WSJ Editorial: Attack by WikiLeaks
Regarding the latest WikiLeaks dump of U.S. secrets, our friends at the New York Sun (at nysun.com) have taken to asking, What would Lincoln do? Their implication is that the President who suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War would not be wringing his hands about Julian Assange the way the Obama Administration has for so many months. This week's cable cache does less immediate harm than the previous leaks did to the lives of Afghans and Iraqis who have cooperated with us on the battlefield, but it certainly will damage U.S. foreign policy.
In most cases, of course, the leaks merely pull back the curtain on disputes and the character of global leaders that are already widely known. That the Turkish government of the AK Party is an unreliable ally, or is chock full of Islamists, will not surprise anyone who's been paying attention. The private rage of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak against Iraqi democracy is also no shocker; a modern Pharaoh doesn't like the voter precedent....
In his Saturday letter urging Mr. Assange to cease and desist, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh accused the WikiLeaker of breaking U.S. law without mentioning a particular statute. Perhaps Mr. Koh meant the 1917 Espionage Act, a vague statute which has rarely been used to punish leakers, and never against a publisher. As recently as 2009, the government dropped an Espionage Act prosecution against two lobbyists for AIPAC, the American-Israel lobby, after a rebuke by a federal appeals court....
For all of his self-justification as an agent of "pure" transparency, Mr. Assange is not serving the interest of free societies. His mass, indiscriminate exposure of anything labeled secret that he can lay his hands on is a hostile act against a democracy that is fighting a war against forces bent on killing innocents. Surely, the U.S. government can do more to stop him than send a stiff letter.
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In most cases, of course, the leaks merely pull back the curtain on disputes and the character of global leaders that are already widely known. That the Turkish government of the AK Party is an unreliable ally, or is chock full of Islamists, will not surprise anyone who's been paying attention. The private rage of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak against Iraqi democracy is also no shocker; a modern Pharaoh doesn't like the voter precedent....
In his Saturday letter urging Mr. Assange to cease and desist, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh accused the WikiLeaker of breaking U.S. law without mentioning a particular statute. Perhaps Mr. Koh meant the 1917 Espionage Act, a vague statute which has rarely been used to punish leakers, and never against a publisher. As recently as 2009, the government dropped an Espionage Act prosecution against two lobbyists for AIPAC, the American-Israel lobby, after a rebuke by a federal appeals court....
For all of his self-justification as an agent of "pure" transparency, Mr. Assange is not serving the interest of free societies. His mass, indiscriminate exposure of anything labeled secret that he can lay his hands on is a hostile act against a democracy that is fighting a war against forces bent on killing innocents. Surely, the U.S. government can do more to stop him than send a stiff letter.