In recent months, WikiLeaks and
I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the
Clinton campaign says about itself to itself. That pressure has come from the
campaign’s allies, including the Obama administration, and from liberals who
are anxious about who will be elected US President.
On the eve of the election, it
is important to restate why we have published what we have.
The right to receive and impart
true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaks – an organization that
has a staff and organizational mission far beyond myself. Our organization
defends the public’s right to be informed.
This is why, irrespective of
the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election, the real victor is the US
public which is better informed as a result of our work.
The US public has thoroughly
engaged with WikiLeaks’ election related publications which number more than
one hundred thousand documents. Millions of Americans have pored over the leaks
and passed on their citations to each other and to us. It is an open model of
journalism that gatekeepers are uncomfortable with, but which is perfectly
harmonious with the First Amendment.
We publish material given to us
if it is of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical importance and which
has not been published elsewhere. When we have material that fulfills this
criteria, we publish. We had information that fit our editorial criteria which
related to the Sanders and Clinton campaign (DNC Leaks) and the Clinton
political campaign and Foundation (Podesta Emails). No-one disputes the public
importance of these publications. It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to
withhold such an archive from the public during an election.
At the same time, we cannot
publish what we do not have. To date, we have not received information on
Donald Trump’s campaign, or Jill Stein’s campaign, or Gary Johnson’s campaign
or any of the other candidates that fufills our stated editorial criteria. As a
result of publishing Clinton’s cables and indexing her emails we are seen as
domain experts on Clinton archives. So it is natural that Clinton sources come
to us.
We publish as fast as our
resources will allow and as fast as the public can absorb it.
That is our commitment to
ourselves, to our sources, and to the public.
This is not due to a personal
desire to influence the outcome of the election. The Democratic and Republican
candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers. I spoke at the
launch of the campaign for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, because her
platform addresses the need to protect them. This is an issue that is close to
my heart because of the Obama administration’s inhuman and degrading treatment
of one of our alleged sources, Chelsea Manning. But WikiLeaks publications are
not an attempt to get Jill Stein elected or to take revenge over Ms Manning’s
treatment either.
Publishing is what we do. To
withhold the publication of such information until after the election would
have been to favour one of the candidates above the public’s right to know.
This is after all what happened
when the New York Times withheld evidence of illegal mass surveillance of the
US population for a year until after the 2004 election, denying the public a
critical understanding of the incumbent president George W Bush, which probably
secured his reelection. The current editor of the New York Times has distanced
himself from that decision and rightly so.
The US public defends free
speech more passionately, but the First Amendment only truly lives through its
repeated exercise. The First Amendment explicitly prevents the executive from
attempting to restrict anyone’s ability to speak and publish freely. The First
Amendment does not privilege old media, with its corporate advertisers and
dependencies on incumbent power factions, over WikiLeaks’ model of scientific
journalism or an individual’s decision to inform their friends on social media.
The First Amendment unapologetically nurtures the democratization of knowledge.
With the Internet, it has reached its full potential.
Yet, some weeks ago, in a
tactic reminiscent of Senator McCarthy and the red scare, Wikileaks, Green
Party candidate Stein, Glenn Greenwald and Clinton’s main opponent were painted
with a broad, red brush. The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading
obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague
statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance
with Russia. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our
publications—because none exists.
In the end, those who have
attempted to malign our groundbreaking work over the past four months seek to
inhibit public understanding perhaps because it is embarrassing to them – a
reason for censorship the First Amendment cannot tolerate. Only unsuccessfully
do they try to claim that our publications are inaccurate.
WikiLeaks’ decade-long pristine
record for authentication remains. Our key publications this round have even
been proven through the cryptographic
signatures of the companies they passed through, such as Google. It
is not every day you can mathematically prove that your publications are
perfect but this day is one of them.
We have endured intense
criticism, primarily from Clinton supporters, for our publications. Many
long-term supporters have been frustrated because we have not addressed this
criticism in a systematic way or responded to a number of false narratives
about Wikileaks’ motivation or sources. Ultimately, however, if WL reacted to
every false claim, we would have to divert resources from our primary work.
WikiLeaks, like all publishers,
is ultimately accountable to its funders. Those funders are you. Our resources
are entirely made up of contributions from the public and our book sales. This
allows us to be principled, independent and free in a way no other influential
media organization is. But it also means that we do not have the resources of
CNN, MSNBC or the Clinton campaign to constantly rebuff criticism.
Yet if the press obeys
considerations above informing the public, we are no longer talking about a
free press, and we are no longer talking about an informed public.
Wikileaks remains committed to
publishing information that informs the public, even if many, especially those
in power, would prefer not to see it. WikiLeaks must publish. It must publish
and be damned.
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