Editorial: One for the whistleblowers

Amidst the din of disheartening developments clogging up our timelines, a ray of sunshine emerged when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia, hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing US military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga. The plea deal, disclosed on Monday represents the latest, and hopefully final chapter in a courtroom drama involving the eccentric Australian computer wizard who has been deified by supporters as a crusader for transparency, while simultaneously being pilloried by national security agencies who continue to believe that that his conduct put lives at risks and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.

It might be recalled that WikiLeaks was set up in the year 2006 by Assange as a platform to enable whistleblowers to expose hidden information, that might or might not involve government wrongdoing. The website became a household name in 2010 after it released thousands of classified US military documents, leaked by a US army intel analyst named Chelsea Manning. Prosecutors had alleged then that Assange teamed up with Manning to obtain the records, by conspiring to crack a Defense Department computer password, and published them without regard to American national security.

The documents detailed Washington’s war in Afghanistan and Iraq, alongside swaths of diplomatic cables. The expose of over 7 lakh documents included battlefield reports such as a 2007 video depicting a US Apache helicopter indiscriminately firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, an operation that killed a dozen individuals including two staffers from the news agency Reuters. The prosecutors have also argued that the details exposed by Assange and Co include the names of human sources who provided valuable information to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan — a clear risk to the soldiers involved as well as their on-ground assets.

While Assange’s release has undoubtedly been welcomed by advocates of journalistic freedom and stakeholders in the fourth estate, the development has shone a light on the sacrifices that are expected from those intending to serve as torchbearers of truth in the media space. Another individual, who has been prosecuted as much, if not more than Assange and has had to pay the ultimate price of ‘excommunication’ from his homeland on account of spilling the beans on questionable government practices is Edward Snowden.

It was way back in 2013, while employed as a government contractor, when Snowden leaked highly classified data pertaining to the National Security Agency (NSA). His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programmes, many of them run by the NSA and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, aided by reputed telecommunication companies and European governments. Snowden’s disclosures went on to inspire a global discourse about national security and individual privacy. For members of the media fraternity, Snowden’s expose was nothing short of a bombshell, coming as it did, partially packaged in the format of a documentary titled Citizenfour. The 2014 film directed by Laura Poitras, featured actual interviews with Snowden, who went on to describe the details of the NSA spying scandal on camera. The film even won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

The American whistleblower, who is currently under indictment for espionage, became a naturalised Russian citizen in 2022. As for the keys to his freedom, that’s something he tossed into the ocean when he chose to be a whistleblower. Something to ponder about, even as we celebrate Assange — don’t kill the messenger.