Responsibility has to be pretty defuse, right? You can at least begin with all the presidents in office since he was prosecuted, until N-1 since presumably the Nth just released him.
Although I'm willing to bet that the true actors here weren't necessarily presidents (even though they would ultimately be accountable like you say). Would be interesting to see who demanded what and when.
There shouldn't be any diffuse responsibility for participating in this farce at any level. When the information was released the public never clamored for it to be investigated and for people to be hunted down and jailed for releasing it. It was entirely a captured administrative state claiming for itself rights it demonstrably never had, such as claiming a foreign national committed treason, or that he could be viewed as an "enemy combatant."
To have gone along with this willingly deserves the same scrutiny we gave German officers at the end of WWII.
I would argue there should, no exception. Not even WWII. While keeping in mind that the responsibility was so gigantic to begin with, that even diffusing it might end up putting most participants in jail, some of them for a long time.
That Wikileaks systematically favors the russian government, and never does anything contrary to the interests of the russian government, strongly suggests they are an asset of russia.
You could claim Wikileaks is a Thai or South African asset too on those preconditions.
"I'we seen bad thigs, this is all i got, lets look at it together."
1) The US was doing a lot of things wrong. Going off the 2011 cables [0] they were spying on various people they weren't meant to be, there were one or two things that look war crimes to me but who knows technically and a few gems like "Der Spiegel reported that one of the cables showed that the US had placed pressure on Germany not to pursue the 13 suspected CIA agents involved in the 2003 abduction of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen".
2) It wasn't obvious in that leak that the US was doing anything counter the interests of the US. But Assange isn't a US citizen and wasn't in the US at the time, so that isn't a reasonable standard to hold him to.
3) Even internally to the US though there is a reasonable argument that he was helpful. If US citizens don't have easy access to this sort of information, how are they supposed to effectively exercise democratic control on the government? People are going out and doing terrible things in their name which, arguably, are counterproductive and they would probably not want done. Accountability requires sunlight and they can't debate whether there is enough sunlight without people like Assange.
4) It turns out that the US does have a huge probably-illegal certainly-ill-advised spying program that was being sniffed out by leakers. The response to Assange seems likely to be part of a campaign to keep material information on such topics like that out of the public sphere.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cable...
It might help you to follow the perspective if you consider it is plausible that the US's current diplomatic strategy is ineffective and needs pressure to reform. Especially after discounting the heft of their domestic economy. From what I've seen of the game theory, generally speaking best policy is to be scrupulously open and honest with very short bursts of sudden backstabbing when it makes overwhelming sense. The is, happily, a strategy that is highly compatible with radically transparent democracy.
There isn't a way to run this sort of institution without transparency. The incentives don't tend to work out.
How much is that Taliban source worth vs. greater transparency that could have ended the war earlier? The biggest problem was publicising which interest groups in the US government were responsible for prolonging the inevitable. Just keeping all meeting minutes on a website unredacted would have been a lot more valuable than having a source.
The tricky one is the Saudis. How much is a Saudi source worth vs. full transparency of voters into the US-Saudi relationship? The issue here is ... we can't debate that, the necessary knowledge is secret. But since large organisations are generally dysfunctional, and there is no reason to believe that the Saudi source is more valuable than more transparency into what is actually going on in the Middle East.
The issue to me is that secrecy makes democratic institutions ungovernable - they can't be assessed without full information and therefore voters can't even attempt to make rational decisions. Full transparency is probably more valuable than the net influence of secret sources [0]. The value of long-term secret sources is highly questionable. If there is a source or confidant in some foreign organisation you want to protect, give them a passport and set them up in Texas. Problem solved.
You know who didn't go to jail? Glenn Greenwald.
There is no genuine concern here over some deep vulnerability our society has to russians or anyone because of wikileaks. Assange (nor snowden) caused any material harm remotely proportional to the blowback they've received since. This is about punishment for circumventing state-level controls and embarrassing the state. To think that Trump would somehow be more lenient on either is unthinkable—he's part of the same class of people that Clinton is that is most sensitive to the health of systems Assange threatens.
Enter Russian oligarchs, just like they bought up London, and then control the oligarchs by force when you can't simply direct them by shared ideology, and you've got pretty much the most powerful propaganda outlet you could possibly have, until you exploit it so heavily that you burn its former reputation to the ground. Which you do, because you yourself care nothing for its well-being: it's a tool for your political aims in fighting NATO and furthering your empire.
Sure, it applies to western media as a whole, from the bottom to the top.
If WWIII had stayed entirely in the infosphere, and Russia had not invaded Ukraine and tried to make good on their preparations, nobody would ever have known WWIII had been waged in the infosphere. That's how well it had been going. It ran aground when physical countries had to be annexed.
As I recall, Wikileaks made the choice to take sides in politics, so the blame lies with them.
> He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012[10] on the grounds of political persecution and fears he might be extradited to the United States.[11]
It seems to me like the Trump administration simply mainted the status quo of what came before them. One theory could be the timing of the charges was more aligned with Ecuador changing PM/kicking Assange out of the embassy. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/04/14/lenin-moreno-julian-assan...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/julia...
Supporting transparency and good journalism isn't a partisan issue, and there are going to be good people in any administration. Plus Assange wasn't annoying presidents, he was going after people in the deep state.
I mean, even if Biden has something to do with this plea deal, his staffers won’t promote it because they think Assange is a kremlin puppet who conspired to help Trump get elected.
But, I mean, sure, maybe Biden directed DOJ about an open case, and AG Garland just rolled with it, because he sure seems like the type.
They were too virtuous to run an election but they seem to make pretty decent policy decisions
Voters backed Biden in the primary because he was a throwback to an earlier version of the party. But the Elizabeth Warren bots ended up running the administration anyway.
They're forcing Assange to 'confess' to a crime in the US, where he has never been and which creates enormous problems. It should be remembered how severe what the US was doing at the time. They got some people handed over to them here in Sweden, who they agreed to not torture, and then started already at the airport. They had torture facilities in Poland, where people almost certainly died, etcetera.
What Assange did was legal and what the many activities the US was engaging in to obtain people abroad etc., illegal. He has no duty to the US, because he is not a US citizen or permanent resident.
Consequently even this is not a friendly act from Biden. It ends Assange's imprisonment, but it is a use of threats in order to obtain something from him, namely his 'confession'.