It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
DINA: Pinochet’s Directorate for Murder and Torture
by Binoy Kampmark / June 24th, 2024
There are three sources of power in Chile: Pinochet, God and DINA.
— Chilean intelligence officer, remarks to a US military attaché, 1974
Decree 521 of the Chilean government of June 18, 1974, was a chilling moment in the country’s convulsed history. With the state now in the pathologically disturbed hands of a military dictatorship steered by coup leader and usurper General Augusto Pinochet, the measure saw the creation of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the clandestine agency responsible for a good share of the mutilations and murders that came to typify the Cold War atrocities of the period.
DINA was, according to the decree, created for “the purpose of producing intelligence collection requirements for the formulation of policies, plans and adoption of measures required for the security and development of the country”. The initial impression is a military wing bureaucratically inclined, dedicated to the mundane task of producing “intelligence collection requirements; for the formulation of policies, plans and adoption of measures required for the security and development of the country.”
Three secret articles supplied the bloody spears to what reads like a superficially benign enterprise, a fact revealed in 1975 by José “Pepe” Zalaquett, a lawyer and member of the human rights organisation known as the Committee for Peace. DINA would run as a clandestine police force empowered to conduct surveillance, initiate arrests, torture detainees and liquidate individuals deemed hostile to the regime both within and outside its borders.
On August 8, 1975, the US Ambassador to Chile, David Popper, drinks the usual Cold War draught: the country positively teams with dangerous left-wing types who, while being necessarily done away with for reasons of security, are being done so in circumstances of dissimulation and deception. The cable to Washington is dismissive of death and duly cognisant of deception on the part of the Pinochet regime: “We conclude that reports describing deaths of disappearances of 119 Chilean extremists outside of Chile are probably untrue, though most or all concerned are probably dead. Most probable explanation we can piece together for what will probably remain something of a mystery is that GOC Security Forces acted directly or through third party, planted reports in obscure publications to provide some means of accounting for disappearance of numerous violent leftists.”
The cable notes disinformation reports that “60 Chilean extremists had been killed outside of Chile as a result of internal purges in extremist groups arising out of conflicts over money, ideology, etc.” There is even a nodding acceptance that a publication running material on the deaths in question, the Argentinean magazine Lea, is one “obscure”, probably running for one issue, and “may have used false publishing address, and appears to be tied to Lopez Rega and Right-wing Argentine groups.” Even at the time, this account was found by such reports as John Dinges of Time magazine to be false.
In October 1975, the directorate’s overly enthusiastic director, Colonel Manuel Contreras, sought to harmonise efforts between his various secret police counterparts in Latin America in efforts to eliminate designated dissidents and left-wing targets. They included Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Bolivia. An invitation to Paraguayan General Francisco Britez that month supplies the first trace of a process that led to the creation of the murderous enterprise known as Operation Condor, arising from a Working Meeting of National Intelligence that took place in Santiago, Chile between November 25 and December 1.
The invitation also sports various attachments that document the bleak and bloody nature of what awaits. In keeping with the temperament of all police chiefs, secret or otherwise, the enemy lurks and can be found everywhere. South America is rife with “subversion” that was borderless in nature, featuring “infiltration” at all levels of society. The Left was on its continental march, typified by such gatherings as the Tricontinental Conference in Havana. To combat such a force required “an effective coordination” of timely exchange of information and experience.
By 1977, the human rights abuses of the regime by DINA were such as to deserve mention in an analytical report from the US Central Intelligence Agency. It stood to reason, given that the directorate had, at that point, burgeoned to an organisation of 38,000 personnel underwritten by a $27 million budget. Such agents of cruelty had to fulfill some role.
The tone of the report is one of regret, given Washington’s backing for the junta in its quest to quash the Left. It notes how such violations had “nearly ceased earlier this year” but were “again on the rise.” It further notes that the Pinochet regime was “reverting” back to those old practices that had affected “its international standing since the 1973 coup.” The culprit for the spike in human rights abuses, involving instances of torture, illegal detentions, and “unexplained ‘disappearances’”: DINA.
The view of Contreras, as expressed in a press interview, was that his organisation had played a “decisive role” in reining in “extremism”. As the Colonel was a Pinochet confidant and answering directly to him, it was “unlikely that he would act without the knowledge and approval of his superior.”
DINA’s murderously disruptive role in the hemisphere received greater scrutiny in 1979 with a Top-Secret Senate Staff Report “concerning activities of certain foreign intelligence agencies in the United States” authored for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations. Chile receives a notable, if far from honourable, mention. As of January 1979, there was, as such, no Chilean intelligence officers stationed in the US but visits had been previously made using “false identification, and their activities were not known.” The description is frank about Chile’s intelligence role in Operation Condor, one marked by assassinations and surveillance of “anti-regime activists”. The intelligence services are also picked up on their “close liaison with the German Nazi colony of La Dignidad in Southern Chile, which makes its substantial resources available to it.” A charming lot indeed.
With chilling revelation, the document mentions the directorate’s initial role in eliminating “subversives” in Chile proper, a task it had largely succeeded in doing by 1976. The task then shifted beyond the borders, the focus being on Chilean dissidents in Europe and the rest of the Americas. Victims of that effort were such notables as former Chilean ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, brazenly killed in the US capital with a car bomb alongside his assistant Ronni Moffit in September 1976.
As the Senate Staff Report goes on to discuss, DINA was dissolved in August 1977, most likely under pressure from Washington “where sensitivity to Chilean repression was heightened by the assassination of Orlando Letelier, and also of pressure from within Chile.” The official reason was that DINA had done what it set out to do. A legacy most cruel and foul had been left, leaving a thickened trail of blood from Santiago to Washington.Facebook
The recent European Parliament elections shocked the mainstream European parties and their international friends and allies.
The 720-member European legislature has largely been the handmaiden for the technocrats in Brussels, who craft the economic and social direction of the European Union. Since its inception, the EU has presented a stable, reliable face of capitalist rule organized around market fundamentalism, minimizing market intervention, and slowing, even reversing, the growth of the public sector. The broad right-center and left-center — traditional pro-business, liberal, and social democratic parties — have united in ensuring that agenda.
With the demoralization or decline of the anti-capitalist left, there has been little resistance mounted to the forward march of the EU program.
Into the breach left by a marginal or now timid anti-capitalist left, stepped a new wave of right-wing populists preparing to exploit the growing mass dissatisfaction with twenty-first-century capitalism and its political custodians. The economic setbacks, stagnant or declining standards of living, inadequate social and employment security, inequality, social strife, and displacement incurred by European workers cried out for political expression. Right opportunists gladly answered these calls with hollow nationalism, ill-aimed blaming and shaming, and cultural anti-elitism.
Throughout Europe, new and refashioned parties like Austria’s Freedom Party, France’s National Rally, Alternative for Germany, Hungary’s Fidesz Party, Italy’s Lega and Brothers for Italy, Netherland’s Party for Freedom, Spain’s Vox, and many others, vie to fill the radical oppositional space evacuated or neglected by the anti-capitalist left.
Where the European Communist Parties could always count on a far more robust protest vote beyond their core membership, the protest vote now goes to the populist right by default.
To stem the right-populist tide, various strategists devised new alliances, power-sharing agreements, even technocratic governments. New “left” populist parties — Syriza, PODEMOS, France Insoumise — sprung up to draw support from the same mass anger and frustration exploited by the populist right.
But none of these supposed answers to right-wing populism have succeeded in containing or reversing its advance. The mid-June European parliamentary elections have, in many ways, marked a new high water for right-populism. In both France and Germany — the two anchors for the Eurozone project — the right has made spectacular gains.
Most dramatically, the French National Rally (RN) — the historic party of the Le Pen family — won more than double the vote (31+%) of Macron’s ruling party. In an act of frustration and, perhaps, desperation, Macron called for early national elections at the end of June. He, no doubt, expects to cry for a “united front” against the threat of right-wing governance, as he has successfully done in the past. He assumes that his party and RN will win in the first round and the left will have no choice but to support him in the second-round run-off.
Meanwhile, Macron’s approval rate in France has reached an all-time low of 5.5%. And he has begun his campaign by attacking both the left and right (“the fever of extremes”) — hardly a formula for drawing the left in a presumed second round of voting.
But the soft leftist parties– France Insoumise, the Communist Party, the Socialist, and the Greens– have cobbled together their own shaky “united front” to make an impact in the first round. The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois “solidarity” only goes so far.
In Germany, the hard right, semi-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party became the second largest party behind the Christian Democrats, garnering more votes than any of the individual parties in the governing coalition. The war-crazed Green Party took an especially hard hit in this election, losing nine seats.
While AfD has done less than RN to attempt to clean its ownership of fascistic detritus, it nonetheless draws a great deal of support from working-class protest voters. Germany’s ARD polling found that “a full 44% voted for the AfD out of disappointment at other parties.”
And that is how much of the electoral support for the populist right should be understood. The traditional right has long drawn its support from the bourgeoisie, small businesses, the professional strata: those protecting their status in a capitalist society. The populist right, taking that approach a step further — through nostalgia, misplaced blame, false anti-elitism, and the bogus promise of life-altering change — appeals to the masses: those alienated from a capitalist society. Unless one wants to cynically dismiss the people for their bad choices or pompously scold them for their bad judgment, you must conclude that the existing left parties have failed the masses, lost their credibility, and surrendered leadership on the popular issues, allowing right-populism to fill the breach.
Can one imagine Le Pen or even Macron winning the votes of France’s workers from the post-war Communist Party of Thorez, Duclos, and Rochet, the party esteemed for its role against fascism, and the party promising socialism?
Can one imagine Berlusconi, Lega, the Five Star Movement, Brothers of Italy drawing the Italian working class away from the Communist Party of Togliatti, the party that led the anti-fascist struggle, the party that offered Italian workers a dignified struggle against capital?
Can one imagine the AfD flourishing in the GDR, that part of Germany that today supplies the greatest number of votes to the AfD?
They do so today because the French Communist Party has abandoned its historic role as the champion of the working class and neither listens to workers nor puts their interests at the top of its agenda.
The Italian party dissolved itself thirty-five years ago and paved the way for decades of political farce and faux populism in Italian politics.
And the capitalist pillage of the former socialist German Democratic Republic planted the seeds of despair that grew into the AfD.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. The untold story of the European parliamentary election reveals a world of possibility.
Purposely overlooked by the media were the impressive left gains in Greece and Germany. In both cases, working-class partisanship, principled socialism, and militant anti-imperialism and the promise of peace attracted voters. Where the weak-tea, decaffeinated left campaigned on fear of the right and defense of the European Union’s foreign policy, the Greek Communist Party and a new, radical German party surprised observers with significant gains.
The Greek Communist Party (KKE) nearly doubled its percentage of the vote over the previous European parliamentary election held in 2019. The results substantially exceeded last year’s parliamentary percentages as well. Its strength was shown especially in Attika and urban and working-class areas. These gains were made because of the principled stance of KKE and in spite of swimming against the EU tide of capitalism and war shared by all the other parties. KKE shows that defeating right-wing populism is possible by giving real, bold, and radical answers to the despair of working people.
In Germany, the left wing of the Die Linke Party — the working class-oriented, anti-imperialist wing — finally broke away and established a new party openly opposed to the European Union agenda, its institutionalized capitalism, and its war policies. Led by the independent-minded Sara Wagenknecht, the new party was quickly organized five months ago, yet drew 6.2% of the vote in the European parliamentary elections. The persistently compromising, centrist-orienting Die Linke was trounced, reduced to 2.7% of the vote. ARD polls show that the new party drew 400,000 votes from Die Linke, 500,000 votes from the Social Democrats, and 140,000 votes from the AfD. In some parts of Eastern Germany, the new party — yet to create a sustainable name — drew as much as 15% of the vote.
Perhaps better than any result, the new party delivered a shocking blow to the idea that one must stop the populist right by rallying to the center in defense of a moribund capitalism. As Lenin reminds us: “Two questions now take precedence over all other political questions — the question of bread and the question of peace.” Wagenknecht’s new party gave the questions precedence, attacking Germany’s economic malaise and inflation, as well as the deadly war in Ukraine. We should follow the development of the new party closely.
By attending to working-class interests, the Austrian Communist Party and the Workers’ Party of Belgium also made gains against the right-populist wave.
It should be clear that the hollow tactic of opposing right-populism by circling the wagons around mainstream centrist parties is proving to be bankrupt. The notion that voters can be shepherded away from populist poseurs with a “united front against the bad guys” approach has failed to win people from a desperate need for bread and peace.
These examples show a principled, proven approach to the problem of the populist-right, an approach that neither resorts to a retreat to the center or a bogus, unsustainable, ineffective “united front.” The thirst for change is there.Facebook
The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, will at long last taste freedom again. He should never have been imprisoned. Nevertheless, the release is conditional on his accepting to plead guilty to espionage in the United States — in the far-flung US territory of Saipan. There he is to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served. However, it is much longer that 62 months. Since Sweden ordered an arrest of Assange over rape allegations in 2010, Assange has found himself under some form of incarceration until his current release.
There are some important takeaways from this gross dereliction of justice.
One: The rape allegations, that continue to appear in lazy media, were false, and this was attested to by the two women in the case. The allegations were a political construction between Sweden acting on behalf of the US. The United Kingdom abetted the US’s scheming against Assange. No western nations stepped forward to criticize the treatment. Graciously, president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador offered asylum for Assange in Mexico.
Why was Assange being targetted? Because WikiLeaks has released scads of classified US military documents on the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, diplomatic cables, and the devastating video Collateral Murder. When US citizen Daniel Ellsberg released the “Pentagon Papers” for publication, he was charged with theft on top of espionage, but government chicanery caused it to end up in a mistrial. Whereas president Richard Nixon failed miserably against Ellsberg, Donald Trump and Joe Biden persevered and kept Assange under some form of lock-and-key.
Two: Assange is not guilty. He is guilty of journalism, which is not a crime. He did not commit treason against the US. He is an Australian citizen and not a US citizen. He did not commit espionage. Assange is not a spy and neither was he a thief. He is a publisher, and when WikiLeaks published the leaks, Assange was doing what the New York Times did when they published the “Pentagon Papers.”
Nonetheless, Assange is human. He has parents, a wife, and kids. Assange realizes that he was up against the state machinery of the US, UK, Sweden, and the collusion of Ecuador under president Lenin Moreno. Crucial was the unwillingness of pre-Albanese Australian administrations to fight for one of its citizens.
If the Deep State in the US can have its own president assassinated without consequences, then it can easily have a single person put in some form of incarceration for as long as it intends.
After years and years of incarceration — especially in the notorious Belmarsh prison, his health diminishing, missing his family — that Assange would have accepted the release terms of a rogue empire is completely understandable.
Three: Justice is all too often not just. Justice delayed is justice denied goes the legal maxim. Unfortunately, Assange is not an isolated example. Edward Snowden cannot return stateside. Seeing what has happened to Assange reinforces that the US government will mete out injustice to him.
Four: Monopoly media continues to evince that it is an organ of government and corporations. Why so? First, because they are instruments of power. Second, they found themselves all too often scooped by WikiLeaks on major stories.
Five: The bad: this is a blow to freedom of speech and the right of the public to know what their government is doing.
Six: More bad: it is too easy to demonize a hero, to torture a hero, and to do this even though there is a significant (although arguably not numerous enough) global movement in support of a hero.
Seven: Even more bad: people must keep in mind the other heroes out there who brought corruption, war crimes, crimes against peace and humanity to the public consciousness and as a consequence face persecution, imprisonment, assassination, and whatever sordid punishments the machinery of rogue states can cook up. People like Daniel Ellsberg, William Binney, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, George Galloway, conscientious objectors, truth tellers, resistance fighters, among others.
Eight: Assange is a hero. Heroes tend to be too loosely defined. Scoring a boatload of goals does not one a hero make, neither does crooning a hit song make one a hero, nor does attaining ultra wealth. Heroes are embued with a highly developed sense of morality and transcend themselves by working for the greater good of humanity and the world.
Nine: It is a Pyrrhic victory for Empire. Yes, Assange was brought to the point of having to confess guilt, but who knows what Assange and WikiLeaks will do for exposing crimes of state from here on.
Ten: Whatever Assange decides to do in the future, his decision is earned. He has already done so much for the people who want transparency and who want their governments held to account.Facebook
Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.
The Release of Julian Assange: Plea Deals and Dark Legacies
by Binoy Kampmark / June 25th, 2024
One of the longest sagas of political persecution is coming to its terminus. That is, if you believe in final chapters. Nothing about the fate of Julian Assange seems determinative. His accusers and inquisitors will draw some delight at the plea deal reached between the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team and the US Department of Justice. Others, such as former US Vice President, Mike Pence, thought it unjustifiably lenient.
Alleged to have committed 18 offences, 17 novelly linked to the odious Espionage Act, the June 2020 superseding indictment against Assange was a frontal assault on the freedoms of publishing and discussing classified government information. At this writing, Assange has arrived in Saipan, located in the US commonwealth territory of Northern Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, to face a fresh indictment. It was one of Assange’s conditions that he would not present himself in any court in the United States proper, where, with understandable suspicion, he might legally vanish.
As correspondence between the US Department of Justice and US District Court Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona reveals, the “proximity of this federal US District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of proceedings” was also a factor.
Before the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, he will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917, or section 793(g) (Title 18, USC). The felony carries a fine up to $10,000 and/or up to 10 years in prison, though Assange’s time in Belmarsh Prison, spent on remand for some 62 months, will meet the bar.
The felony charge sheet alleges that Assange knowingly and unlawfully conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, then based at Operating Base Hammer in Iraq, to receive and obtain documents, writings and notes, including those of a secret nature, relating to national defence, wilfully communicated those documents from persons with lawful possession of or access to them to those not entitled to receive them, and do the same from persons unauthorised to possess such documents.
Before turning to the grave implications of this single count and the plea deal, supporters of Assange, including his immediate family, associates and those who had worked with him and drunk from the same well of publishing, had every reason to feel a surreal sense of intoxication. WikiLeaks announced Assange’s departure from London’s Belmarsh Prison on the morning of June 24 after a 1,901 day stint, his grant of bail by the High Court in London, and his release at Stansted Airport. Wife Stella regularly updated followers about the course of flight VJ199. In coverage posted of his arrival at the federal court house in Saipan, she pondered “how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory depravation and the four walls” of his Belmarsh cell.
As for the plea deal itself, it is hard to fault it from the emotional and personal perspective of Assange and his family. He was ailing and being subjected to a slow execution by judicial process. It was also the one hook upon which the DOJ, and the Biden administration, might move on. This being an election year in the US, the last thing President Biden wanted was a haunting reminder of this nasty saga of political persecution hovering over freedom land’s virtues.
There was another, rather more sordid angle, and one that the DOJ had to have kept in mind in thinning the charge sheet: a proper Assange trial would have seen the murderous fantasies of the CIA regarding the publisher subject to scrutiny. These included various possible measures: abduction, rendition, even assassination, points thoroughly explored in a Yahoo News contribution in September 2021.
One of the authors of the piece, Zach Dorfman, posted a salient reminder as news of the plea deal filtered through that many officials during the Trump administration, even harsh critics of Assange, “thought [CIA Director Mike] Pompeo’s extraordinary rendition plots foolhardy in the extreme, and probably illegal. They also – critically – thought it might harm Assange’s prosecution.” Were Pompeo’s stratagems to come to light, “it would make the discovery process nightmarish for the prosecution, should Assange ever see trial.”
From the perspective of publishers, journalists and scribblers keen to keep the powerful accountable, the plea must be seen as enormously troubling. It ultimately goes to the brutal exercise of US extraterritorial power against any publisher, irrespective of outlet and irrespective of nationality. While the legal freight and prosecutorial heaviness of the charges was reduced dramatically (62 months seems sweetly less imposing than 175 years), the measure extracts a pound of flesh from the fourth estate. It signals that the United States can and will seek out those who obtain and publish national security information that they would rather keep under wraps under spurious notions of “harm”.
Assange’s conviction also shores up the crude narrative adopted from the moment WikiLeaks began publishing US national security and diplomatic files: such activities could not be seen as journalistic, despite their role in informing press commentary or exposing the venal side of power through leaks.
From the lead prosecuting attorney Gordon Kromberg to such British judges as Vanessa Baraitser; from the national security commentariat lodged in the media stable to any number of politicians, including the late California Democrat Dianne Feinstein to the current President Joe Biden, Assange was not of the fourth estate and deserved his mobbing. He gave the game away. He pilfered and stole the secrets of empire.
To that end, the plea deal makes a mockery of arguments and effusive declarations that the arrangement is somehow a victory for press freedom. It suggests the opposite: that anyone publishing US national security information by a leaker or whistleblower is imperilled. While the point was never tested in court, non-US publishers may be unable to avail themselves of the free speech protections of the First Amendment. The Espionage Act, for the first time in history, has been given a global, tentacular reach, made a weapon against publishers outside the United States, paving the way for future prosecutions.
Julian Assange walks free, wife Stella appeals for donations for return flight Julian Assange was freed after pleading guilty to violating US espionage laws, ending a 14-year legal battle. His wife, Stella, is crowdfunding to cover the USD 520,000 debt for his charter flight home to Australia.
Appealing for donations to cover the USD 520,000 debt for Julian's jet, Stella, in a fundraising campaign on X said, "Julian's travel to freedom comes at a massive cost: Julian will owe USD 520,000 which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian government for charter Flight VJ199."
"He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia. Any contribution big or small is much appreciated," she said.
Stella Assange's post on X
The crowdfunding for Julian had collected 56 per cent of the donation, amounting to £296,341, at the time of writing this report.
The project will receive the last donation on July 23, 2024. JULIAN ASSANGE WALKS FREE
Julian Assange walked free on Wednesday from a court on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law in a deal that allowed him to head straight home to Australia.
His release ends a 14-year legal saga in which Assange spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven years in asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London battling extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.
During the three-hour hearing, Assange pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents but said he had believed the US Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.
Chief US District Judge Ramona V Manglona accepted his guilty plea and released him due to time already served in a British jail.
'It's a win for Assange, a win for humanity, but a loss for investigative journalism'
• FRANCE 24
Australia's prime minister said Wednesday he was "very pleased" by the plea deal that ended WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's long legal "saga". Assange is on a flight home to Australia after spending more than five years in London's high-security Belmarsh prison fighting extradition to the United States for revealing US state secrets. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective on the Assange 'saga', François Picard is joined by Andrew Fowler. Investigative journalist, former ABC Four Corners reporter
Father, awaiting Julian Assange's arrival in Australia, says he never gave up John Shipton, father of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaks during an interview in Canberra , Australia June 26, 2024. PHOTO: Reuters
PUBLISHED ON JUNE 26, 2024
CANBERRA — Julian Assange's father, John Shipton, could breathe a massive sigh of relief on Wednesday (June 26) after a decade-long campaign to free his son.
The WikiLeaks founder on Wednesday was released by a court on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law.
Assange's family, including his father, children and wife, Stella, gathered in Australia's capital Canberra ahead of his expected evening arrival by private jet, marking the end of a long legal fight tied to WikiLeaks' release of hundreds of thousands of classified US defence documents in 2010.
Shipton said he planned to ask his son in a low-key Australian way when he arrives: "Where have you been?"
"My faith has never, ever, ever died," he told Reuters in an interview at parliament.
"That Julian can come home to Australia and see his family regularly and do the ordinary things of life is a treasure. Life measured amongst the beauty of the ordinary is the essence of life," Shipton said.
He said he was "divided in two" on the deal that saw Assange plead guilty to one charge of espionage, saying his release meant he would have precious time with his sons.
He was nonetheless concerned about the "political and legal circumstances surrounding it".
"I think it is going to be a problem for journalists and publishers anywhere in the world to publish criticism of the United States government," he said.
Assange's release was cause for celebration in Canberra, where politicians who had campaigned for Assange gathered around Shipton in a hall outside the parliament chamber.
"We want to give you a hug," said lawmaker Sophie Scamps.
Assange will need time to recover from his "monastic life" in self-exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years, and then prison for five years, Shipton said.
He looked forward to being involved in his son's "practical everyday human life, not the sweep of politics."
"The American secret service in 2011 published their review saying we must hound him and his family to the end of the earth and bankrupt them. Its been expensive but I've got no complaints - the results are there for everyone to see," he said.
He said the Australian government had been "nothing short of magnificent".
Assange has previously said he got his "rebel gene" from his father. Shipton said he considers his son to be personally conservative and polite.
"It is his understanding of the capacity of the internet to bring to us information that can be the foundation of knowledge that is revolutionary," he said.
"He is only 52 I imagine he will find something to do. He will be 53 next week. The momentum he has got ... he will conjure forth those things that he can do."
Shipton said the family had devoted the last decade to doing everything in its capacity to see Assange free.
"We Australians managed to turn around a superpower in its attempt to destroy an Australian citizen," he said.
Shipton learnt of the plea deal from his son Gabriel.
Gabriel told Reuters on Wednesday he was "feeling extremely relieved that this ordeal is finally over and that Julian can move on with his life."
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walks free from court after pleading guilty in US deal
Assange appears before a judge in Saipan in the Pacific as long-running legal case ends
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves a US courthouse in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. Photograph: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
Wed Jun 26 2024 -
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has walked free from a US court after pleading guilty to one charge in a deal that resolves a long-running legal case over the publication of classified documents.
Assange appeared before a judge in Saipan in the US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific just after midnight on Wednesday and pleaded guilty to a single felony charge after the United States dropped 17 other espionage charges against him.
He admitted to his role in the conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act and was sentenced to time already served in a British prison.
Assange did not answer questions from reporters on the short walk into and out of the court.
The court hearing followed his dramatic release from Belmarsh Prison in London on Monday where he has spent five years, largely in solitary confinement, fighting extradition.
Assange left the UK on Monday evening and flew to Saipan via Bangkok after the plea deal was signed on June 19th.
Speaking outside court after the hearing, his US lawyer Barry Pollack said his prosecution was “unprecedented” and the WikiLeaks founder “suffered tremendously in his fight for free speech”.
Mr Pollack said: “The prosecution of Julian Assange is unprecedented in the 100 years of the Espionage Act, it has never been used by the United States to pursue a publisher, a journalist, like Mr Assange.
“Mr Assange revealed truthful, important and newsworthy information, including revealing that the United States had committed war crimes, and he has suffered tremendously in his fight for free speech, for freedom of the press, and to ensure that the American public and the world community gets truthful and important, newsworthy information.”
He added that they “firmly believe that Mr Assange never should have been charged under the Espionage Act”.
He said: “There was a very narrow agreed upon set of facts here and Mr Assange acknowledges that of course, he accepted documents from Chelsea Manning, and published many of those documents because it was in the world’s interest that those documents be published.
“Unfortunately, that violates the terms of the Espionage Act. That’s what we acknowledged today. We also said Mr Assange said very clearly that he believes there should be First Amendment protection for that conduct. But the fact of the matter is, as written, the Espionage Act does not have a defence for the First Amendment.”
Mr Pollack added that the court “determined that no harm was caused by Mr Assange’s publications”.
Jennifer Robinson, another of Assange’s lawyers, said the case set “a dangerous precedent” which should be a “concern” to journalists and people around the world.
“The US is seeking to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over all of you without giving you constitutional free speech protections, and anyone who cares about free speech and democratic accountability should stand against it,” she said.
After the hearing Assange boarded a flight to his native Australia to be reunited with his wife, two young sons and other members of the family.
The plea deal brings to an end a criminal case of international intrigue and to the US government’s pursuit of a publisher whose secret-sharing website made him a cause celebre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose US military wrongdoing
. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the US courthouse in Saipan. Photograph: YUICHI YAMAZAKI/AFP via Getty Images
US prosecutors had repeatedly asserted that his actions broke the law and put the country’s national security at risk.
The leaks detailed thousands of civilian deaths as a result of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, and implicated American armed forces in the killing of innocent bystanders, including a father and two Reuters journalists during an air strike on Baghdad in July 2007.
Assange will pay half a million US dollars (€466,750) for the chartered flight on which left Stansted, accompanied by a WikiLeaks lawyer, a representative of the Australian government and a medic to check on his health.
WikiLeaks has launched a fundraising campaign to pay for the flight
Assange’s wife Stella said on Tuesday her relief at his release was coupled with anger that he had spent so long in prison.
Speaking from Australia, she said: “It is hard to believe that Julian has been in prison for so long. It had become normalised. I am grateful to the people who made this possible but I am also angry that it ever came to this.
“Overall I am elated but I cannot believe it is actually happening until I see Julian.”
She told the PA news agency that she travelled to Australia with the couple’s two young sons Gabriel and Max on Sunday when it became clear that Assange would be freed.
WikiLeaks has released footage of founder Julian Assange boarding a plane ahead of an expected court hearing in the Northern Mariana Islands. Video: Reuters
Mrs Assange said her husband’s release would not have happened without the intervention of Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, who has been increasingly vocal in demands for the United States to drop charges against Assange.
“The public climate has shifted and everyone understands that Julian has been the victim,” she said.
Assange had been locked in a lengthy legal battle in the UK over his extradition, which saw him enter and live in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in 2012 before his detention in Belmarsh Prison.
In a January 2021 ruling, then-district judge Vanessa Baraitser said Assange should not be sent to the United States, citing a real and “oppressive” risk of suicide, while ruling against him on all other issues.
Later that year, US authorities won a High Court bid to overturn this block, paving the way towards Assange’s extradition.
Assange was due to bring his own challenge to the High Court in London in early July after he was recently given the go-ahead to challenge the original judge’s dismissal of parts of his case.
His release from prison comes days ahead of his 53rd birthday on July 3rd.
– PA
WikiLeaks’ Assange pleads guilty to publishing US military secrets in deal that secures his freedom
SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S.
Mari Yamaguchi, Kimberly Esmores, Alanna Durkin Richer And Eric Tucker, The Associated Press
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the federal court in Saipan, Mariana Islands, Wednesday, June 26 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets Wednesday in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that secures his liberty and concludes a drawn-out legal saga that raised divisive questions about press freedom and national security.
The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years in major world stages of Washington and London, came to a surprise end in a most unusual setting with Assange, 52, entering his plea in a U.S. district court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Assange's native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.
The deal required the iconoclastic internet publisher to admit guilt to a single felony count but also permitted him to return to Australia without any time in an American prison. The judge sentenced him to the five years he'd already spent behind bars in the United Kingdom, fighting extradition to the United States on an Espionage Act indictment that could have carried a lengthy prison sentence in the event of a conviction. He was holed up for seven years before that in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
He smiled slightly as U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona imposed the sentence, pronouncing him a “free man."
The conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of satisfaction. The Justice Department, facing a defendant who had already served substantial jail time, was able to resolve — without trial — a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process. Assange, for his part, signaled a begrudging contentment with the resolution, saying in court that though he believed the Espionage Act contradicted the First Amendment, he accepted the consequences of soliciting classified information from sources for publication.
Jennifer Robinson, one of Assange’s lawyers, told reporters after the hearing that the case “sets a dangerous precedent that should be a concern to journalists everywhere.”
“It’s a huge relief to Julian Assange, to his family, to his friends, to his supporters and to us — to everyone who believes in free speech around the world — that he can now return home to Australia and be reunited with his family,” she said.
Assange arrived at court in a dark suit, with a tie loosened around the collar, after flying from Britain on a charter plane accompanied by members of his legal team and Australian officials, including the top Australian diplomat in the U.K.
Inside the courthouse, he answered basic questions from Manglona, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and appeared to listen intently as terms of the deal were discussed.
He appeared upbeat and relaxed during the hearing, at times cracking jokes with the judge. While signing his plea agreement, he made a joke about the 9-hour time difference between the U.K. and Saipan. At another point, when the judge asked him whether he was satisfied with the plea conditions, Assange responded: “It might depend on the outcome,” sparking some laughter in the courtroom.
“So far, so good,” the judge responded.
The plea deal, disclosed Monday night in a sparsely detailed Justice Department letter, represents the latest — and presumably final — chapter in a court fight involving the eccentric Australian computer expert who has been celebrated by supporters as a transparency crusader but lambasted by national security hawks who insist that his conduct put lives at risks and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.
The criminal case brought by the Trump administration Justice Department centers on the receipt and publication of hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Prosecutors alleged that he teamed with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records, including by conspiring to crack a Defense Department computer password, and published them without regard to American national security. Names of human sources who provided information to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were among the details exposed, prosecutors have said.
But his activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view and warned of a chilling effect on journalists. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
The indictment was unsealed in 2019, but Assange’s legal woes long predated the criminal case and continued well past it.
Weeks after the release of the largest document cache in 2010, a Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. Assange has long maintained his innocence, and the investigation was later dropped.
He presented himself in 2012 to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there, welcoming a parade of celebrity visitors and making periodic appearances from the building’s balcony to address supporters.
In 2019, his hosts revoked his asylum, allowing British police to arrest him. He remained locked up for the last five years while the Justice Department sought to extradite him, in a process that encountered skepticism from British judges who worried about how Assange would be treated by the U.S.
Ultimately, though, the resolution sparing Assange prison time in the U.S. contradicts years of ominous warnings by Assange and his supporters that the American criminal justice system would expose him to unduly harsh treatment, including potentially the death penalty — something prosecutors never sought.
Last month, Assange won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.
His wife, Stella Assange, told the BBC from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over 72 hours whether the deal would go ahead but she felt “elated” at the news.
After the morning court hearing, Assange left Saipan by plane around midday headed for Australia, where relatives were waiting to be reunited with him.
Assange on Monday had left the London prison where he has spent the last five years after being granted bail during a secret hearing last week. The plane carrying him and Australian officials landed for refueling in Bangkok en route to Saipan. A video posted by WikiLeaks on the X platform showed Assange staring intently out the window at the blue sky as the plane headed toward the island.
“Imagine. From over 5 years in a small cell in a maximum security prison. Nearly 14 years detained in the U.K. To this,” WikiLeaks wrote.
___
Tucker reported from Fort Pierce, Florida, and Durkin Richer from Washington. Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Washington, Napat Kongsawad and David Rising in Bangkok, Jill Lawless and Brian Melley in London and Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this report.
Mari Yamaguchi, Kimberly Esmores, Alanna Durkin Richer And Eric Tucker, The Associated Press
Why Putin Sent Russian Ships to Cuba
On June 17, Russian naval vessels left Cuba without incident, concluding a five-day visit. The visit may have been without incident, but it wasn’t without meaning. Frustrated that their diplomatic messages were not being heard, Russia sent a louder message. But that message may not have simply been about projecting power as the West has presented it.
On June 12, four Russian naval vessels docked at Havana Bay in Cuba, just 90 miles from the coast of Florida. The vessels included the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and the Kazan submarine. Though they can both carry advanced weapons, neither were carrying nuclear weapons.
The two vessels make a strong statement. The Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov, “one of the Russian Navy’s most modern ships,” is capable of being armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles. The Kazan submarine is a nuclear-powered submarine that is one of the Yasen-class submarines “that has worried the US and Western militaries for years due to its stealth and strike capabilities.” It is quiet and tough to track and can carry cruise missiles.
Though the Pentagon has said that the Russian fleet does not pose a threat to the United States, the U.S. has deployed ships, reconnaissance planes and sea drones to monitor and track the vessels. The U.S. also sent a fast-attack submarine to Guantanamo Bay and their Canadian ally sent a navy patrol ship into Havana.
Though saying they do not pose an actual threat, the mainstream media has portrayed the arrival of the ships as a Russian demonstration of its ability to project power into America’s hemisphere and backyard.
It is not possible to divine Russia’s intention. The official Russian statement is that “Naval exercises are standard practice in very varied parts of the world, and are standard practice for states – in particular those that are major naval powers like the Russian Federation. The carrying out of such visits is also a widespread practice.”
But, though it is impossible to read Russia’s intention in sending the ships, it is not difficult to see the effect. There are two significant messages to be read in the arrival of the Russian fleet.
Whatever Russia’s intent was, the arrival of the fleet had the effect of turning the Ukraine table and asking the U.S. to consider, for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, what concerns they might have, and how they might react, to having a rival superpower at your door and the potential for advanced weapons on your borders. The answer was clear. Though U.S. intelligence has determined that none of the vessels are carrying nuclear weapons, the Pentagon has assessed that they don’t pose a threat, and the State Department has said that such visits are routine, that did not assuage the need for them to rush a fast-attack submarine and surround the fleet from above, around and below.
Whether or not it was Russia’s intent, the U.S. may have been reminded about incursions into backyards and spheres of influence. The felt reminder was noted by Russia. Noting Washington’s nervous response, a reporter asked Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova what signal Russia was sending. She answered that the West was always “completely deaf” to diplomatic signals, but that “[a]s soon as it comes to exercises or sea voyages, we immediately hear questions and a desire to know what these messages are about. Why do only signals related only to our army and navy reach the West?”
The second thing that is clear from the arrival of the Russian vessels in Cuba is that, as Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, put it to me, “Russia has been rebuilding relationships established by the Soviet Union over the last decade or so – including with the likes of Cuba and many African states – and naval visits have been part of that process.”
Despairing that the door to a comprehensive European security arrangement has been permanently shut and facing Western attempts to isolate it, Russia has turned, instead, to old relationships. Putin is not trying to rebuild the Soviet empire, but he may be trying to rebuild Soviet relationships. The recent signing of a comprehensive strategic partnership with North Korea is the most current example. While signing the agreement, Putin recalled a long Russian-North Korean relationship going back over three quarters of a century. The visit to Cuba fits into that pattern. Hill also includes Russia’s reliable relationship with Syria.
Another example is Africa. Putin has said that “Russia’s multifaceted cooperation” and “partnership” with African countries “is reaching a whole new level” and has promised that Russia “has always and will always consider cooperation with African states a priority.” He frequently points out that “Ever since the African peoples’ heroic struggle for independence, it has been common knowledge that the Soviet Union provided significant support to the peoples of Africa in their fight against colonialism, racism and apartheid.”
In the 1960’s, the Soviet Union kept Cuba afloat while under attack by the U.S. embargo. William LeoGrande, Professor of Government at American University and a specialist in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, says, “Although that partnership collapsed with the end of the Cold War, Vladimir Putin has worked hard to rebuild it.”
Putin, LeoGrande says, forgave 90% of Cuba’s debt to the Soviet Union, has provided increasing economic aid, and, in 2009, signed a strategic partnership with Cuba that included economic, political and diplomatic relations. Russian aid has saved Cuban lives during COVID, according to LeoGrande.
As well as reminding the U.S. of concerns they would have with a rival superpower on their doorstep who could transfer weapons with a flight time of minutes to your territory, the visiting Russian vessels should be seen in the context of the reestablishment of Russia’s old relationship with Cuba.
Whatever signal Russia was sending, it was heard louder in Washington than diplomatic signals Russia has sent. The advanced vessels in Cuba’s harbors may have reminded the U.S. what it feels like to have a rival superpower with advanced weapons on your borders. It is also a reminder that Russia, instead of being isolated, is reestablishing old Soviet-era relationships.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net
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