Déjà vu of the Pentagon Paper Trial

Post revelations of the US embassy cables, the United States government has tried and failed to define Wikileaks as a terrorist organisation.

Far - right commentators have called for his assassination, whilst the governments legal team has been pursuing aspects of the Espionage Act to convict Wikileaks founder whom is currently in solitary confinement with limited access to the internet as part of the "access to justice program" where he restricted to specifically working on his case.    The Espionage Act, whilst an old piece of legislation has been used before as a means to override laws in United States protecting freedom of speech.  

In a case where a man sent out a leaflet against United States enlistment laws, the judge decided that he was guilty of Espionage.  This case was nearly a hundred years ago, yet we see in present times that the attitudes of the United States government has not changed.  What makes it difficult is the later infamous case known as, "The Pentagon Papers".  The United States government failed to successfully convict Daniel Ellsberg and the New York Times for releasing classified documents that gave the world an insight into the Vietnam war.   They failed to restrain the publication and proved ultimately that the Espionage Act is an ineffective tool for censoring media outlets.  Recent reports however confirm that the US government is aware of this and thus, attempting to change laws in order to prosecute Wikileaks.

 How successful they will be is based on how corrupt the judicial process is in this case and considering some of the bizarre case conclusions in recent times, it would not be unusual for such a case to support United States governments requests.  The major flaw is that Julian Assange is not a citizen of united states government and if they attempt to uphold any existing or future law, this affects every publisher, every writer and even blogger whom writes or submits documents against the reputation of United States government.

The government thus has the problem of ambiguity, beyond its capacity as powerful as it has been at maintaining its control over the west.  Recent revelations have sparked outrage from many countries, leaders, experts and people from all walks of life.  The US government can not realistically withstand the consequences of the impact if it proceeds any further with frivolous action.