{"id":28919,"date":"2017-04-28T09:36:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T17:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=28919"},"modified":"2017-04-28T09:36:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T17:36:05","slug":"daniel-ellsberg-trump-threat-to-wikileaks-is-the-nuclear-option-against-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/28\/daniel-ellsberg-trump-threat-to-wikileaks-is-the-nuclear-option-against-the-first-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Ellsberg: Trump Threat to WikiLeaks Is the &#8216;Nuclear Option&#8217; Against the First Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Statement by Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cObama having opened the legal campaign against the press by going after the roots of investigative reporting on national security \u2014 the sources \u2014 Trump is going to go after the gatherers\/gardeners themselves (and their bosses, publishers). To switch the metaphor, an indictment of Assange is a \u2018first use\u2019 of \u2018the nuclear option\u2019 against the First Amendment protection of a free press. (By the way, the charges they\u2019re reportedly considering against him \u2014 conspiracy, theft, and violation of the Espionage Act \u2014 are exactly the charges I faced in 1971.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf journalists and publishers fail to call this out, denounce and resist it \u2014 on the spurious grounds that Julian is \u2018not a real journalist\u2019 like themselves \u2014 they\u2019re offering themselves up to Trump and Sessions for indictments and prosecutions, which will eventually silence all but the heroes and heroines among them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>This statement by Daniel Ellsberg was read by Army veteran and retired diplomat Ann Wright at a news conference Friday morning outside the Department of Justice organized by <a href=\"https:\/\/exposefacts.org\/\">ExposeFacts<\/a>, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>Video of the news conference, which also featured remarks by retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, is now available at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ann.wright.50\">Facebook Live<\/a>. Higher quality video and audio will be available later today on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCs517KJ-ndVf3iY839TtwJg\">YouTube <\/a>and via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/xposefacts\">@xposefacts<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Statement by Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower: \u201cObama having opened the legal campaign against the press by going after the roots of investigative reporting on national security \u2014 the sources \u2014 Trump is going to go after the gatherers\/gardeners themselves (and their bosses, publishers). To switch the metaphor, an indictment of Assange is a \u2018first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-28919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28919"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28921,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28919\/revisions\/28921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28919"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=28919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}