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Before Obama there were three indictments.

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Obama has brought five in these two years.

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If he brought it against Assange, if he did, it would be six,

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it would be twice as many as all previous Presidents put together.

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And what’s going on here?

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Well it’s part of a policy of generally, use of state secrets privilege,

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against dismissing lawsuits

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being totally secretive, not being at all forthcoming on freedom of information in terms of,

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of these areas.

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So it’s part of a policy.

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But why more than others, I don’t,

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I would be interested to hear anybody’s suggestion.

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In fact I think you were [unintelligible] asked, yeah, right Peter…

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Why is it that Obama is pressing this so strongly?

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This is before Wikileaks, remember, except for Bradley.

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The previous four were before Wikileaks

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and two of them were for acts undertaken under Bush

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which Bush had not indicted.

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Uh, Thomas Drake and… Shamai Leibowitz, who’s in prison now.

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So in other words this, “We’re not looking back,”

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applies to the myriad crimes

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of the Bush administration, torture, aggressive war,

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warrantless wiretapping…

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crimes that strike at the heart of our Constitution

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as well as domestic law.

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No looking back on those.

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The only looking back is on whistleblowers.

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Drake and Leibowitz

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revealing what they thought were great wasteful practices or…

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so there’s a war on whistleblowers.

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To me, and again, why Obama so much, I have a hypothesis, and really

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this is just very speculative,

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I think he’s more, feels more vulnerable

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to whistleblowers

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than either his predecessor, because he’s doing many

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of the same things, one of the great secrets in the cables

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released is how little difference there is

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from 2008 to 2009, they’re the same practices, the same torturing,

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not that much difference, but Bush was proud of it.

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He did it, he did it secretly at first, it was all covert at first,

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but when it came out, “Torture? We don’t torture, what we do, we do,

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and I don’t apologize for it.

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NSA warrantless wiretapping? No problem!”

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I think Obama’s a little more embarrassed about all that coming out,

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that he’s, that he’s acting in the same lines that he has,

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a new war that he’s escalating, adding to Bush’s war in Afghanistan,

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and he really wants to do what all Presidents have always wanted to do,

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shut down leaks that they don’t control, leaks they don’t make,

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but I think he’s, I think he’s really doing it more aggressively

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than any previous President, and specifically

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he’s doing it by treating the Act that I was charged under

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as an Official Secrets Act, as an Act that criminalizes all leaks.

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And if he gets a conviction, of any of these people,

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not just Manning or Assange, if he gets Drake, or Kim,

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if they go up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court takes it

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and doesn’t notice that it’s un-Consititutional,

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which is not a bad bet,

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earlier Courts would almost surely have called it un-Constitutional,

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this one might not.

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And if he gets that, he has a very broad Official Secrets Act,

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and from then on, all he has to do to find out who is

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the source of any leak, one day to the next,

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with a clear-cut crime,

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is to call in the reporter whose byline is on the head of that column and say,

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“We’re not charging you with anything, we’re not against the press,

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we’re for the press. Just who committed the crime?"

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And if the person can’t take the Fifth Amendment,

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he or she is not being charged with anything,

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they just either tell, or they go to jail indefinitely for contempt.

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Judith Miller lasted 85 days, and some of them will last longer,

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but a lot of them won’t, and from then on,

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no source will have any basis for assuming,

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or hoping that their,

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their name for whistleblowing will be anonymous,

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their only recourse will be Wikileaks, so Wikileaks matters.