Henry Kissinger once said it’s dangerous to be America’s enemy. It’s fatal to be America’s friend. Look, the First Amendment is the linchpin of our liberties. Without the freedom of speech, we have no democracy, we have no transparency, we don’t know who the government is killing and we don’t know when the government is lying. The Pentagon Papers case should have no exemption to it. Julian Assange is a national hero. I am elated that he is free, but I’m crushed that the feds got their pound of flesh with this meaningless sham guilty plea for a crime we all know he didn’t commit.

George Napolitano, I mean, I can see both arguments here, but as a journalist, my every instinct is you should absolutely be free to publish, particularly when you’re protected by the First Amendment. Should there be any line though? I mean, you know, I’m mindful of the fact that President Trump is facing criminal charges for storing classified documents. Joe Biden was investigated with the same thing. If it’s perceived to be a crime for a president to take classified documents just to his home where he’s protected by secret service, why isn’t it a crime for people to publish random classified documents to the world? Well, because of the First Amendment peers, which not only guarantees the freedom of speech, but according to the Pentagon Papers case, nicely described by my friend Michael, establishes the right of the public to know what the government is doing.

But Mike Pence, for example, has slammed it. Julian Assange endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The Biden administration’s plea deal with Assange is a miscarriage of justice and dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces and their families. And Biden himself has actually been extremely critical of Assange in the past. You know, effectively, I think he called him a terrorist at one stage. He called him a high tech terrorist when he was vice president.

And he could have dropped the case in 2021. Instead, tried to extradite and stand trial in the United States. So, you know, people are flip-flopping around a bit on this. And even on one side or another, there are people disagreeing with each other. What should we make of it all? Well, as I said earlier, we can’t lose sight of the significance of the First Amendment and the absolute freedom that journalists must have, like Daniel Ellsberg, just to drop the 7,000 pages that he stole from the federal government on the New York Times and on the Washington Post.

He was eventually indicted for espionage. The case was thrown out. We all know the story. The FBI broke into a psychiatrist’s office during the trial. The judge was outraged. He threw the case out. Chelsea Manning was prosecuted, pleaded guilty to half, was found guilty to the other half, sentenced to 35 years in jail. President Obama commuted it to time served. Manning was released from jail hours before Trump was inaugurated. Trump told me shortly after January 6th and before January 20th, in one of our final of many conversations, he planned to pardon Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.

Someone, probably Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo, talked him out of it. Fascinating. Bill Barr’s ever done. I think it’s, I should say, it also appears, I would just say, I think it’s wonderful to see Republicans coming around to a properly pro-free speech position after having been stuck in this awful neoconservative agenda, which got us into terrible wars in the Middle East. And I’ve got us stuck in an awful war in the Ukraine. [tr:trw].

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