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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> Assange tried to do that and was rejected.

Assange tried (at least he claims he tried) to get the US government to help him remove names that it felt should not be released. The US government refused. Which is perfectly understandable: why should the US government tell Wikileaks exactly which names in some leaked documents are the names of actual US government informants? That would be stupid.

Assange then chose to release all the material anyway, putting the life of anyone whose names were in that material potentially at risk. Newspapers, in the same position, did not publish the names. Whether you agree or not with either action, the fact remains that they are clearly different actions, and that one involves publishing people's names and potentially putting their lives at risk and the other does not.

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He was right to publish it, I as a non-American care less about US operatives than about knowing the truth, esp. considering what was revealed. We're talking about people who were complicit in the organization that claimed there were WMDs in Iraq, among other bs.

> I as a non-American care less about US operatives

What if you lived in an oppressive regime and believed, rightly or wrongly, that the US was trying to help improve the situation in your country, and you gave the US information? Would you still be OK with your name being published and your life being put at risk?

What situation was the US trying to improve during O.I.L. (Operation Iraqi Liberation, original name, look it up)? Removing non-existent WMDs? What a smashing success it's been since then.

> Assange tried (at least he claims he tried) to get the US government to help him remove names that it felt should not be released. The US government refused. Which is perfectly understandable: why should the US government tell Wikileaks exactly which names in some leaked documents are the names of actual US government informants? That would be stupid.

If that's stupid then complaining asking him to redact names without telling him which ones is even more stupid and gives the U.S. no right to complain. Especially when top secret is used to conceal war crimes.

> Assange then chose to release all the material anyway

Not publishing war crimes because those who commited them refuse to cooperate in redacting names would be a great way for the Pentagon to make sure their crimes stay hidden. In fact it appears that was their goal in not cooperating.

> Newspapers, in the same position, did not publish the names.

Newspapers were NOT in the same position. They published the leaks but Pentagon started cooperating with them by then.

It's remarkable that people exposing war criminals get more blame that actual war criminals who did not face any consequences and laughed about while murdering civilians including journalists.

> asking him to redact names without telling him which ones is even more stupid

He should have had the good judgment to redact all names even without being asked to. (Or at least all names that he didn't know belonged to people whose lives would not be put at risk by their publication.) He didn't.

> Newspapers were NOT in the same position.

It is true that newspapers (and other "mainstream" media organizations) have a special relationship with governments (and note that I'm not saying it's right that they do, only that as a matter of fact they do), so they aren't in exactly the same position as Wikileaks. That still does not excuse Wikileaks putting people's lives at risk by publishing their names.

> people exposing war criminals get more blame that actual war criminals

I haven't said anything at all about blame regarding anyone other than Assange, so you have no basis for even making any such comparison.

Also, I'm not blaming Assange for publishing the material itself. I'm blaming him for publishing people's names and putting their lives at risk. As I've already said, he could have published the material without publishing the names. He chose not to.

> He should have had the good judgment to redact all names

So how exactly are you supposed to hold officials accountable if you don't have any names to go on?

> I haven't said anything at all about blame regarding anyone other than Assange

Right. That is exactly my problem. When we're talking about war criminals I'd hope the person who exposed it would be the last to get some blame in the matter.

Leave the names of officials. Redact names your don't know, as was already suggested. Newspapers seem to have managed to do this just fine for ages.

If there issue is that high ranking officials aren't being held accountable, there's no reason to publish the names of some random agent.

> Leave the names of officials. Redact names your don't know

That's not as easy as it sounds. Many of the names you'd want to leave up would be of smaller generals whom you may not be familiar with. The actual shooters should perhaps also not be redacted. At least not fully.

> Newspapers seem to have managed to do this just fine for ages.

They do this by being cozy with the Pentagon and asking them exactly for what WikiLeaks has asked them for. The difference is the Pentagon's not going to ignore an email from the NYT. It did ignore WikiLeaks.

> Many of the names you'd want to leave up would be of smaller generals whom you may not be familiar with

Investigative journalism is a difficult profession. Yet people manage. Throwing your hands up is a disservice to the profession. Calling someone who does so a journalist is a disservice to actual investigative journalists.

I did address this above but you ignored it.

You didn't. Assange found that it was difficult to be a real journalist. Instead of attempting to be responsible and do the investigative work required to figure out names that might be worth publishing, he threw up his hands and published them all

That's not investigative journalism. It's much closer to muckraking.

I know, you'd consider the likes of NYT/WaPo to be 'real journalists'.

The ones that had so cozy of a relationship with the Pentagon that they saw no problem in being government mouthpieces and getting the public to support a war in Iraq that killed 200k+ people on a made up pretense of WMDs. Same for Lybia, Syria etc.?

Because that's how you get the level of government access to be what you'd consider a 'real' journalist.

I am glad that you don't get to define who makes a 'real' journalist and who doesn't. Julian is not one of these[1] indeed.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism

> The ones that had so cozy of a relationship with the Pentagon that they saw no problem in being government mouthpieces and getting

I consider that journalistic malpractice. Like I said, investigative journalism is difficult. People, including the "real ones" sometimes do it badly. When they do, the good ones apologize and retract.

For what its worth, I don't actually think that you'd need particular government access to do a reasonable job of censoring the names of at risk agents in the documents wikileaks leaked. I'd go far enough to say that me, as a layperson, with practically no journalistic experience could do a better job than Assange did. In fact, I'm certain of that.

That's disqualifying. He didn't even try.

Assange did not allow the Pentagon to redact names. Specifically:

“...Assange wrote that WikiLeaks would consider recommendations made by the International Security Assistance Force "on the identification of innocents for this material if it is willing to provide reviewers."

That’s from your salon.com article.

So Assange would “consider” redacting (not promising anything) and only if a group from the United Nations identified “innocent” names. There’s no mention that the Pentagon has any input at all. And there’s no reason to think anyone at the ISA should know the names of undercover intelligence agents in those documents, especially the documents completely unrelated to Afghanistan... since the ISA was involved only with issues in Afghanistan.

> how exactly are you supposed to hold officials accountable if you don't have any names to go on?

Manning could have told Assange which names were the names of US government officials. (In fact, I'd be surprised if Manning didn't actually do just that; on your own theory of who should be held accountable it would be irresponsible not to.)

> When we're talking about war criminals

We're not. We're talking about Assange. He can still be at fault and worthy of blame for some things he did, even if the US government is also worthy of blame for some things it did.

> We're not.

And that's exactly the problem. No wonder they're still free today while Julian's not.

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