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<h1>Ellsberg: Snowden Would Not Get Fair Trial, Kerry Is Wrong</h1>
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<span class="cat-date-line3"> <a
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<span class="cat-date-line4">By Daniel Ellsberg, <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/daniel-ellsberg-snowden-fair-trial-kerry-espionage-act"
target="_blank">www.theguardian.com</a><br>
June 1st, 2014</span><br>
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<h2><span style="color: #666666;">Edward Snowden is the greatest
patriot whistleblower of our time, and he knows what I learned
more than four decades ago: until the Espionage Act gets
reformed, he can never come home safe and receive justice.</span></h2>
<div id="mainblock" class="block"
data-id="53880aa7e4b0bd8f351891f7">
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<figure class="element element-image"
data-media-id="gu-fc-1d75f7a2-50bf-4c64-a4e1-9bf53c48cebc"><figcaption
style="color: #666666;">As the author knows from direct
chat-log conversations with him over the past year,
Snowden acted in full knowledge of the constitutionally
questionable efforts of the Obama administration, in
particular, to use the Espionage Act in a way it was never
intended by Congress. (Video still via NBC News)</figcaption></figure>
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</div>
<div class="flexible-content-body" data-display-hint="">
<p>John Kerry was in my mind Wednesday morning, and not because
he had called me a patriot on NBC News. I was reading the lead
story in the New York Times – “<a style="color: #005689;"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/world/asia/us-to-complete-afghan-pullout-by-end-of-2016-obama-to-say.html">US
Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016</a>” – with a
photo of American soldiers looking for caves. I recalled not
the Secretary of State but a 27-year-old Kerry, asking, as he
testified to the Senate about the US troops who were still in
Vietnam and were to remain for another two years: <a
style="color: #005689;"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixdveuf0gq"><i>How do
you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?</i></a></p>
<p>I wondered how a 70-year-old Kerry would relate to that
question as he looked at that picture and that headline. And
then there he was <a style="color: #005689;"
href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/kerry-snowden-coward-traitor-n116366">on
MSNBC</a> an hour later, <a style="color: #005689;"
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/29/daniel-ellsberg-john-kerry-snowden_n_5412980.html">thinking
about me</a>, too, during a round of interviews about
Afghanistan that inevitably turned to Edward Snowden ahead of
my fellow whistleblower’s own primetime interview that night:</p>
<blockquote class="quoted" style="color: #666666;">
<p>There are many a patriot – you can go back to the Pentagon
Papers with Dan Ellsberg and others who stood and went to
the court system of America and made their case. Edward
Snowden is a coward, he is a traitor, and he has betrayed
his country. And if he wants to come home tomorrow to face
the music, he can do so.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the Today show and CBS, Kerry complimented me again – and
said Snowden <a style="color: #005689;"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/snowden-return-us-kerry-face-charges-espionage">“should
man up and come back to the United States”</a> to face
charges. But John Kerry is wrong, because that’s not the
measure of patriotism when it comes to whistleblowing, for me
or Snowden, who is facing the same criminal charges I did for
exposing the Pentagon Papers.</p>
<p>As Snowden <a style="color: #005689;"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/29/edward-snowden-interview-breaking-law-was-only-option-says-whistleblower">told
Brian Williams on NBC later that night</a> and Snowden’s
lawyer told me the next morning, he would have no chance
whatsoever to come home and make his case – in public or in
court.</p>
<p>Snowden would come back home to a jail cell – and not just an
ordinary cell-block but isolation in solitary confinement, not
just for months like Chelsea Manning but for the rest of his
sentence, and probably the rest of his life. His legal
adviser, Ben Wizner, told me that he estimates Snowden’s
chance of being allowed out on bail as zero. (I was out on
bond, speaking against the Vietnam war, the whole 23 months I
was under indictment).</p>
<p>More importantly, the current state of whistleblowing
prosecutions under the Espionage Act makes a truly fair trial
wholly unavailable to an American who has exposed classified
wrongdoing. Legal scholars have<a style="color: #005689;"
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=4k0cwvr2fnec&pg=pt504&lpg=pt504&dq=melville+nimmer,+%2522national+security+issues+v.+free+speech,%2522+stanford+law+review&source=bl&ots=_2nvbbwjeh&sig=scqk5ajpjwujjqjqvxyxfui07c4&hl=en&sa=x&ei=aoehu6hjc4llsaslrykoag&ved=0ccoq6aewaa#v=onepage&q=Melville%2520Nimmer%252C%2520%2522National%2520Security%2520Issues%2520v.%2520Free%2520Speech%252C%2522%2520Stanford%2520Law%2520Review&f=false">strongly</a> <a
style="color: #005689;"
href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/edgar.pdf">argued</a> that
the US supreme court – which has never yet addressed the
constitutionality of applying the Espionage Act to leaks to
the American public – should find the use of it overbroad and
unconstitutional in the absence of a public interest defense.
The Espionage Act, as applied to whistleblowers, violates the
First Amendment, is what they’re saying.</p>
<p>As I know from my own case, even Snowden’s own testimony on
the stand would be gagged by government objections and the
(arguably unconstitutional) nature of his charges. That was my
own experience in court, as the first American to be
prosecuted under the Espionage Act – or any other statute –
for giving information to the American people.</p>
<p>I had looked forward to offering a fuller account in my trial
than I had given previously to any journalist – any Glenn
Greenwald or Brian Williams of my time – as to the
considerations that led me to copy and distribute thousands of
pages of top-secret documents. I had saved many details until
I could present them on the stand, under oath, just as a young
John Kerry had delivered his strongest lines in sworn
testimony.</p>
<p>But when I finally heard my lawyer ask the prearranged
question in direct examination – <i>Why did you copy the
Pentagon Papers?</i> – I was silenced before I could begin
to answer. The government prosecutor objected –<i>irrelevant</i> –
and the judge sustained. My lawyer, exasperated, said he “had
never heard of a case where a defendant was not permitted to
tell the jury why he did what he did.” The judge responded: <i>well,
you’re hearing one now</i>.</p>
<p>And so it has been with every subsequent whistleblower under
indictment, and so it would be if Edward Snowden was on trial
in an American courtroom now.</p>
<p>Indeed, in recent years, the silencing effect of the
Espionage Act has only become worse. The other NSA
whistleblower prosecuted, Thomas Drake, was barred from
uttering the words “whistleblowing” and “overclassification”
in his trial. (Thankfully, the Justice Department’s case fell
apart one day before it was to begin). <a style="color:
#005689;"
href="https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/02/guilty-plea-fox-news-leak-case-shows-why-espionage-act-prosecutions-are-inherently">In
the recent case of the State Department contractor Stephen
Kim</a>, the presiding judge ruled the prosecution “need not
show that the information he allegedly leaked could damage US
national security or benefit a foreign power, even
potentially.”</p>
<p>We saw this entire scenario play out last summer in the trial
of Chelsea Manning. The military judge in that case did not
let Manning or her lawyer argue her intent, the lack of damage
to the US, overclassification of the cables or the benefits of
the leaks … <a style="color: #005689;"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/bradley-manning-sentencing-wikileaks-live">until
she was already found guilty</a>.</p>
<p>Without reform to the Espionage Act that lets a court hear a
public interest defense – or a challenge to the
appropriateness of government secrecy in each particular case
– Snowden and future Snowdens can and will only be able to
“make their case” from outside the United States.</p>
<p>As I know from direct chat-log conversations with him over
the past year, Snowden acted in full knowledge of the
constitutionally questionable efforts of the Obama
administration, in particular, to use the Espionage Act in a
way it was never intended by Congress: as the equivalent of a
British-type Official Secrets Act criminalizing any and all
unauthorized release of classified information. (Congress has
repeatedly rejected proposals for such an act as violating the
First Amendment protections of free speech and a free press;
the one exception to that was vetoed by President Clinton in
November 2000, on constitutional grounds.)</p>
<p>John Kerry’s challenge to Snowden to return and face trial is
either disingenuous or simply ignorant that current
prosecutions under the Espionage Act allow no distinction
whatever between a patriotic whistleblower and a spy. Either
way, nothing excuses Kerry’s slanderous and despicable
characterizations of a young man who, in my opinion, has done
more than anyone in or out of government in this century to
demonstrate his patriotism, moral courage and loyalty to the
oath of office the three of us swore: to support and defend
the Constitution of the United States.</p>
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