On 11/29/18 12:48 AM, jim bell wrote:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/28/assange-wikileaks-prosecu...
Philip Agee.
Good one. :o) I do approve of Phil Agee - I literally shook his hand and thanked him for his service - but he was not a Nice Man. What he saw the U.S. doing in Latin America - sponsoring and directing State terror campaigns against opponents of U.S. backed totalitarian governments - pushed Agee over to the Commie side. He believed that the USSR and its allies presented the only hope for relief from the U.S. reign of terror in various countries south of the U.S. border. Apparently it was the systematic use of torture and murder to make examples of political activists that really got to him. Where widespread concerns about setting precedents negating First Amendment press protections kept Agee from being prosecuted, Assange already has "secret" U.S. criminal charges. The charges against Assange probably assert that he "conspired" with Russian Federation intelligence agencies to harm the U.S. National Interest. This tells us a lot about the evolution of U.S. public policy in the years between: Agee personally collected and published very damaging classified information; Assange has only published materials provided by others. Agee committed criminal offenses under U.S. law; Assange is an Australian under no legal obligation to obey any U.S. chain of command's orders. By the late 1980s Agee was free to travel and speak in the United States. If Assange sets foot outside the Ecuadorian embassy, a joint US/British team already in place will snatch him and ship him to the United States for a show trial. What defensive strategies will Assange use going forward? That's hard to guess. But I would suggest that anyone who approves of Wikileaks' work, and happens to have access to damaging information related to the individuals who would be personally involved in prosecuting Assange, can contribute by collecting as much of that information as possible and sending it along to Wikileaks.