Was ASSANGE a journalist or a criminal?                                               

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The release of a stunning trove of sensitive diplomatic cables and entire Pentagon databases almost a decade ago made Julian Assange and his anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks as household names and an enemy of the American government. But was he an enemy of the people of the United Sates?

Assange, a 47 year-old natïve of Australia founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and came to international attention in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks provided by sex-changed Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning) and who was born on December 17, 1987). She was an American activist and whistleblower who was previously assigned in 2009 to an Army unit in Iraq as an intelligence analyst. In that capacity, Manning had access to American classified databases. In early 2010, he/she leaked classified information to WikiLeaks resulting in her his/her being convicted and sentenced on August 21^st 2012 to 35 years in the military prison called Leavenworth Manning was credited with the 1,294 days he/she spent in pre-trial confinement plus an additional 112 days. He/she was also dishonorably discharged, him/her  being reduced to Private from Private First Class and was forced to forfeit all pay and benefits.

 Manning was released from Fort Leavenworth's detention center at approximately 2 a.m. on May 17, 2017 as a direct result of a presidential pardon issued by President Obama.      

WikiLeaks published thousands of private emails involving Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign that investigators said were stolen and passed to Assange's organization working for the Russian government. That episode and others like it so infuriate American authorities that the then-CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, (mow secretary of State at the time of this writing) called Assange's organization a "hostile intelligence service.” In my opinion, that was a correct definition of Assange’s organization.

The federal government of the United States launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and asked Allied nations for assistance in arresting Assange so that the American government  could have him extradited to the United States for trial. 

In November 2010, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Assange. He had been questioned there months earlier over allegations of sexual assault and rape. Assange denied the allegations and further said that if he was arrested. he would be extradited from Sweden to the United States because of his role in publishing secret American documents.

Six years, nine months and 24 days after walking into the Ecuadorian embassy in London and seeking asylum, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was dragged back out onto the streets by British police officers at the request of the Ecuadorian  authorities.

Assange, who was pale with a heavily white beard as he was carried towards a group of officers towards a waiting police vehicle shouted, “The U.K. must resist!” He appeared to be carrying a copy of Gore Vidal’s book History of The National Security State.

His dramatic expulsion from the embassy followed a year of ratcheting tension between Assange and his Ecuadorian hosts, as a result of what he said publicly in his WikiLeaks publication, and the publications of hundreds of thousands of hacked emails mysteriously stolen from the inboxes of Ecuador’s president and first lady.

It was this last move that finally set Ecuador’s government firmly against Assange, who was by then already being treated less like a political refugee than an inmate—albeit one who was free to leave the embassy at any time.

“The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit on the behavior of Mr. Assange,” Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, said in his statement of April, 11^th of 2019.

Snooping into private conversations of your host and then publicly is insulting your host is a real sign of stupidity.  Did Assange really think he could do this and not suffer some form of consequences?

A few hours later, federal prosecutors in Virginia having learned of Assange’s expulsion from the embassy of Ecuador in London, unsealed an existing indictment accusing Assange of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to crack a password in order to swipe classified documents from government computers nearly a decade ago.

I can’t imagine anything that would have excited them more than each of them being introduced to beautiful young women who wanted to have sex with them when they learned that their prey was  now on the loose and ready for its capture.

 Assange  was not willingly planning to travel to the United States to face charges filed under seal against him, one of his lawyers said on April 20^th. 2019, foreshadowing a possible legal fight in the UK courts over extradition that was such a central figure in the U.S. special counsel’s Russia-Trump investigation.

Assange had speculated in his writings publicly for years that the American Justice Department had brought secret criminal charges against him for revealing highly sensitive government information on his website.

What was the sensitive information he got from Manning’s disclosure? They were;

Evidence of Two American helicopters firing on a group of ten men in the Amin District of Baghdad. Two were Reuters employees there to photograph an American Humvee under attack by the Mahdi Army. Pilots mistook their cameras for weapons. The helicopters also fired on a van, targeted earlier by one helicopter, that had stopped to help wounded members of the first group. Two children in the van were wounded, and their father was killed. More than 150 innocent Afghans and Pakistanis, including farmers, chefs, and drivers, were held for years without charges being laid against them while they were imprisoned in Gitmo.  He also leaked ‘Collateral Murder, a video, which shows a US helicopter attack in Baghdad in which at least nine non-combatants were killed.

The Guardian noted that despite the American government's claim of having detained dangerous militants, the files, which covered almost all the prisoners held since 2002, revealed an emphasis of holding people to extract intelligence. Although many prisoners were assessed as not posing a threat to security, they were nonetheless detained for a very long time.

The America government didn’t go after the editors of The Guardian and also the editors of American newspapers when they too made the disclosures so why did they choose to go after Assange?

The leaked files and later published in WikiLeaks showed that nearly 100 detainees had been diagnosed with depressive or psychotic illnesses. The United States tried to retain British nationals and legal residents, such as Jamal al-Harith and Binyam Mohamed, for intelligence value, although its agents knew neither were members of the Taliban or al-Qaeda, and Mohamed had been tortured, so any "evidence" he provided was suspect due to that fact.

Manning compared US policies enacted after the September 11^th , 2001 terrorist attacks to shameful events in the nation's history when he wrote;

"In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture.  We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government.  And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our War on Terror. Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically-based dissention [sic], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission. "Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few.  I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light, As the late Howard Zinn once said, ‘There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.’" unquote

Manning’s lawyer, Mr. Coombs also revealed to media members that prosecutors had initially offered Manning a lower sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. He refusing to elaborate on the details, citing a non-disclosure agreement, but admitted Manning would have been given a sentence less than 35 years had he accepted, the offer according to yhe Washington Post researcher Julie Tate.   

Immediately after sentencing, Amnesty International called on President Barack Obama to commute Manning’s sentence to time already served to allow his immediate release.  

Instead of fighting tooth and nail to lock Assange up for decades, the US government should turn its attention to investigating and delivering justice for the serious human rights abuses committed by its officials in the name of countering terror.

When a citizen who shares information with the press and public is punished far more harshly than those who tortured prisoners and killed civilians, something is seriously wrong with the American system of justice.

Manning's sentence was automatically sent to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals as it exceeds a period of one year. Before that process could get underway, the entire court-martial proceedings had turned into an official transcript, which the defense, prosecution, and judge signed off on.

Manning would have had the option of petitioning General Jeffrey Buchanan, the Convening Authority overseeing the trial, for clemency. General Buchanan also has the option of reducing the sentence on any particular count or overturning it altogether. Conversely, Buchanan cannot overturn a not guilty verdict or tack on time to the sentence.

His lawyer, Coombs had previously asked the judge for leniency, requesting a sentence that did not “rob him of his youth." Coombs argued that Manning's leaks had not endangered the United States. It may have embarrassed the United States but it certainly must would have embarrassed the US government and rightly so.

The prosecution had sought a 60-year sentence, arguing the stiff term would deter others from leaking classified information.

"There's value in deterrence," prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow said in his closing argument.

The 25-year-old Manning apologized for the “unintended consequences” of his actions, saying he believed he was “going to help people, not hurt people. He said, “I believe that I really informed people of the failings of its government. unquote.

 The people of the United States and other people around the world realized from the disclosures that the United States do on occasion, make stupid mistakes and also commit abuses against suspects.

 Banning was convicted of 20 charges including espionage, theft and violating computer regulations. Manning was found not guilty, however, of the most serious charge – aiding the enemy – which would have entailed a potential sentence of life without the possibility of parole. 

Manning faced up to 90 years in prison for passing on more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010. He was later arrested in Iraq in May of that year. 

Manning like other convicted defendants was entitled to appeal against any verdict handed to him by the court-martial in the Army Court of Criminal Appeal within six months. 

Manning was transferred to prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas according to the Guardian. He was held at the prison after his long stint in solitary confinement ended in April 2011 until he was sent to trial at Fort Meade, Virginia. 

Fort Leavenworth, is is a foreboding stone complex which became operational in 1903, and it is the only penitentiary designated for military prisoners who are sentenced to more than ten years behind bars. 

A medium-security facility, inmates are highly restricted in their movements but generally work 40-hour weeks in the kitchen, laundry, or hold a variety of other duties. They are forbidden from spending more than $80 a month, but only earn pennies for every week they work. 

Raelean Finch, who chronicles life inside Leavenworth on the Captain Incarcerated blog with an anonymous inmate, said the conditions are more hospitable than prisons for the civilian population. 

"It's presided over by military folks," Finch told the Associated Press. "These are people who cleaned bathrooms with a toothbrush during basic training."

Luetenanant William Calley was previously held at the prison for his involvement with the infamous 1968 My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War until President Nixon ordered him to be released.  Sergeant Robert Bales joined Manning after killing 16 Afghan civilians in 2012. Also Major Nidal Hasan, who was convicted for killing 13 people and wounding over 30 others during a 2009 attack at Fort Hood is also imprisoned at Leavenworth where he is   serving a life sentence.

In my opinion, since Assange is a citizen of Australia, he should be sent back to Australia and not to the United States.

As I see it, Assange didn’t commit any crime with his WikiLeaks disclosures just as the newspapers that quoted his disclosures didn’t commit any crimes. They were all protected by the United States’  Constitution  that guarantees the freedom  of the press.