WATCH: A Time of Growing Repression

CN Editor Joe Lauria addressed a meeting held on the eve of an appeal hearing for Australian whistleblower David McBride, highlighting the growing repression in contrast to 50 years ago.

On the night before the appeal hearing of Australian whistleblower David McBride on March 3, Consortium News Editor Joe Lauria addressed a gathering in Canberra, the Australian capital. Below are the texts of his remarks as prepared and as delivered.  

As Prepared

If David McBride’s were an isolated case, it would be an outrage.

But this case has taken on ramifications beyond the borders of Australia.It is part of a broader pattern of growing repression by the governments of the Five Eyes Nations.

McBride’s is an international case. As important in the U.S., U.K., Canada and New Zealand as it is here.

Whistleblowers of course have been punished before. Probably the most famous case was that of Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the classified Pentagon Papers to the NYT to try to stop the Vietnam War, exposing official American lies that the war was being won.

First Ellsberg gave the Papers to Sen. Mike Gravel to read into the Congressional Record, America’s Hansard. Both Ellsberg and Gravel whom we lost in recent years were friends who sat on CN‘s board of directors.

To illustrate how much more repressive our 5 Eyes governments are today than 50 years ago in the Pentagon Papers case, and to put David McBride’s imprisonment in context, consider the case of Julian Assange.

The government’s misconduct in the Ellsberg case paled in comparison to the misconduct in Assange: spying on medical and legal privileged communications and plotting to kidnap or kill Assange. When I emailed Ellsberg about these revelations in Julian’s extradition hearing he was sure he would be released as he bad been. But that was half a century ago.

Consider also two of the worst U.S. massacres, about 50 years apart. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the collateral murder in Iraq.

In My Lai the whistleblower was listened to by Congress

In Collateral Murder, the whistleblower was imprisoned.

In My Lai a soldier was imprisoned.

In Collateral Murder no one from the military was charged.

In My Lai the journalist, Seymour Hersh, won a Pulitzer and got a job at The New York Times.

In Collateral Murder, the journalist, Julian Assange, was imprisoned in a maximum security facility.

This is how far we’ve come. This is the time we live in, the time of Julian Assange, who thankfully was freed after the U.S. knew it would lose, and the time of David McBride, who goes to court tomorrow in an attempt to be free.

It is also the time of Antoinette Lattouf and Mary Kostakidis and mania over an explosion of suspicious “antisemitism” incidents leading to a new law that can essentially land someone in prison for making another feel unsafe from mere speech.

It’s a time of journalists being detained under the Terrorism Act at border entries in Britain for something they wrote or said in relation to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a genocide for which Israel is on trial at the ICJ in the Hague.

It’s a time when university students in the United States are arrested by helmeted riot police and barred in some cases from completing their education for protesting the genocide. A time when Donald Trump wants overseas students deported for criticizing Israel.

Julian Assange agreed to a plea to gain his freedom. He said essentially: I broke the law, but the law is wrong. The U.S. Espionage Act criminalizes journalism that publishes classified material, permitted under the First Amendment. The law is unconstitutional.

Similarly David McBride broke the law, but the law is wrong. It brings Australia to pre-Nuremberg days of following orders. On the day he pleaded guilty, one of McBride’s trial lawyers, Mark Davis said:

“It was the fatal blow made in conjunction with the decision a few days ago that limits what we can say to the jury on David’s behalf in terms of what his duty as an officer was on the oath he took to serve, as we say, the interests of the Australian people.

Well the ruling was: he doesn’t have a duty to serve the interests of the Australian people. He has a duty to follow orders. That is a very narrow understanding of the law in our view that takes us back really to pre-World War II. We all know how military law has been judged since then in terms of compliance to follow orders.

So facing that reality, we’re limited in terms of what we could put to a jury in term’s of David’s duty … together with the removal of evidence makes it impossible, realistically, to go to trial. It is a sad day and a difficult day for us to advise David on his options this afternoon and he embraced them.”

McBride said: “I stand tall and I believe I did my duty and I don’t see it as a defeat. I see it as a beginning of a better Australia.”

Let us all hope that he is right, and this 50 year trend towards greater and greater repression to protect the interests of the powerful, who have never been so challenged by the public in social and independent media, is indeed coming to an end.

I confess it looks very dark at the moment.

As Delivered

I’m gonna talk about a little bit about the international aspect of [the David McBride] case. We heard about how, if he won, it could bring down the two party system here [in Australia]. Well, the case has international ramifications as well. But first, I just want to say a few words about Consortium News.

I think we’re the only U.S. publication that has written a word about this story. I don’t know if that’s absolutely certain, but we certainly have covered it in great detail. I was in the courtroom during the trial period.

And I’m going to be covering tomorrow’s hearing as well. The appeal.

Why is that? Because on its own it’s an outrageous case, obviously, but it’s part of a trend … 50 years in making. We’re much worse off today than we were 50 years ago. I look around the room. Unfortunately, it looks like almost everybody in this room can remember 50 years ago, which doesn’t bode very well for the future of activism.

You see so many people of a certain age, if you look at 50 years ago what was the situation in Vietnam War anti-war protests? So many of us remember those days. Now maybe the most famous whistleblower of all, Daniel Ellsberg was on our board at Consortium News. He was a friend of ours.

He, of course, leaked the Pentagon Papers, which he worked on for the Rand Corporation. He first gave it to Senator Mike Gravel, who was a friend of ours as well. Was also on our board. And Gravel read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, which is America’s Hansard. And then Ellsberg gave it to The New York Times.

The government shut it down. The Times went to the Supreme Court and won that case, a very important case. And that case was that the government has no right of prior restraint. It cannot stop publication in advance. They can’t tell a paper you can’t publish this. However, after publication, they could arrest anyone they wanted to, if it broke the Espionage Act.

And that, of course, is what happened to Julian Assange. His case was after publication. So if government can’t stop you from publishing. But once you do, they can prosecute you for breaking the Espionage Act.

Now, I want to illustrate just how far we’ve fallen in 50 years.

When Julian Assange’s extradition hearing was going on in London, we were there in the courtroom one day. We watched the rest online, and there was testimony from the case in Spain of the security company that were spying on his privileged communications with his lawyers and with his doctors inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. And we heard about these incredible abuses. There were plots to kidnap or kill him.

I wrote to Daniel Ellsberg, I told him what had just come out, and he said, that’s it. He’s going to be released. Why? Because Ellsberg was let off when prosecutorial misconduct was revealed in his case. They tried to bribe the judge with the FBI directorship, and they, of course, went into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist office and stole files trying to dig up dirt on him.

Once that became known, the case was over. He was free. That’s how Dan Ellsberg avoided going to jail for leaking the Pentagon Papers, which infuriated Nixon and Kissinger. And we know this from the Nixon tapes. He was free because of the misconduct.

So when Ellsberg heard that they were going to try to kidnap or kill Julian Assange, that they listened in and recorded his conversations with his lawyers – the government that was prosecuting him — that he had to walk free.

Well, he didn’t, he didn’t walk free. That’s a difference between 50 years ago and today.

Also consider this: There were two major massacres by U.S. in these 50 years. The first was My Lai in Vietnam and 50 years or so later with the Collateral Murders in Baghdad. One in Vietnam, the My Lai village and one in Baghdad.

What happened in the My Lai case? In My Lai, the whistleblower was listened to by the U.S. Congress and the Department of Justice. They actually investigated it.

50 years later in The Collateral Murder, the whistleblower, Chelsea Manning, was put in jail for revealing potential war crimes. 50 years ago they listened.

And they prosecuted.

One soldier actually went to prison. That’s in the My Lai case. In the Baghdad murders, The Collateral Murder, no one has been prosecuted on the side of the military.

And the third person in this story is the journalist. In My Lai it was Seymour Hersh. Seymour Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that story. He got a full time job at The New York Times out of it.

The journalist in Collateral Murder went to prison. To a maximum security facility in London.

This is where we are today. At least I can say it looked like they were making a pretense of seeking justice in those days. Look how far we’ve come today. Look how far we have come.

Julian was freed only because the U.S. realized they were going to lose the case, based on the fact that they couldn’t give protection on the First Amendment issue. The Department of Justice could not give an assurance to the Home Secretary in Britain. They were going to lose this case. So they let him go. And we hope, of course, tomorrow that David McBride could be let go.

But we are living in a time now of David McBride. We’re living in a time of Antoinette Latouff. In the time of Mary Kostakidis. In a time of this suspicious anti-Semitism explosion that’s going on around this country that has led to a law that could imprison someone for making someone feel unsafe because of speech. This would not have been possible 50 years ago.

It seems to me that we had more freedom to speak out against the war in Vietnam. People were not criminalized. Look at the students in Columbia University and other universities in the United States now. Riot police arrested them, took them off campus. Many of them were not allowed to complete their education.

Donald Trump wants to kick out of the country any foreign student who has protested the genocide on an American University campus. This is the time that we’re living in now, a time when Julian Assange, essentially pleaded that he broke the law, but the law was wrong. That’s essentially what he said.

And what did that mean? Yes. Technically, the Espionage Act, as it’s written, says no one, no one, even a journalist can possess without authorization or disseminate without authorization, defense or classified information. Certainly, Julian Assange possessed classified information. Certainly, every national security reporter in the United States every day is handling classified information. They could be prosecute if the government wants.

As I said, in the Espionage Act, the government cannot stop a newspaper from publishing before. But after publication, they can arrest you and prosecute you based on the way the Espionage Act is written right now. And this is what they did with Julian Assange. The problem is the law is wrong. It’s unconstitutional because there is the first Amendment which allows journalists to publish classified material.

You can’t steal it. But if it’s given to you, even if it was stolen, you have a right to publish that. That is what the First Amendment is all about. And the Espionage Act is in conflict with that. It’s an unconstitutional law, but it’s still on the books. And that’s where Julian could say, I did break that law, but I thought I was protected by the First Amendment.

So he kept his integrity and he had to plead to something. And he did. Technically, he broke that law. Julian has not put other journalists in danger. This is a misconception here. When you plead, there is no legal precedent. They can’t put another journalist in jail because Julian Assange agreed to that. No, there has to be a conviction in front of a jury and that never happened.

Now, politically, is that bad? Yes. But legally Julian did not compromise to put other journalists in the future in any jeopardy whatsoever by that.

In David’s case, and the law, the Nuremberg principle is what has already been brought up here. Does he have a duty to the public? Or only duty to follow orders?

This is the essence of the case. It’s exactly like Julian. The law is wrong. Even if David broke it technically. So let’s hope if there’s a victory in the appeal of McBride’s case, it will have enormous repercussions. Because we’re living in a time right now of extraordinary repression in all of the Five Eyes countries, we not only have those university students being arrested for protesting the genocide.

We’ve got a Terrorism Act in Britain where several people, people we know who are also on our board, like Craig Murray – and Richard Medhurst, who have been stopped at the border, arriving in Britain and questioned and detained. Why? Because of what they’ve written, what they’ve said about Israel, because they criticize them. For 24 hours, Medhurst was under arrest and they raided his house now in Austria, the British and the Austrian police going after him.

We have a writer Scott Ritter, one of our writers. The FBI raided his house. This, I cannot believe 50 years ago would be as common as it’s become right now. Back then, we would have tried to imagine what it would have been like to have lived during the McCarthy era. I don’t think we have to imagine that anymore. And I don’t think it’s paranoia to say that. I resisted this for a long time, saying that we’re living in the same kind of time and we are, we are.

So when you look at the Terrorism Act in Britain, this repression here with this new hate law here in Australia, when you see what happened to Julian Assange and of course, what’s happened to David McBride, these are all a package, in my view, of the 5 Eyes countries. And they share intelligence with each other.

I believe also they are very worried, in particular, about the fact that the public now has means to express themselves that they did not have 50 years ago on social media and on independent media like Consortium News and so many others that have risen up. This is a whole new element here.

The mainstream media, which is in league with the established order, is losing control of the story. People are getting their own voices, that they need to stop if they want to preserve their own interests, their own privileges. And that’s all it’s about: their lifestyle. They want to keep their lifestyle going and shut the rest of us up, and we won’t let them if we can.

So tomorrow we’re going to come out and have a rally for David. I’m going to be in the courtroom reporting on that. Let’s hope there’s some progress, because if there is, it will have enormous repercussions, as I’m saying, in all the Five-Eyes countries.

There has to be a victory. There has to finally be victories. There’s got to be a tipping point. Where we win and they lose.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.