"Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange" (Michael Moore)

This video appeared on the New Yorker website the week Raffi Khatchadourian's "Reporter at Larget" piece on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, "No Secrets," appeared, in the June 7 issue. The site caption read: "Here Khatchadourian discusses a classified U.S. military video that shows the killing of two Reuters employees in Baghdad, posted by WikiLeaks under the title 'Collateral Murder.'"

by Ken

For once I found myself, if not exactly ahead of the story, then less than usually behind it, thanks to what seemed to me a fine piece of reporting by Raffi Khatchadourian in the June 7 New Yorker, a "Reporter at Large" piece called, "No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency." The piece gave a good sense of Assange's background, and what had brought him to the kind of undertaking he was undertaking. It was certainly a more informed and believable image than the fantasy Julian Assange created by the powerful forces that have found themselves embarrassed or worse by the revelations in the documents made public by WikiLeaks.

Am I 100 percent comfortable with every aspect of the WikiLeaks undertaking? Well, no, but if there were any undertaking we could be 100 percent comfortable with, is there much chance that that undertaking could be undertaking anything of any real value or use? Let me put it this way: What level of comfort do we feel with, to pick a not-quite-random example, our government's decisions to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way those wars have been fought? 100 percent? 99? 95? 75? Shall I keep going? I have a feeling I haven't gotten anywhere near the correct answer.

And that's what's been so startling about the response to the big WikiLeaks document releases. No, I'm no talking about the Establishment response of thoroughly disgraced intellectual stooges like Holy Joe Lieberman, who combines deeply engrained ignorance and deceit about what actually constitutes national security with the basic venality and fundamental dishonesty that make him, well, what he is. I confess, I'm a bit taken aback by the hysterical overreaction, but that's only a matter of degree, and probably represents the degree of panic those Establishment types are feeling knowing how explosive the masses of secrets they're still sitting on would prove if they're WikiLeaked. In other words, that panic tells me even more surely that the job Assange has taken on is desperately needed.

No, what has surprised me is the hostility of people I thought of as similarly minded progressives, who have found all manner of reasons to jump to the defense of the governments and institutions whose secrets have so far been exposed. Oh, they're usually careful to say that they don't approve of the behavior depicted, but in fact, isn't that exactly what they're doing? They continue, for example, to blither about Assange's irresponsibility in releasing unredacted documents, no matter how often it's point out to them how hard Assange has worked -- bringing in major media organizations to participate in the vetting -- to accomplish just what the deniers claim he's such a menace for not doing. In the end, it's hard not to conclude that the WikiLeaks attackers really and truly prefer that the secret-holders be left to keep their secrets, which they're painfully uninterested in taking account of.

Again, I direct readers' attention to Ian Welsh's post, "Why Assange and Wikileaks have won this round," which I cited in my post, "At this point do we have to be hoping for a revolution?." Let me just recall this paragraph:

It has proved that the West is run by authoritarian thugs with completely twisted priorities. Kill hundreds of thousands of people and engage in aggressive war? No big deal. Cause the greatest economic collapse of the post-war period sending millions into poverty? We couldn’t possibly prosecute the people who did that, but we will give them trillions! Reveal our petty secrets and lies, and that we know the war in Afghanistan is lost, have known for years and continue to kill both Afghanis and our own soldiers pointlessly? We WILL destroy you, no matter what we have to do.

I really don't have anything new to say on the subject, beyond voicing my concern about what seem to me the really dangerous people, the ones responsible for what Ian earlier described, in his remarkable post "An American Future," as "a deranged manhunt combined with a truly Soviet-style screaming of “I can’t hear you” as they try and ban soldiers, the Library of Congress and public servants from reading information everyone has access to."

What I really wanted to do was to call attention to the statement issued by Michael Moore, "Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange," explaining his decision to contribute $20,000 to Assange's bail in London and why is is "publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars." (Note that Moore is scheduled to talk about this with Keith Olbermann on tonight's Countdown.)

The statement is a terrific document, and deserves to be read in full, which I encourage everyone to do. (Here's the link again.) Here are just some excerpts:

We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull it off. The only reason they thought they could get away with it was because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to operate in secret again. . . .


WikiLeaks deserves our thanks for shining a huge spotlight on all this. But some in the corporate-owned press have dismissed the importance of WikiLeaks ("they've released little that's new!") or have painted them as simple anarchists ("WikiLeaks just releases everything without any editorial control!"). WikiLeaks exists, in part, because the mainstream media has failed to live up to its responsibility. The corporate owners have decimated newsrooms, making it impossible for good journalists to do their job. There's no time or money anymore for investigative journalism. Simply put, investors don't want those stories exposed. They like their secrets kept ... as secrets.

I ask you to imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at this photo. That's Mr. Bush about to be handed a "secret" document on August 6th, 2001. Its heading read: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on those pages it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings." Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.

But if that document had been leaked, how would you or I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's impending attack using hijacked planes? . . .


Or what if the public in 2003 had been able to read "secret" memos from Dick Cheney as he pressured the CIA to give him the "facts" he wanted in order to build his false case for war? If a WikiLeaks had revealed at that time that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction, do you think that the war would have been launched -- or rather, wouldn't there have been calls for Cheney's arrest?

Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt. What if within days of August 4th, 1964 -- after the Pentagon had made up the lie that our ship was attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin -- there had been a WikiLeaks to tell the American people that the whole thing was made up? I guess 58,000 of http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifour soldiers (and 2 million Vietnamese) might be alive today.

Instead, secrets killed them.

Moore makes important points about the anti-WikiLeaks arguments:

For those of you who think it's wrong to support Julian Assange because of the sexual assault allegations he's being held for, all I ask is that you not be naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey. Please -- never, ever believe the "official story." And regardless of Assange's guilt or innocence (see the strange nature of the allegations here), this man has the right to have bail posted and to defend himself. I have joined with filmmakers Ken Loach and John Pilger and writer Jemima Khan in putting up the bail money -- and we hope the judge will accept this and grant his release today.

Might WikiLeaks cause some unintended harm to diplomatic negotiations and U.S. interests around the world? Perhaps. But that's the price you pay when you and your government take us into a war based on a lie. Your punishment for misbehaving is that someone has to turn on all the lights in the room so that we can see what you're up to. You simply can't be trusted. So every cable, every email you write is now fair game. Sorry, but you brought this upon yourself. No one can hide from the truth now. No one can plot the next Big Lie if they know that they might be exposed.

And that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done. WikiLeaks, God bless them, will save lives as a result of their actions. And any of you who join me in supporting them are committing a true act of patriotism. Period.

Michael Moore's website has more coverage, including this link to SUPPORT WIKILEAKS and this one to STOP THE CRACKDOWN.

As of the close of business today in London, the Guardian's live blog reported:

5.44pm: Just to recap: Assange will remain in prison, at least until the appeal is heard. That seems to be the end of the excitement and confusion – for today at least.

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