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By Chip Gibbons / Defending Rights & Dissent
John Bolton is an unrepentant war criminal and one of most odious national security hawks in Washington. As part of his antipathy for press freedom, whistleblowers and anyone who challenges the national security state, he called for both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden to be executed for exposing abuses of power by our government.
Similarly, he called for journalist Julian Assange to get “at least 176 years in jail” for publishing truthful information about U.S. war crimes. Now, Bolton, like Manning, Snowden, and Assange has been indicted under the Espionage Act.
We at Defending Rights & Dissent were one of the leading voices in Washington in support of Manning, Snowden and Assange. And we remain the leading voice on reforming the Espionage Act so it can no longer be used to prosecute courageous whistleblowers and journalists.
As part of our reform proposal, we advocated the Espionage Act be amended to require the government to prove a defendant intended to harm the national security of the U.S.
Nothing in the indictment of Bolton indicates the government believes Bolton had that level of intent. As a result, we do not believe Bolton should be indicted under the Espionage Act. This is the same position we took regarding Donald Trump, who himself has been responsible for abusing the Espionage Act to silence journalists and whistleblowers.
The Espionage Act is an overly broad, archaic law. As a result, it is ripe for selective, politically motivated enforcement. It is for these reasons that Bolton championed it as a tool for political persecutions against whistleblowers and journalists. And it is for this reason the Trump administration has chosen it as a tool for their petty retaliation against a national security hawk who shares much of their views on the use of the Espionage Act.
Enough is enough. It is well past time to reform the Espionage Act once and for all.
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Chip Gibbons
Chip Gibbons is a journalist and researcher. His work has appeared in Jacobin, In These Times, and The Nation. He authored the report Still Spying on Dissent: The Enduring Legacy of FBI First Amendment Abuse