WikiLeaks Netflix Documentary Reflections

In the Fall of 2021, I took a presidency class in which we took a deep-dive into the federal executive branch and analyzed various takes on the expansion of presidential powers. The provisions granted to the President in the Constitution could be broadly interpreted. The broadness in these provisions allow, and have allowed, for the mass expansion of presidential powers. These powers begin at the root of national security in the realm of foreign affairs and live on when a President is elected into the highest form of office in the government, becoming head of state, and also the chief diplomat. What's more is that the president has the ability to pass executive orders with "the stroke of a pen". I am aware that this ability to bypass Congress could be a very good thing . Take the Emancipation Proclamation for example,

Abraham Lincoln's order in 1863 read that "all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free". Without such executive powers, orders to counteract deeply ingrained racism could possibly never exist. With that being said, I was assigned to debate on the topic of executive directives undermining U.S. democracy against a very intelligent colleague of mine. Through my preliminary research to build up a strong argument for class, my chapter book mentioned Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) assistant. Snowden is famous for whistleblowing on unethical CIA surveillance metadata practices particularly within domestic borders. The basis for using this in my argument was that these practices derived from presidential executive orders after 9/11 and had the ability to have somebody detained and perhaps even executed. This sort of panic allowed for some quite scary directives to be passed. Granted, this wouldn't be the first time in history.

Before I continue to my reflections, I highly encourage you to watch the documentary on Netflix called "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks" yourself, so that you have more context than my own interpretations (and please contribute to the dialogue in the comments section). Continue at your discretion as there may be some spoiler alerts ahead.

"Continue at your discretion as there may be some spoiler alerts ahead".

Looking at the documentary from various angles, it is difficult to pinpoint who the real hero is, if there ever was one, or if the WikiLeaks team and Private Chelsea Manning (former-Bradley Manning) were all heroes. This is a hot button issue since we must consider if their actions were a form of treason that left the U.S. vulnerable to other powerful states around the globe. A considerable note that was mentioned by former US Classification Czar Bill Leonard, was that the files and footage leaked were not at all compromising national security and it was shared amongst soldiers already. So the real issue arises when the general public has an easy access to cruel visuals caused by our authoritative figures. With the narrative surrounding liberty and transparency that the U.S. "fights for", it surely took contradictory action.

If I learned anything from taking a political science course on foreign relations, its that there are various ways to begin interpreting information. International Relations (IR) holds many different theories and perspectives on the interaction between nation states. The beauty behind this is that we break from the normative views we have been indoctrinated to have. The viewpoint that most Americans have on the world originate from a Eurocentric lens, according to Erik Ringmar. This has occurred “naturally” and can be difficult to step away from. This film helps shake our normative views and beliefs on the U.S. government, which is not inherently bad. The U.S. prides itself on being the land of the free, where you have freedom of speech, press, assembly, petition, privacy, and the right to the due process of law. However, we see many of these rights infringed due to a claimed national security breach. This further illustrates how national security broadens the power for the U.S. executive(s) in power. The powers seem almost limitless, although that claim must be further examined. As an American, I believe in the right to question the government, I do not see it as an insult to the nation, but as a form to re-affirm the narrative America has inculcated into our minds as well as to the world. If almost nobody has the capacity to check the presidency, or the government, then the obligation is vested to its citizens to do so. The U.S. Constitution explicitly states that “We the People- affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens” (U.S. Const.). It is not undemocratic nor radical to counterbalance what the government ought to be doing, and what the government ought NOT to be doing. It leaves a sour taste in your mouth knowing there is a whole other layer of secrecy under so much unattachment already. The film helps validate all the doubts that Americans might have about power and secrecy being accumulated at the top and serving against the public. The viewpoint adopted by me would be best aligned with Liberalism theory of IR, which is defined as “prioritizing protecting individual freedom by limiting the power of the government… especially contest wars for territorial expansion or imperialism…believe conflicts and protection can be resolved through peace and not through wars” (McGlinchey, et al.).

One of the biggest problems that I see pointed out in the WikiLeaks scandal is that Julian Assange, the founder of the site, is doing nothing different than what journalist do. However, because of the contents of the news he expelled, he was treated as an enemy. Not only that, but the media coverages spinned the entire narrative surrounding WikiLeaks. Although Assange exposed horrible actions made by Military officials, Assange was painted as the enemy almost as if he took those actions. Journalist, Heather Brooke, said it best when she said the U.S. government and the U.S. media fixed the narrative around the speculative blood rather than the actual blood U.S. militant action had actually spilled. In addition, the U.S. turned in the conspiring Iraq prisoners to the Iraq authorities who are known for torturing and having unethical and unhumanitarian practices as forms of punishment. In this case, the U.S. was breaking the Geneva Convention Laws, which are a "body of Public International Law, also known as the Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflicts, whose purpose is to provide minimum protections, standards of humane treatment, and fundamental guarantees of respect to individuals who become victims of armed conflicts". There is a special note regarding Assange's "heroness". I do not think Assange is inherently innocent since he did risk many people's lives by expelling documents onto WikiLeaks. He explicitly stated that he believes people who cooperated, deserved to die. I do not think he was sorry for the immoral action such as the example given, but Assange also comes across as detached from human emotion (this is not an excuse for murder, but was probably a contributor).

I would not classify myself as strictly liberal, since I do not think we can counteract powerful nations, like China, simply with diplomacy while they test hypersonic missiles that are hard to detect with our current technology. I do believe American task forces should not be spreading unnecessary destruction and death that many developing nations are trying to escape from already. Likewise, I believe the jarring leaks that private Manning shared only add to the literature of the U.S.’s military industrial complex. By this, I mean that the government and military are intertwined, especially through bolstering capitalistic monetary gain as well as power, so there are benefactors to maintain secrets that compromise the status quo. I do think that Julian Assange lacked a moral compass in which his desire to see a drastic "enlightened" change in the world thwarted the safety of at-risk Iraq individuals who were named in the classified documents.

Backtracking to the ability to interpret information through a contrasting lens, Assange definitely does this. Through his radical "humanitarian" approach to journalism in hopes to destroy corruption, he is the perfect example for an unconventional mind that has shaken up the establishment. It makes the public question at some point: was he right? He is said to share information that is uploaded to WikiLeaks to be, well, leaked. So far that is not a crime (maybe?). Encouraging and allegedly aiding in devising criminal acts by breaking through cyber walls to access classified data? Perhaps. The investigation surrounding Julian Assange's charges are still ongoing. If you ever wondered, what if the U.S. is not "the best"? Well Assange would affirm that statement in a heartbeat. During a press conference in the film, Assange explains that "this is not the liberal democracy that we had all dreamed of. This is an encroaching, privatized censorship regime". If you are a free-thinker (or not an all-knowing God) then you can't help but think what if he's right? What if the U.S. is only offering us the illusion of freedom? Is this such a radical and unpatriotic thought that it must be thrown out as soon as Assange and private Manning are prosecuted? I'll ask one more question that I heard at the beginning of the film, "was it not once patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong"? When the U.S. federal government desperately succeeds in hiding information that is not inherently compromising national security, then you can't help but wonder.

Now we proceed to decipher the philosophy around truths. Assange was desperate to find true information, and Private Manning was desperate to share true information. In the documentary, Professor Robert Manne explains the philosophical background that Assange had for leaking information. Assange came from a mentality that all information is good, and it must be shared. Assange also did not trust the government and believed there were secrets out there that must be found and exposed. Here, we can link actual truths and falsified truths back to the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, who I briefly learned about through a Fall 2021 Intro to Philosophy course. Quine theorized the two dogmas of empiricism that should be rejected after John Locke and David Hume's theorized the opposite. The first dogma is the distinction between analytical and synthetic truths. The second dogma is the radical reductionist belief. According to Quine, not everything is true or false information. Truths also cannot solely be reduced down to simplistic experiences. Truths, whether objective or subjective, are intrinsically connected and can only be revised to reconfigure levels of beliefs. The interconnectedness is what Quine calls the "web of belief". Within this web, the most outer edges are the sensory experiences and the closer you move towards the core beliefs, lies the objective truths that are harder to change. Quine helps us explain the philosophy behind leaking top secret information to the public. It cannot be simply boiled down to one truth, or one sole hero within the scandal. Likewise, we cannot decipher who to believe because the objective truths and the analytic truths are difficult to decipher. This could be because the truths are impossible to separate. The analytical truths would be the sensory emotions that we accrue whilst learning more and more about Assange and the U.S. government. In cases like this, I do not think it is possible to know exactly what is hard proof for the truth and what is a conspiracy. We, common people, cannot invade databases in the Department of Defense and we definitely cannot invade minds to find the "truth". Perhaps in this situation, everyone is just wrong. What I do not hold as wrong is the provisions granted within the Bill of Rights to Americans and the values that the United States wholeheartedly spews.

Apparently there is a line that is crossed when it comes to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to privacy, and access to the due process of the law. The right to check your government also has its limits and it rings authoritative. Although I am grateful for the existence of such a nation with great potential, and lucky to have been born here, I do not abandon the dream of a corrupt-free nation.

References

U.S. Const.

McGlinchey, Stephen, Walters, Rosie and Scheinpflug, Christian. International Relations Theory. Bristol, E-International Relations Publishing, 2017.