At Issue: WikiLeaks | South Sound Book Review Council

In 2007, documents detailing the way officials at Camp Delta, located at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and actually a prison for suspected terrorists, were hiding prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Over the subsequent years hundreds of thousands of documents were released, leaked, to journalists and/or published on-line. Some of the most controversial leaks documented events in America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of that documentation diminished the nobility of the American effort.

The fact that much of this information was once in the possession of the U.S. government in the form of “secret” files and not officially released, made these “Leaks” even more controversial. In addition, some of the “leaked” information detailed American secret efforts to gather electronic data as part of the “War on Terror.”Needless to say these complicated events have raised a number of important questions. What is the role of secrecy in our democratic society? What is the role of government surveillance in that same society? What is the role of secret, warrantless data collection by our government in an effort to combat the somewhat amorphous threat of “terror.”The debate over the above issues is the subject of At Issue WikiLeaks part of the “At Issue Series” and published by Greenhaven Press (2013). The 11 essays in WikiLeaks present several points of view on the matter. The views of Susan Mulligan and Sen. Dianne Feinstein are best summarized by the title of the latter’s essay, “WikiLeaks Should Be Prosecuted Under the Espionage Act.” More dramatic in this school of thought is “WikiLeaks is a Terrorist Organization.” Countering this are a number of essays on the other side of the debate best exemplified by Mark Stephens’ “WikiLeaks is Not a Threat to National Security.” An essay by Julian Assange, the inspiration behind WikiLeaks, not surprisingly defends of the nobility of this controversial project. The most enlightening essay is by Bill Keller, former executive editor of the New York Times, and provides insight into how a newspapers handle “leaked” documents in a responsible way. He offers fine counterpoint to Mulligan, Feinstein and Stephens.

(Submitted by the Washington State Civics Educator of the Year, Ed Bergh)

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