Edward Snowden responded to a new report about the Biden administration's attempt to build a case against another high-profile whistleblower, calling it a "historic scandal."
Snowden's remarks come a day after Rolling Stone reported that President Joe Biden's Justice Department has been pressuring multiple British journalists to cooperate with prosecutors in its efforts to have WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange extradited to the U.S.
Assange is being held in London's Belmarsh prison on charges related to his involvement with Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who gave Assange classified national defense documents concerning conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
"It is a historic scandal that Biden continues to pursue Assange for what are now plainly political reasons, and that major newspapers ignore it," Snowden tweeted on Thursday. "The FBI is now pressuring journalists into [testifying] against Wikileaks to prop up its flimsy case."
Snowden himself has spent the last decade exiled from the U.S. A former contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), he became well known in 2013 after he leaked highly classified information from the agency and was charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property. He now lives in Russia, where he was granted permanent residency by Russian President Vladimir Putin last year.
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment.
In the Rolling Stone report, journalist James Ball accused the Biden administration of "using vague threats and pressure tactics" to persuade British reporters into helping the U.S. strengthen its case against Assange.
"I know because I am one of the British journalists being pressured to cooperate in the case against him, as someone who used to (briefly) work and live with him, and who went on to blow the whistle on WikiLeaks' own ethical lapses," Ball wrote.
Ball described being asked by U.S. and U.K. authorities to act as a "voluntary witness" concerning a story he wrote about Assange's relationship with Putin ally Israel Shamir, noting that without his testimony, the "U.S. government cannot make much use of what I revealed in the article in a court of law."
Ball said that while he was "more than willing" to write about his relationship with Assange in the media, "I do not believe it should be used to help a vindictive prosecution of Assange."
Because the WikiLeaks documents were published in conjunction with five American newspapers, including The New York Times, the Justice Department, under the Obama administration, ultimately decided it could not prosecute Assange without threatening the First Amendment protections granted to those papers.
"If President Biden wants his Department of Justice to reverse the decision of the Obama DOJ on prosecuting Assange for his 2010 actions, he should at least explain it, and say why it is worth the silencing effect it is having on mainstream journalism," Ball wrote.
He continued, "As it stands, Biden's DOJ is threatening the U.S. media's First Amendment rights, even as it claims to be standing up to a Supreme Court that is threatening many other rights. The hypocrisy should not stand."
Amnesty International used Monday, which was Assange's 52nd birthday, to renew calls for the Australian government to ask that the U.S. drop all charges against the Australian whistleblower and its extradition efforts.
"This will be his 13th birthday without his freedom and away from his loved ones, and it must be his last," Amnesty International said in a blog post. "Julian Assange's family confirm that his deteriorating health, his incarceration in Belmarsh prison and the continuing threat of prosecution by the United States government is causing him profound harm."
The post went on: "Julian Assange used his platform to expose war crimes that would have otherwise remained concealed. Prosecuting him will have a significant 'chilling effect' on media freedom and will risk exposing him to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The Australian government must do everything in its power to have the US drop the charges against him and to ensure his release."
Reflecting on his own decisions, Snowden told The Guardian last month that he had "no regrets" about leaking information about the NSA's scale of surveillance.
"Technology has grown to be enormously influential," he said. "If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today, 2013 seems like child's play."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
