Speculation around a plea bargain for jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may just be a way to appease the media while a deal is negotiated in secret, say two journalists.
US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy appeared to give credence to reports of a compromise with the US Department of Justice that could see Assange return to his homeland Australia and reunited with his wife and child after more than a decade in British jail and taking refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
The journalist, currently languishing in Britain's highest-security prison Belmarsh, faces up to 175 years in jail if he is extradited to the US for trial on espionage charges for publishing evidence of US war crimes in Iraq supplied by Pentagon whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
"She was asked by an Australian reporter if she believed that there could be a diplomatic outcome," Gosztola said. "Her response was that she doesn't see this as a diplomatic issue and, however, there could be a resolution."
He noted that the ambassador then parroted a generic "boilerplate comment" by her boss, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on World Press Freedom Day.
"It's actually very insulting that Antony Blinken took to Australia a comment that was written by some intern or lowly staff member at the State Department," Gosztola said. "They've just been going around using it as a way to avoid any scrutiny."
Ultimately, Kennedy had nothing new to say about the Assange case, the journalist argued, and merely referred journalists back to speculative media reports about a plea-bargain deal.
"When she was asked if a deal could be struck, she says, 'Well, that's up to the Justice Department.' All right. Well, you and I have been following this very closely. It doesn't seem like anything new has been said."
Nevertheless, the author believed the statement was "a hugely positive sign for Assange."
"It's a hugely positive sign for Assange people that they are getting under the skin of officials who have the ability to make us believe that something is taking place behind the scenes," Gosztola stressed. "Clearly they understand the demands that are being put forward."
He advised supporters of the WikiLeaks founder not to reject a plea-bargain deal just because it might "sound like he was admitting guilt, giving in to the persecution that has come from the US government."
"I do not fault him for wanting to find a way out of this so that he can end what has been 12 to 13 years, give or take, of arbitrary detention in some form or another, with the harshest chapter being right now, being what he is enduring in Belmarsh Prison," Gosztola said.
Podcast host and former CIA agent John Kiriakou, in turn, said that the situation remained murky.
"The people who I know, who know, aren't talking and they're they're not talking on purpose," he said.
"I think we're in a very sensitive period right now where there are conversations between the Justice Department and Julian Assange's attorneys on the one hand, and cables going back from Australia, from Caroline Kennedy, back to Tony Blinken updating the State Department on the Australian government position," Kiriakou said. "I actually spoke with Stella Assange briefly this morning and she didn't want to say a single word."
One of the journalist's Australia-based colleagues, Consortium News editor-in-chief Joe Lauria, is "very close" to the Assange campaign — but he told Kiriakou that he had been "shut down" when he asked about a possible deal.
"That also leads him to believe that something's up, something's cooking, it's being negotiated," Kiriakou said.
The radio host said his understanding was that Assange would take what is known as an "Alford plea," described by some jurists as "a plea of guilty containing a protestation of innocence."
"He does not admit guilt, but he acknowledges that there is enough evidence to convict him of a crime," Kiriakou explained. "He would then be found guilty of whatever the crime is, presumably something under the Espionage Act... sentenced to 'time served,' and expelled from the US and the UK and sent back to Australia."
He said that would mean freedom for Assange, but potential future problems for other journalists.
"If you're a national security journalist for The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times or The Washington Post or Associated Press, this is going to be a problem for you because it legitimizes the Justice Department strategy of going after people who find themselves in receipt of what they call national defense information," Kiriakou argued. "Do we adopt on a more permanent basis the Trump and Biden administration policy of going after people deemed to be national security leakers? This is a very serious question here, and nobody really wants to address it."
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