Saturday, November 24, 2018

When the Trib, Col. McCormick played Julian Assange to

The Chicago Tribune, like all mainsteam media outlets, has done nothing to defend the right of Australian journalist Julian Assange to publish classified facts about US war crimes in Iraq. That brought prosecution and conviction of PFC Chelsea Manning under the Espionage Act for disseminating the information to Assange for publication. Manning spent two years in solitary confinement and another five in federal prison before being pardoned by President Obama. The US has had no success bringing Assange to legal US justice but is punishing him harshly nonetheless. He's been under detention in London starting in 2010, the last six years holed up in the Ecuador embassy there under conditions some argue are life threatening: no medical care, no exercise, no contact with the outside world. That  Assange conspired with Manning to reveal classified US government is not in dispute. The reality is that the free press worldwide depends on leaked secret information to reveal the truth about government wrongdoing and that it's rarely punished. It's certainly not out of reverence for a free press but simple expediency the US government doesn't want to frogmarch revered NY Times, Washington Post or Chicago Tribune publishers into federal court. Hold the presses. Back in 1942, FDR tried to do just that to Col. Robert McCormick and his 'World's Greatest Newspaper' Chicago Tribune. Col. McCormick used purloined classified Navy information on Japanese plans to attack Midway in his June 7, 1942, page one scoop entitled 'Navy had word on Jap plan to strike at sea', while the Battle of Midway was still raging. The article strongly implied the US had broken the Japanese code to get that critical info, a leak that jeopardized future code breaking revelations. FDR threatened to send in the Marines to occupy the Tribune Tower. He ordered the Navy to convene a federal Grand Jury to consider espionage charges against the Trib reporter, editor and the Colonel himself. The Trib escaped prosecution when the military decided that further state secrets would likely be revealed in prosecuting the offending exemplars of the free press.

McCormick  lived another thirteen years to rail editorially against his bete noir FDR and his hated New Deal. Maybe if Col. McCormick could be granted another reprieve, this time for an earthly visit to the Trib Editorial Board, he might remind them that "What's good for the journalist McCormick...is good for the journalist Assange". 

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