Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange By Michael Moore
| December 14, 2010
Friends,
Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London
, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented
to the judge a document from me stating that I have put
up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out
of jail.
Furthermore, I am publicly offering the assistance of my
website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I
can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues
its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret
and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars.
We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands
are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war
crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They
might not have been able to pull it off. The only reason
they thought they could get away with it was because they
had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now
been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to
operate in secret again.
So why is WikiLeaks, after performing such an important
public service, under such vicious attack? Because they
have outed and embarrassed those who have covered up the
truth. The assault on them has been over the top:
**Sen. Joe Lieberman says WikiLeaks "has violated
the Espionage Act."
**The New Yorker's George Packer calls Assange "super-secretive,
thin-skinned, [and] megalomaniacal."
**Sarah Palin claims he's "an anti-American operative
with blood on his hands" whom we should pursue "with
the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders."
**Democrat Bob Beckel (Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign manager)
said about Assange on Fox: "A dead man can't leak stuff
... there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son
of a b*tch."
**Republican Mary Matalin says "he's a psychopath,
a sociopath ... He's a terrorist."
**Rep. Peter A. King calls WikiLeaks a "terrorist
organization."
And indeed they are! They exist to terrorize the liars
and warmongers who have brought ruin to our nation and to
others. Perhaps the next war won't be so easy because the
tables have been turned -- and now it's Big Brother who's
being watched ... by us!
WikiLeaks deserves our thanks for shining a huge spotlight
on all this. But some in the corporate-owned press have
dismissed the importance of WikiLeaks ("they've released
little that's new!") or have painted them as simple
anarchists ("WikiLeaks just releases everything without
any editorial control!"). WikiLeaks exists, in part,
because the mainstream media has failed to live up to its
responsibility. The corporate owners have decimated newsrooms,
making it impossible for good journalists to do their job.
There's no time or money anymore for investigative journalism.
Simply put, investors don't want those stories exposed.
They like their secrets kept ... as secrets.
I ask you to imagine how much different our world would
be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at
this photo . That's Mr. Bush about to be handed a "secret"
document on August 6th, 2001. Its heading read: "Bin
Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on those pages
it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious
activity in this country consistent with preparations for
hijackings." Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went
fishing for the next four weeks.
But if that document had been leaked, how would you or
I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done?
Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would
have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's
impending attack using hijacked planes?
But back then only a few people had access to that document.
Because the secret was kept, a flight school instructor
in San Diego who noticed that two Saudi students took no
interest in takeoffs or landings, did nothing. Had he read
about the bin Laden threat in the paper, might he have called
the FBI? (Please read this essay by former FBI Agent Coleen
Rowley, Time's 2002 co-Person of the Year, about her belief
that had WikiLeaks been around in 2001, 9/11 might have
been prevented.)
Or what if the public in 2003 had been able to read "secret"
memos from Dick Cheney as he pressured the CIA to give him
the "facts" he wanted in order to build his false
case for war? If a WikiLeaks had revealed at that time that
there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction, do
you think that the war would have been launched -- or rather,
wouldn't there have been calls for Cheney's arrest?
Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons
the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and
the corrupt. What if within days of August 4th, 1964 --
after the Pentagon had made up the lie that our ship was
attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin --
there had been a WikiLeaks to tell the American people that
the whole thing was made up? I guess 58,000 of our soldiers
(and 2 million Vietnamese) might be alive today.
Instead, secrets killed them.
For those of you who think it's wrong to support Julian
Assange because of the sexual assault allegations he's being
held for, all I ask is that you not be naive about how the
government works when it decides to go after its prey. Please
-- never, ever believe the "official story." And
regardless of Assange's guilt or innocence (see the strange
nature of the allegations here ), this man has the right
to have bail posted and to defend himself. I have joined
with filmmakers Ken Loach and John Pilger and writer Jemima
Khan in putting up the bail money -- and we hope the judge
will accept this and grant his release today.
Might WikiLeaks cause some unintended harm to diplomatic
negotiations and U.S. interests around the world? Perhaps.
But that's the price you pay when you and your government
take us into a war based on a lie. Your punishment for misbehaving
is that someone has to turn on all the lights in the room
so that we can see what you're up to. You simply can't be
trusted. So every cable, every email you write is now fair
game. Sorry, but you brought this upon yourself. No one
can hide from the truth now. No one can plot the next Big
Lie if they know that they might be exposed.
And that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done. WikiLeaks,
God bless them, will save lives as a result of their actions.
And any of you who join me in supporting them are committing
a true act of patriotism. Period.
I stand today in absentia with Julian Assange in London
and I ask the judge to grant him his release. I am willing
to guarantee his return to court with the bail money I have
wired to said court. I will not allow this injustice to
continue unchallenged.