It is not defamation.
In fact, it is the one thing he shares with my President.
I have no idea of whether it was true. I have forgotten the details. It has to have been half a century ago.
I read an account of near misses, what would have been an accidental launching of US missiles in response to what appeared to have been Soviet missiles coming into the United States. Just in time, each incoming attack was found to have been something else, and massive nuclear retaliation was called off. Finally, American technicians located a series of potential false indicators of Soviet launches, any one of which could have triggered a US response and World War III. The experts developed fixes for each defect, those that had been found.
The remaining problem was that the detection system in the Soviet Union had similar flaws. A computer glitch, or meteor shower, or a flock of geese, or some other unanticipated confluence of thousands of common events could convince some military sentinel that his computer monitor was showing a US first strike on its way to Moscow.
The Kennedy administration wanted the Soviets to adopt the same safeguards the US had developed, but they knew Khrushchev and his military would be skeptical about accepting US assurances about new technology, perhaps demanding concessions for adopting it. They might reject any suggestion that American superiority in any technological development could be real.
So Kennedy ordered something different. The idea was that something stolen would have more credibility than something given.
The United States made no announcement. Administration officials shared with Soviet counterparts: nothing.
Instead, they arranged for Soviet spies to find and confirm the new American technology. They pretended carelessness and allowed what they hoped would look like accidental leaks. The Soviet Union Central Committee became convinced they had a wonderful opportunity to steal military secrets that could make their own detection systems more reliable.
And so the world became safer.
It was not completely safe, of course. Two decades later, Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov refused to believe the US attack that his computer screen was showing and disobeyed orders to launch Russian nuclear retaliation.
We can read about international exchanges today that were carefully guarded when they occurred: secret negotiations to upgrade security around vulnerable nuclear supplies in small countries, or efforts to ship dangerous materials secretly to larger countries where they could be destroyed altogether.
I thought about nuclear dangers now amplified by terrorist threats as I read recent humorous stories about Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks. He is currently holed up in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, avoiding arrest. He had been charged with rape, but is now only facing extradition to the United States.
Publications from around the world are joyfully reading his demands, 140 of them, about news coverage of him and his organization. He had demanded that his message and those demands not be publicized, but national security reporter Emma Best, herself a transparency activist, published them anyway.
Some of the legal warnings are about legal charges.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange is a paedophile.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange is a rapist.
Well, the rape charges were dropped by the Swedish government, since it is impossible to serve him notice of the charge, while he is holed up in an embassy. So has the charge of molestation, for the same reason.
A few of the items also have to do with serious stuff, whether he is on the Russian payroll, whether he is residing in the embassy for anything other than legal reasons.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange or WikiLeaks has ever, through intent or negligence, revealed a source.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has ever revealed a source intentionally or through negligence.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange or WikiLeaks has ever directed, conspired, or colluded in a criminal manner with its sources.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that WikiLeaks or Julian Assange shared documents with a dictator.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has ever attempted to pass information on opposition figures or dissidents to any government.
Some items on the list concern political or organizational affiliations:
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange is a communist.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
There are strange warnings about comically petty stuff. Apparently there was some news story that he irritated Ecuadorian staff by skateboarding in hallways, damaging expensive wooden floors.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has ever played soccer or used a skateboard during week days or office hours at the embassy.
Did he skateboard on polished floors during off-hours or on weekends? A lot of his defamation warnings are weirdly specific.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has ever walked into embassy meeting rooms in his underwear.
Did he wander about the embassy nearly naked but make sure he kept out of meeting rooms?
Other warnings are just weird.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange lives, or has ever lived, in a basement, cupboard or under the stairs.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange does not use cutlery or does not wash his hands.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Ecuador asked Julian Assange to improve his hygiene.
He is oddly technical about youthful criminality.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange is a criminal or has a criminal record.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has committed a criminal offence since his teenage convictions were expunged.
He seems a little obsessed about the cat he eventually set free. There was a report about embassy staff saying he did not properly care for the animal. Well, I can imagine the alleged irritation. We can probably all imagine what non-housebroken pets can do around expensive furniture, carpeting, and the same floors a reasonable person might want to skateboard upon after office hours and on weekends.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has ever tortured a cat or dog.
Back when most folks thought Julian Assange was simply a transparency purist, and that Wikileaks was dedicated only to exposing governmental misconduct, it occurred to me that some secrets should be kept secret. For instance, the Kennedy subterfuge that prevented the world from blowing up. Friends, close friends whose judgment I trust, for the most part, were thrilled that military crimes, brutal attacks on groups of civilians, were exposed, but I was skeptical of anyone who wanted to violate all privacy.
Then he published information that confirmed my skepticism.
Every once in a while innocent civilians in Afghanistan had reported planned terrorist attacks. After Barack Obama became President Obama, trust in the new leader became manifest. The flow of information increased around the world and more terrorist acts were intercepted and prevented. American officials kept the identities of sources a carefully held secret, but it was still a brave act.
Assange got hold of information about those sources in Afghanistan and published 77,000 documents. He redacted names and addresses, but he was careless with other identifying information. The Taliban announced that they would review the documents and track down those civilians. Assassinations of entire families spiked for several months.
Some folks in the WikiLeaks organization were stunned. They had planned a careful review of those documents. Assange surprised them when he released those 77,000 pages behind their backs.
He did apologize.
Not for his carelessness in revealing the identities and the subsequent murders of informants and families.
He was sorry he had redacted anything at all. He felt those redactions had contributed to what he regarded as a myth: that government secrecy was ever justified.
Then he published 390,000 more documents, this time containing names and locations of civilians in Iraq who had reported planned terrorist acts. There was no redaction. The names were there in black and white.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange is a murderer.
Well, you’d have to ask those who were targeted, whose families were also targeted, by terrorists after their names were published. And I suppose you could argue that simply publishing those names might not be the same as attempting to pass information.
There has been some recent discussion among the fringes of the internet on whether President Trump might pardon Julian Assange, allowing him to become a refugee in the United States.
I suppose there are some superficial similarities between my President and Mr. Assange. Both hate Hillary Clinton, for example.
And both go to extraordinary extremes over petty issues. I can imagine my President screaming about some report that he once mistreated his cat, or that his mom put him in a cupboard under the stairs.
Once and now Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi raised security concerns and “respectfully suggested” that President Trump wait to deliver his annual State of the Union until the Trump shutdown had been ended.
He responded by cancelling military transport for her planned fact finding visit to a war zone. He scornfully suggested that she fly commercial instead. When she made arrangements to do just that, he borrowed a page from Julian and his refusal to redact. He adopted that long ago tale from Kennedy times, and the lesson: that when you want an enemy of the United States to act on something, leak it.
Just as she was to leave, the administration leaked the commercial schedule and the route Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the planeload of passengers would be flying.
Of course, that meant terrorist groups would have their best shot at creating a spectacularly deadly event. Pelosi was able to cancel her flight in time.
One additional odd warning Julian Assange made in his 140 item list probably referred to personal hygiene.
It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange stinks.
Mr. Assange has a history of putting innocent people into mortal danger to prove a point. In this, he turns out to be more like Mr. Trump than many citizens may still believe.
Mr. Assange, you may indeed occasionally wash your hands, bathe once in a while, and sometimes use a knife and fork.
Though it pains me to say it, you share one other characteristic with my President.
You do indeed stink.
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He had demanded that his message and those demands not be publicized
Oh, the irony.
In a just world, Assange would not be handed over to the US. He would be handed over to the surviving families of those Afghanis and Iraqis he helped the Islamists to murder.