Between The Lines - Kevin Bankston on Political Pressure to Prosecute WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange (Week Ending 12/24/10)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

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U.S. Reacts to WikiLeaks with Calls to Imprison or Kill Founder Julian Assange

Real Audio MP3

Interview with Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, conducted by Scott Harris

After Julian Assange spent a week in a London jail, a British judge granted the WikiLeaks founder cash bail in the amount of 200,000 pounds or $315,000 with strict conditions. But Sweden, which is seeking to question Assange in connection with his alleged sexual assault of two Swedish women, announced that it would oppose the granting of bail.

WikiLeaks' has drawn harsh criticism from the Obama administration for its release of thousands of classified field reports on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this summer, and its more recent circulation of secret U.S. State Department cables, exposing Washington's sometimes embarrassing confidential discussions of foreign policy and heads of state. Conservative American politicians and commentators are ramping up the pressure to retaliate against Assange and Wikileaks. Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol has called for the assassination of Assange, U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., has demanded Assange be charged with treason and that the New York Times be investigated for its publication of some redacted WikiLeaks documents.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder maintains that WikiLeaks' release of secret documents has put the safety of Americans at risk, and says the Justice Department is investigating whether to prosecute Assange, possibly under the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who explains why he strongly rejects the constitutional basis for any prosecution of Julian Assange for his group's publication of documents that they did not themselves illegally obtain.

KEVIN BANKSTON: I fear that a lot of the hyberbolic and hysteric commentary about WikiLeaks has created more heat than light and isn't really clarifying the situation. But I think that regardless of whether you or I or anyone else think the release of the diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks was responsible or irresponsible or is overall a good thing or a bad thing for democracy in the U.S. or is journalistic -- or, to use a term that's been hardly overused lately, terroristic -- the fact remains that our First Amendment strongly protects the right of WikiLeaks or the New York Times, or you or I to publish and to read these cables. There's a lot of complaint about well, some of this may not be particularly newsworthy or why was it important for this stuff to be published? But it's not the burden of a publisher to demonstrate why what they're publishing is important. The presumption in our system is that if you are publishing it, it is important and it is protected.

Rather, the burden is on the government if it wants to restrain publication or prosecute somebody to meet a very high burden and demonstrate that specific information in a specific cable is going to cause direct, immediate or irreparable harm to the United States. And if they can't do that, our First Amendment demands that the speech stay up. And ultimately, that is a bargain that we've made as a country and in the end, it's a powerful and important bargain, one that we've staked our all on.

BETWEEN THE LINES: We hear that the U.S. Justice Department under the Obama admnistration is studying prosecution of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. What legal standing does the U.S. Justice Department have to go after Julian Assange, who is an Australian citizen, and certainly not subject to all U.S. laws, is he?

KEVIN BANKSTON: Well, there are certainly practical concerns in terms getting jurisdiction over Julian Assange. It is possible they would be able to extradite him from Sweden when he goes to face the separate sexual assault charges that have been brought against him there. It's a bit hard to comment on an indictment that hasn't come down yet and a criminal complaint that does not exist yet. But the law most often cited in regard to WikiLeaks is the Espionage Act of 1917, which rather broadly criminalizes the receipt or dissemination of national defense information. As you note, 1917 is a long time ago, and there have been a lot of intervening Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment and reiterating how strong our First Amendment is and how strongly it protects our ability and the ability of the foreign press, to the extent they're speaking to us Americans, the right to publish true political speech. And that's exactly what we're talking about here when we discuss the documents of the United States government, which are by definition, political speech and very strongly protected under our First Amendment. So, I think the question we need to ask ourselves, though, if and when a prosecution is brought against Julian Assange, is what's preventing such a prosecution against the New York Times or any other innocent recipient of this information who attempts to report on it or publish it? Indeed, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who's been the source of some of the most hysterical commentary here, has in fact, suggested that the New York Times should be criminally investigated for reporting news based on these cables and for possessing these cables, which I think should send a shudder down the spine of any American who cares about free speech and a free press.

BETWEEN THE LINES: When Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman talks about investigating the New York Times and any other publication by extension, that reprints portions of these leaked diplomatic cables published initially by WikiLeaks, what standing would that kind of investigation have without jeopardizing the constitutional guarantee of the right of a free press and free speech?

KEVIN BANKSTON: I think that such a prosecution would threaten the First Amendment rights -- not just of the person prosecuted, but everyone else to the extent it would chill us, it would frighten us, it would create a fear around these documents that I don't think is warranted. And, to try and create an antidote to that fear, what we've published on our site is a memo from the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, which is Congress' bipartisan objective legal office to write memos for them about what the law really is.

And we have gotten a hold of a very recent memo from CRS about WikiLeaks and the laws that might apply and how the First Amendment might create hurdles to prosecuting WikiLeaks, and it makes very clear something we already knew, but I think the public needs to hear more of, which is: a prosecution against a publisher for publishing true information that they did not illegally obtain, but rather was provided to them would be absolutely unprecedented under American law. It's something that just doesn't happen. That's a fact that I think a lot of the rhetoric here is ignoring. And I think that a prosecution of that nature would represent a sea change and pose a real, new threat to our system of free speech.

Contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation by calling (415) 436-9333 or visit their website at www.eff.org.