"The Pentagon Papers" Supreme Court ruling applies to WikiLeaks

JonathanToth

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Jan 25, 2011
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I'm reading "Obama's War" by Bob Woodward ©2010, and on page 179 he says:



"On June 30, 1971, Supreme Court decision on the Pentagon Papers case, nearly four decades earlier and just three months before I joined the Post, opened the door for such conversations with the government. In its 6 to3 ruling, the court essentially said THE GOVERNMENT COULD NOT RESTRAIN THE PRESS BEFORE PUBLICATION OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, which permitted The New York Times and The Washington Post to CONTINUE PUBLISHING the top secret 47-volume Vietnam War study, which showed that the government had repeatedly lied to the public about the war.

Because the government COULD NOT LEGALLY STOP US FROM PUBLISHING the McChrystal assessment, we had the upper hand in listening to arguments for deleting passages from the report. For the Pentagon Papers, the Times and Post did not consult the government in advance. To do so would have alerted the government and likely resulted in a court action to stop publication, which is exactly what the government did in federal court after the initial articles ran.

The beauty of the Supreme Court's Pentagon Paper ruling--WHICH FORBIDS RESTRAINT--is that IT ENCOURAGES US TO ASK THE GOVERNMENT FOR THEIR SPECIFIC OBJECTIONS TO THE PUBLICATION OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS."
[my CAPS...but interesting timing on Woodward's part to bring this up now]



Since this IS the case, the US government CANNOT seek any kind of "espionage" charge against Julian Assange. They know this.

My questions are:

-If our government would take this again to the supreme court, do they have enough pull to change the ruling or alter it to depict WikiLeaks as something other than "The Press"?

-Do any of these political assassinations that happened in the last two weeks have anything to do with WikiLeaks?
1. John Wheeler III-bio/chemical warfare expert for both Bush's, found in land fill after the birds and the fish started dying (1/4/2011)
2. John Roll-federal judge placed in office by Bush Sr. in 1991, who in 2009, faced death threats after presiding over a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit in Arizona, killed by Jared Loughner (1/8/2011)
3. Ashley Turton (married to Daniel A. Turton, 43, the White House's deputy director of legislative affairs for the House of Representatives)-lobbyist for Progress Energy, that Duke Energy bought for $13 billion in stock the day after her death, found in her burned car, in her garage (1/10/2011)

-Now that these people are dead, what new options does the government have in regards to WikiLeaks (meaning: did any of them have any damaging info or power that some in the government might have felt was a threat)?

-Were these assassinations simple vendettas performed by the CIA to intimidate anyone who might think of snitching to WikiLeaks?



Just questions...but transparency will sort it all out...
Transparency is the Apocalypse.
 
I'm reading "Obama's War" by Bob Woodward ©2010, and on page 179 he says:



"On June 30, 1971, Supreme Court decision on the Pentagon Papers case, nearly four decades earlier and just three months before I joined the Post, opened the door for such conversations with the government. In its 6 to3 ruling, the court essentially said THE GOVERNMENT COULD NOT RESTRAIN THE PRESS BEFORE PUBLICATION OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, which permitted The New York Times and The Washington Post to CONTINUE PUBLISHING the top secret 47-volume Vietnam War study, which showed that the government had repeatedly lied to the public about the war.

Because the government COULD NOT LEGALLY STOP US FROM PUBLISHING the McChrystal assessment, we had the upper hand in listening to arguments for deleting passages from the report. For the Pentagon Papers, the Times and Post did not consult the government in advance. To do so would have alerted the government and likely resulted in a court action to stop publication, which is exactly what the government did in federal court after the initial articles ran.

The beauty of the Supreme Court's Pentagon Paper ruling--WHICH FORBIDS RESTRAINT--is that IT ENCOURAGES US TO ASK THE GOVERNMENT FOR THEIR SPECIFIC OBJECTIONS TO THE PUBLICATION OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS."
[my CAPS...but interesting timing on Woodward's part to bring this up now]



Since this IS the case, the US government CANNOT seek any kind of "espionage" charge against Julian Assange. They know this.

My questions are:

-If our government would take this again to the supreme court, do they have enough pull to change the ruling or alter it to depict WikiLeaks as something other than "The Press"?

-Do any of these political assassinations that happened in the last two weeks have anything to do with WikiLeaks?
1. John Wheeler III-bio/chemical warfare expert for both Bush's, found in land fill after the birds and the fish started dying (1/4/2011)
2. John Roll-federal judge placed in office by Bush Sr. in 1991, who in 2009, faced death threats after presiding over a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit in Arizona, killed by Jared Loughner (1/8/2011)
3. Ashley Turton (married to Daniel A. Turton, 43, the White House's deputy director of legislative affairs for the House of Representatives)-lobbyist for Progress Energy, that Duke Energy bought for $13 billion in stock the day after her death, found in her burned car, in her garage (1/10/2011)

-Now that these people are dead, what new options does the government have in regards to WikiLeaks (meaning: did any of them have any damaging info or power that some in the government might have felt was a threat)?

-Were these assassinations simple vendettas performed by the CIA to intimidate anyone who might think of snitching to WikiLeaks?



Just questions...but transparency will sort it all out...
Transparency is the Apocalypse.

The case does make it much more difficult to charge and convict someone of treason or espionage against the US -but Assuange is actually a greater disadvantage than he knows. He is NOT an American citizen so he can't claim that as a citizen he did this on behalf of other citizens he believed had a "right" to know. And secondly his VENOM and HATRED of the US are undeniable -he has written extensively about how much he despises the US. So his own writings provide the most critical part of proving a case against him -that he released classified information knowing it was classified -and he clearly did it for the purpose of harming the US.

Fat chance THIS administration will ever do anything about it though. More than 4 MILLION people have security clearance to gain access to classified information which is ridiculous. Either the documents they have access to are over classified or the people with access have been too easily granted access -probably some of both going on. Just a reminder to those who believe government is this wonderful, touchy-feely thing -in reality it is all too often incompetent, inefficient, redundant and too intrusive. So no surprise that out of more than 4 million people a couple of them were traitors. Those traitors bother me FAR more than Assuange who is not a US citizen. THEY can and should be charged for treason because they cannot use Assuange's cover of pretending to be the "press" even. They violated an oath they took and knowingly and purposely distributed classified information to a FOREIGNER -which is a felony. THAT is still an easy case to prove and no reason they shouldn't be able to figure out exactly who did it. They've got one and supposedly suspect at least one more person.
 
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