And this actually proves an important point about the various three-letter agencies: they're not really the nefarious organizations that exist in the imaginations of people who have seen too many movies.
Jason Bourne's CIA would has assassinated Julian Assange a long time ago. The real one just grumbles.
What good would assassinating him do? He's not the only one who runs Wikileaks or has access to the information.
They'd need to "snatch" everyone who has access to it, which might be a very difficult proposition, not to mention a complete public relations disaster, considering Wikileaks is in the public spotlight right now.
I very much doubt the CIA is holding back out of the goodness of their hearts. No. What we are witnessing is simply cold, calculated realpolitik in action.
He is clearly the leader though. While assassinating him will do nothing about the information WikiLeaks already possesses, it may well throw the organization into disarray and thus irrelevance.
Assange is only a viable target if there is no other leader waiting at the wings if he dies. Our impression of WikiLeaks' organization structure is that no such "Assange" exists yet.
Or it might cause a political shit-storm and undermine American credibility, while giving a moral imprimatur to future leaks.
Wikileaks is more powerful as an idea than an organization. They've legitimized the idea of web-based distribution of leaks, much like Napster legitimized file-sharing services. That genie isn't going back into the bottle. Shutting down Napster only gave rise to a host of unaccountable, decentralized services. Shutting down Wikileaks would likewise only lead to the creation of new decentralized services that facilitate leaks without any of the human editorial control that Wikileaks currently provides.
How much "leadership" does it take to put stuff up on a website?
Really, I think you overestimate Assange's importance to the operation of Wikileaks, and the amount of "disarray" the "organization" will be put in if something happens to him.
And, honestly, if someone chooses to leak info in the future and Wikileaks doesn't publish it for some reason, then some other website or news organization will.
The really critical people in this whole scheme are the leakers and whistleblowers themselves, and silencing Assange will do nothing to stop them. It's just shooting the messenger.
I'm not suggesting they assassinate him. He's broken numerous laws and they have a pretty compelling case against him.
I can't imagine that the public relations fallout from his arrest would be any worse than the public relations disaster they have with the release of these cables.
"He's broken numerous laws and they have a pretty compelling case against him."
Are we still talking about the CIA? Has it become a law-enforcement agency and I didn't notice?
If your point is regarding the possibility of the US government going after Assange by legal means (not via some extralegal, shadowy CIA antics), I'm certain they would if they could.
The fact that they haven't leads me to believe their case against him isn't quite as airtight as you believe.
But regardless of what they do or try to do to Assange, it won't stop Wikileaks. The best that the US government could manage is to extract some sort of retribution or send out a warning to future leakers and whistleblowers.
The fact that they haven't leads me to believe their case against him isn't quite as airtight as you believe.
I'm not sure whether he's broken any US laws or not. He did not, after all, leak the information, he merely publicised it after someone else (Bradley Manning, apparently) leaked it. Wikipedia mentions no warrants out for his arrest apart from the rape one, for which he's apparently right now "under arrest in absentia" in Sweden.
Bradley Manning, of course, remains in solitary at Quantico pending court martial -- he most certainly broke some laws.
And your argument is not based on the laws of the US at all.
If the US government (more specifically Obama's justice department) wanted to prosecute, surely they could, would, and would win.
There are political ramifications of that move. I would bet the negative (inflaming a lot of people against the Obama administration) outweigh the positive (not really sure what the positive is, the papers would still find their way out).
Thus, they are aiming their legal guns squarely at the guy who actually leaked this stuff in the first place.
they're not really the nefarious organizations that exist in the imaginations of people who have seen too many movies.
You're assuming that they're not nefarious when another explanation explains the facts just as well: they might be nefarious but very incompetent. I mean, we know that CIA officers routinely sign into hotels and airlines using their real names so that they can collect frequent flier points. Any clandestine organization whose staff does that is...really stupid. It is an organization with an institutionalized culture of incompetence.
Jason Bourne's CIA would has assassinated Julian Assange a long time ago. The real one just grumbles.
Jason Bourne's CIA officers would not give their real names to everyone and their brother in order to collect a few measly reward points, so their relevance to the actual CIA is precisely zero.
Hmmyeah... they're not exactly angels though... see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_transnational_human_rights_.... Maybe they are doing more than grumbling, we just don't know it yet. Or they realize that sudden "accidents" would be mighty suspicious and/or ineffective.
I think you're right with regards to US agencies. I'll be more interested to see what happens if he releases damaging information against less tolerant governments, i.e. the Russians.
Jason Bourne's CIA would has assassinated Julian Assange a long time ago. The real one just grumbles.