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| image: Reuters |
Raw Story
A Republican Congressman from New York has invented a new definition for the word "terrorism" that doesn't require guns, bombs, vast underground networks of sleeper cells, a criminal conspiracy or even violence.
All that's needed to be a terrorist, according to Rep. Peter King, is a website and some inconvenient information.
That's why King sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday, demanding that whistleblower website WikiLeaks be deemed a "foreign terrorist organization" and it's founder declared a terror ringleader.
"To me they are a clear and present enemy to the United States of America," he told a CBS radio reporter on Sunday.
King said the website's release of sensitive -- but not "top secret" -- US diplomatic cables was "worse than a military attack."
Declaring the site a "terrorist" group, King suggested, would allow the US "to seize their funds and go after anyone who provides them with any help or contributions or assistance whatsoever."
He also called for site founder Julian Assange to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
That may prove difficult, however, given that WikiLeaks did not steal any of the documents it released to the media -- they was given to them by a whistleblower, allegedly a young soldier named Bradley Manning.
That sequence of events, of a whistleblower contacting a high profile news venue with explosive information that needs to be made public, happens in newsrooms all across the country every week.
Though inconvenient for officials, the revelation of information contained in any of the WikiLeaks files, much like the Pentagon Papers amid the Vietnam war, is crucial to maintaining an enlightened public -- a point the US Supreme Court made abundantly clear in New York Times Co. v. United States in 1971.
"In seeking injunctions against these newspapers and in its presentation to the Court, the Executive Branch seems to have forgotten the essential purpose and history of the First Amendment," Justices Hugo Black and William Douglas wrote, taking the side of the Times, which had recently published what was then considered the largest cache of secret military information in US history.
"In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy," they continued. "The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government."
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