Speaking at a satirical benefit for Julian Assange in Washington on the eve of the third anniversary of Assange’s arrest, John Kiriakou opened by conceding a criticism of himself. Assange’s family had accused him, in what he called a very friendly way, of being overly optimistic about the case, and he had come to the conclusion that they were right: he had believed the case was so crystal clear, and the concerns about Assange’s human rights and civil liberties so obvious, that he could not lose.[1]
The panel
The illustration Kiriakou offered was a Zoom meeting he had taken part in not long before. Among the participants were two former reporters for Knight Ridder, and neither of them mentioned Assange through the entire presentation. Only at the very end of the question period did someone point out that an hour and a half had passed without the name coming up. One of the reporters answered that he did not view Assange as a journalist; he viewed him as an activist.[2]
Kiriakou’s answer
Kiriakou’s response did not contest the label so much as go around it. Even if one declines to call Assange a journalist, he said, he is certainly a publisher. And the man was not an American citizen, was not compelled by any American law to protect the information in the first place, and had released information that the American public itself owned — yet he faced 175 years.[3]
From that he drew the conclusion he had come to deliver: if a foreign publisher under no legal duty of secrecy can be sent to prison for that, then every national security journalist in America is next, every last one. It was the argument he urged the audience to carry to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — that if Assange went down for this, they were going down after him.[4]
Having been, by his own account, wrong to expect the courts to save Assange, he told the room that the work now fell to them: to be at the courthouse every day if Assange were brought to Virginia, in the courtroom and outside it, where the reporters would be, so that it was plain the man had a core of support willing to throw down for him.[4]