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From: BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com>
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Subject: Re: Obama ends pursuit of Julian Assange
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Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2024 12:15:15 -0700
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In article <v5ehpo$1inqs$1@dont-email.me>,
 "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

> Just heard on the news that the United States government has entered
> into a plea deal with Julian Assange. Assange is allowed to plead guilty
> to one count of violating the Espionage Act, that vile law written on
> behalf of the Wilson administration by Congress to silence critics of
> WW1 and America's involvement in that horrid European war, that has been
> used by subsequent administrations in all sorts of creative ways to
> silence critics of America's war policies and just generally to
> intimidate people into silence.

I still don't understand how Assange was subject to the Espionage Act at 
all. He was foreign national and was not within U.S. borders when he did 
all the stuff the government claimed of him.

Citizens of other nations do not owe allegiance to the United States 
and, indeed, all other countries, including our closest allies, spy on 
us as we do to them.

The U.S. Congress has no legal authority or justification to bind all 
six billion people on earth to obey U.S. law.

> Yes, by publishing everything Manning leaked, Assange had put lives in
> danger, but no one believes Obama cared about that. It was strictly
> about embarassment.

And when the NY Times published the Pentagon Papers, they put lives in 
danger, too, but it was constitutionally protected speech. Like the 
Times, Assange didn't steal the TS info. Manning did. And like the 
Times, he should have been constitutionally protected when he published 
it.

The argument was that the Pentagon Papers decision didn't apply because 
he's a foreign national and not entitled to constitutional protections 
when not on U.S. soil. But that same argument applies to the Espionage 
Act, too. The government is basically saying "U.S. law only applies to 
you (foreign nationals) when it suits us".