Washington, DC, June 11, 2024 --  

The campaign against Julian Assange has come to an end, but the intelligence abuses that triggered the case continue.

The release of Julian Assange after signing a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors has brought an end to one of the ugliest and strangest espionage cases in America's history. His sentencing on Tuesday in a US. Courtroom on the remote Pacific island of Saipan provides a bizarre end to a case that was strange from the start.¹ Most importantly, the plea agreement ends over a decade of deference of American civilian authority the the country's military intelligence complex.

Assange has always been controversial. To supporters, he is a heroic crusader for government transparency: a whistleblower who published disturbing facts that the powerful wanted to keep secret from the people. To detractors, he was a dangerous tool of America's enemies who instigated stealing of classified information and put the lives of numerous American spies at risk.

The U.S. Justice Department charged Assange with helping former US Army analyst Bradley Manning steal classified US documents which Assange later published on WikiLeaks. Manning became an icon of America's culture war, legally changing her name to Chelsea and undergoing gender reassignment surgery. Manning had testified that her struggles with gender identity and opposition to war had affected her mindset.

Like many convicted spies, it was Assange's personal flaws and sexual dalliances that led to his downfall. Disputed details of a shady sexual encounter in Sweden led to a rape investigation and an international warrant. While out on bail in London, he requested asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. But his caustic personality and alienation of his hosts gave Ecuador cover to cut a deal with America and the UK, and he was handed over in 2019. The five years he spent in prison fighting extradition to the US counted as time served in the sentence in his plea deal. He is now a free man.

The Biden administration should be commended for closing the case, but it is a day late and a dollar short. America's wars against Islamic militants in the 2000s led to excessive classification of government acts and widespread domestic espionage. The President Obama sided with the intelligence complex against the public interest during the wind-down of the wars in the 2010s. He never held the intelligence agencies to account for illegal and abusive practices, something that will always tarnish his legacy.

To this day, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden remains exiled to Putin's Russia for revealing NSA abuses against the American public. Former President Obama actively blocked Snowden from boarding a plane to South America from Moscow in 2013, cancelling his passport while he was in transit. A few months later, the Obama administration further assisted the America's intelligence abusers, forcing down the private jet of former Bolivian president Eva Morales in Europe over suspicions that Snowden was on board.

Even if the Biden administration wanted to end the case against Snowden, doing so would be much harder. Obama handed Putin a huge propaganda victory by stranding Snowden in exile in Moscow. Russia is unlikely to give up his pawn willingly, given the abysmal state of relations with the United States. And given reports that Biden personally appealed to foreign leaders not to grant asylum to Snowden², backtracking now may be personally and politically difficult.

The Assange case aside, Biden has not shown any willingness to challenge the military intelligence complex. In April he signed an extension of the FISA authorization that allows the NSA domestic wiretap authority provided the intended targets are not US citizens.³ This was one of the specific abuses unveiled by the Snowden leaks to the Guardian the the Washington Post.

Should Biden lose the White House to former President Donald Trump in November, intelligence leaders would find themselves with a much more adversarial president. During his first term, Trump was highly critical of American intelligence failures, and had a tense relationship with agency leaders after he shared classified photos to the press and was later charged for retaining classified documents at his Mar-al-Lago estate.

Unfortunately, while Trump may have antipathy toward intelligence leaders, he is no friend of civil liberties. Trump's beef with the CIA and NSA comes down to doubts about their competence and his anger that they will not pledge personal loyalty.

At least the Obama-Biden legacy of slavish devotion to the intelligence complex is now tempered by Biden's ending the case against Assange. For those who wish to see intelligence abuses tempered further, another Biden term at least offers some hope. Even if he doesn't do anything more to reign in abusive spooks, at least he provides hope that a 2028 presidential election will take place. If we're lucky enough to vote again in four years, perhaps Americans can elect somebody to do what our current leaders cannot or will not do.

Related Web Columns:

Egomaniacs, Traitors and Crackpots, August 21, 2012

Embarrassing Indeed, December 14, 2010

Notes:

1. USA Today, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Pleads Guilty to Violating Espionage Act in Plea Deal for Freedom, June 25, 2024

2. The Guardian, Ecuador's Correa Says Biden Asked Him to Deny Edward Snowden Asylum, June 29, 2013

3. Electronic Frontier Foundation, U.S. Senate and Biden Administration Shamefully Renew and Expand FISA Section 702, Ushering in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance, April 22, 2024