Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, has declared that Wikileaks is not protected by the First Amendment. One wonders how the director of the CIA obtained the authority to decide who is and is not protected by the First Amendment. I was under the impression that the courts, the legislatures, and the people were the ones vested with the authority to interpret the meaning of the constitution, not some political appointee at the head of an intelligence agency. I'm also wondering what theory of the first amendment Pompeo had in mind when he made such a creepy proclamation, because the only thing anyone can prove with regards to Wikileaks is that they received and published classified information. There is no evidence that they were involved in the act of taking said information. The Obama administration, no friend to press freedoms themselves, tried to conjure up a theory that would allow them to prosecute Wikileaks, one that focused on the "collusion" between Wikileaks and its sources. That fell apart after the Obama Justice Department realized that this "collusion" doctrine would ensnare virtually any journalist who worked with a source that was giving them classified information. That means organizations like The Washington Post and The New York Times would be open to prosecution. In other words, the precedent that a collusion-based doctrine would set would be a mortal threat to freedom of the press. So is Pompeo just blowing hot air like his boss always does, or is he really that delusional and power mad?Trump’s CIA Director Pompeo, Targeting WikiLeaks, Explicitly Threatens Speech and Press Freedoms
Glenn Greenwald | April 14 2017, 8:43 a.m.
IN FEBRUARY, after Donald Trump tweeted that the U.S. media were the “enemy of the people,” the targets of his insult exploded with indignation, devoting wall-to-wall media coverage to what they depicted as a grave assault on press freedoms more befitting of a tyranny. By stark and disturbing contrast, the media reaction yesterday was far more muted, even welcoming, when Trump’s CIA Director, Michael Pompeo, actually and explicitly vowed to target freedoms of speech and press in a blistering, threatening speech he delivered to the D.C. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.
What made Pompeo’s overt threats of repression so palatable to many was that they were not directed at CNN, the New York Times or other beloved-in-D.C. outlets, but rather at WikiLeaks, more marginalized publishers of information, and various leakers and whistleblowers, including Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
Trump’s CIA Director stood up in public and explicitly threatened to target free speech rights and press freedoms, and it was almost impossible to find even a single U.S. mainstream journalist expressing objections or alarm, because the targets Pompeo chose in this instance are ones they dislike – much the way that many are willing to overlook or even sanction free speech repression if the targeted ideas or speakers are sufficiently unpopular.
Decreeing (with no evidence) that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” a belief that has become gospel in establishment Democratic Party circles – Pompeo proclaimed that “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.” He also argued that while WikiLeaks “pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice,” but: “they may have believed that, but they are wrong.”
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Originally Posted by decedent
