Hero or villain isn't a fixed point. For most of the political people we see on TV giving sound bites on this, is a primarily a matter of transactional self interest.