I was sorry to see government officials like Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton overreacting to last week’s Wikileaks’ data drop, but it’s appalling to see CNN trying to poke a reaction by asking “Is Julian Assange a terrorist or a journalist?”, which the network did on a December 12th broadcast. FBI profiler Greg McCrary toed the party line and called Assange “the Robin Hood of data or information,” which is a quotable line but essentially meaningless and dumb. Thank goodness former CIA analyst Ray McGovern showed appropriate common sense and perspective. “Of course he’s a journalist,” McGovern. “Thomas Jefferson said that if it were a choice between a government and a free press, he’d pick a free press. This is what’s needed to preserve democracy. The idea is to tell as close to the truth as possible and not simply take notes on what the government is saying. That’s what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have done to the embarrassment of the government because a lot of our dealings are kept in secret and need not be kept in secret.” McGovern then suggested that CNN follow WikiLeaks’ example. “Seek out the secrets,” he said. “Find out why it is that my tax-payer money is going to fund trafficked young boys performing dances in women’s clothing before the Afghan security forces who we are recruiting to take over after we leave. Take a look at the documents and see the abhorrent activities that our government has endorsed or done through its contractors. And then tell me you don’t think the Americans can handle that. Well, I think they can handle it.”
The best comment that I ever heard about Wikileaks was spoken about a year and a half before I ever heard of Wikileaks. When I visited him in London in 2009, my friend Tim O’Toole was talking about terrorism and the security response, but his comments were right on. “What’s really going on is that we are living in an era when there is a massive transfer of power from institutions to individuals. Technology gives individuals access to information, access to communication, the ability to form groups without the aid of institutions. And so you have Nick Leeson, who took down Barings Bank, one of the most successful banks in history, financed the wars against Napoleon, and it vanishes in a second because some individual was able to push some buttons. You have a situation where a blogger can have a bigger impact on an election than a major newspaper. You have a few guys with box cutters who turn a passenger jet into a cruise missile. It’s this ability of individuals to cause outcomes far beyond what any individual could have ever done before that has institutions so confused. Because change is coming so fast—meanwhile, we’re still holding governments responsible, and government officials take steps to demonstrate a feeling of control. And often they overreact. And so you have the Palmer raids, or Japanese internment, or McCarthyism. Every time there’s crisis, we swing wildly in reaction. It’s kind of what’s happening with Guantanemo now. So what should society do about this transfer of power? Well, we can’t handle it by suppressing liberty, because you never keep up, and every time we try. we become ashamed that we walked away from our principles. We need more liberty, to make it work for us, by welcoming all of the smart people of the world to our shores. We have to ride the wave as a society. If you try to suppress it, you’re doomed to failure.”