[Peace-discuss] Ellsberg: Snowden Would Not Get Fair Trial, Kerry Is Wrong
David Johnson via Peace-discuss
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Wed Jun 4 00:16:49 EDT 2014
Your the one being played by corporate media propaganda.
Edward Snowden is a TRUE American hero for revealing to the American
people and the world the crimes of the corporate ruling class who have
hijacked OUR government, shredded OUR constitution and Bill of Rights
and how they are spying on the average American citizen. Obviously you
care NOTHING about freedom and the right to privacy.
Like those in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy 80 years ago who blindly
followed the dictators and warmongers of the corporate State.
David Johnson
On 6/3/2014 4:39 AM, Roger Helbig wrote:
> Ellsberg has been blinded by being with the far left too long. He was
> a brave man when he released the Pentagon Papers. He also first
> released them to Congress and did not send them to the North
> Vietnamese or Viet Cong. Snowden was a thief, pure and simple who has
> very artfully played the media for all it is worth by letting his
> fellow huckster who conned the Pulitzer Prize community release little
> tidbits of the stolen documents without regard to consequences to our
> lives on a periodic basis just to keep the attention on him. He has
> also played the left like a well tuned violin. Too bad that none of
> you pseudo intellectuals realize that you are being played and I
> really feel sorry for Ellsberg who used to have my profound respect
> but now is just another shill for Snowden.
> Roger
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 5:18 AM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss
> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>
>
> Ellsberg: Snowden Would Not Get Fair Trial, Kerry Is Wrong
>
> 1snow
> Resist! <http://www.popularresistance.org/category/resist/>
> Criminal Justice and Prisons
> <http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/criminal-justice-and-prisons/>,
> Edward Snowden
> <http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/edward-snowden/>,
> Whistleblower <http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/whistleblower/>
> By Daniel Ellsberg, www.theguardian.com
> <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/daniel-ellsberg-snowden-fair-trial-kerry-espionage-act>
> June 1st, 2014
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> 5
> <http://www.popularresistance.org/ellsberg-snowden-would-not-get-fair-trial-kerry-is-wrong/#>
> Print Friendly
> <http://www.printfriendly.com/print?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popularresistance.org%2Fellsberg-snowden-would-not-get-fair-trial-kerry-is-wrong%2F>
>
>
> 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.
>
> 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)
>
> 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 -- "US Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of
> 2016
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/world/asia/us-to-complete-afghan-pullout-by-end-of-2016-obama-to-say.html>"
> -- 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: /How do you ask
> a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?/
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yixdveuf0gq>
>
> 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 on MSNBC
> <http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/kerry-snowden-coward-traitor-n116366> an
> hour later, thinking about me
> <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/29/daniel-ellsberg-john-kerry-snowden_n_5412980.html>,
> 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:
>
> 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.
>
> On the Today show and CBS, Kerry complimented me again -- and said
> Snowden "should man up and come back to the United States"
> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/snowden-return-us-kerry-face-charges-espionage> 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.
>
> As Snowden told Brian Williams on NBC later that night
> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/29/edward-snowden-interview-breaking-law-was-only-option-says-whistleblower> 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.
>
> 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).
>
> 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 havestrongly
> <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>
> argued <http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/edgar.pdf> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> But when I finally heard my lawyer ask the prearranged question in
> direct examination -- /Why did you copy the Pentagon Papers?/ -- I
> was silenced before I could begin to answer. The government
> prosecutor objected --/irrelevant/ -- 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: /well, you're hearing one now/.
>
> 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.
>
> 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). In
> the recent case of the State Department contractor Stephen Kim
> <https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/02/guilty-plea-fox-news-leak-case-shows-why-espionage-act-prosecutions-are-inherently>,
> 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."
>
> 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
> ... until she was already found guilty
> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/bradley-manning-sentencing-wikileaks-live>.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.)
>
> 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.
>
>
> Related Posts:
>
> * NBC News Shows Why Viewers Can't Trust Them
> <http://www.popularresistance.org/nbc-news-shows-why-viewers-cant-trust-them/>May
> 31, 2014
> * Edward Snowden Interview
> <http://www.popularresistance.org/edward-snowden-interview-with-vanity-fair/>April
> 10, 2014
> * Snowden Says He Was a Spy, Not Just an Analyst
> <http://www.popularresistance.org/snowden-says-he-was-a-spy-not-just-an-analyst/>May
> 28, 2014
> * Why Won't Kerry Leave Syria Alone?
> <http://www.popularresistance.org/why-wont-kerry-leave-syria-alone/>May
> 20, 2014
> * CODE PINK Mocks Egyptian Dictator Sisi Outside Of US Chamber
> Of...
> <http://www.popularresistance.org/code-pink-mocks-egyptian-dictator-sisi-outside-of-us-chamber-of-commerce/>April
> 16, 2014
>
>
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