Darrell Castle talks about the ordeal of Julian Assange and what his case tells us about what it means to be a real journalist in today's world.

Transcription / Notes

THE DARK SECRETS OF WAR

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 12th day of July in the year of our Lord 2024. I will be talking about the ordeal of Julian Assange but also what his case tells us about what it means to be a real journalist in today’s world. In essence his case tells us that the truth no longer sets us free and telling the truth has become a crime.

Before we get into the matter of Assange perhaps a little background is in order. A free press is vitally important to American freedom and if I can convey nothing else to you today it is that the press, and by that, I mean real, genuine, journalism is there to inform the people of what their government is doing. Those in government should be looking out for and expecting the press to expose their works of darkness, if they have any. That sentiment has been spoken by many from the founders all the way to the Supreme Court in the modern era.

I will illustrate my words with a quote from Justice Hugo Black in the case of The New York Times versus The United States decided in 1971. His quote came to me from an article written by Scott Ritter in his newsletter Scott Ritter Extra.

“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 the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose the deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

That quote is one of the most important in American history because it is fundamental to liberty. The press is supposed to be the servant of the people, not a wholly owned subsidiary of the government itself, and certainly not of any one political party. The case quoting Justice Black goes back to the Vietnam days of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

Ellsberg was not a journalist but an employee of the U.S. Department of Defense working in the Pentagon. He was involved in the production of a report ordered by secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that was a history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968.

The Times printed the report on its front pages and further stated that the report showed that the Johnson administration had lied systemically to Congress and the American people about U.S. entry into and conduct of the Vietnam War. McNamara claimed that he only had the report prepared because he wanted to leave a written record for future policy makers to prevent them from making the same mistake. The report revealed lots of things the government was lying about including U.S. troops raiding into North Vietnam, etc. The optimistic picture of the war presented by the government was false and the government knew the war was unwinnable and a waste of lives. It was top secret information and although Ellsberg was not a journalist he was disturbed by the report and he violated his security clearance by sending it to the Times who then chose to publish it on the front page.

I lived through that time so I remember it well. I was not happy that Ellsberg released classified information and I wanted to see him punished. I admit now that I really didn’t understand what was happening and what was at stake. Ellsberg sent the information to the New York Times but that paper made the decision on its own to publish it. The Times was perhaps not an affiliate of the Democrat Party at that time as it is now and also the Times along with other media was generally hostile to the...