Press Release: Defending Rights & Dissent Sues FBI For WikiLeaks and Assange Files

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 12, 2024

Contact: Chip Gibbons, Policy Director, chip@rightsanddissent.org

Defending Rights & Dissent Sues FBI For WikiLeaks and Assange Files

Washington, DC – Defending Rights & Dissent filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit yesterday against the FBI to compel the release of its files on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. 

“For nearly a decade and a half, we’ve been trying to get at the truth about the US government’s war on WikiLeaks,” said Chip Gibbons, Policy Director at Defending Rights & Dissent. “Scattered reporting in the press and government court filings have offered a glimpse of that picture. The decision to respond to reporting on US war crimes with foreign counterintelligence investigations, criminal prosecutions, and dirty tricks continues to cast a dark shadow over our First Amendment right to press freedom. With the legal persecution of Julian Assange finally over, the FBI must come clean to the American people. We will work tirelessly to see that all files documenting how the FBI criminalized and investigated journalism are made available to the public.”

“As soon as we began publishing newsworthy stories about US war crimes in 2010, we know the US government responded to what was one of most consequential journalistic revelations of the 21st century by spying on and trying to criminalize First Amendment protected journalism,” said Kristinn Hrafnsson, Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks. “While WikiLeaks has fought for transparency, the US government has cloaked its war on journalism in secrecy. That’s why Defending Rights & Dissent’s lawsuit is so important, as it will help unmask the FBI’s efforts to criminalize journalism.”

Defending Rights & Dissent (DRAD) is a national civil liberties organization that defends the American people’s right to know and freedom to act. Since the release of the Collateral Murder video, DRAD has been a leader in opposing government attacks on WikiLeaks and its sources. DRAD also sponsored first hand reporting on the case, sending its policy director Chip Gibbons to London to report on the extradition hearing. A previous DRAD FOIA request for the FBI’s WikiLeaks file was rejected on the grounds that the records were part of an ongoing law enforcement proceeding. Immediately after Assange’s plea deal, DRAD refiled the request. 

DRAD is represented by Loevy & Loevy, who previously represented them in a multi-agency FOIA lawsuit attempting to shine light on a leak investigation that resulted in the prosecution of a journalist’s source. Past FOIA requests filed by Defending Rights & Dissent have resulted in an exposeé published in The Intercept about FBI monitoring of Palestinian solidarity activists and serve as the basis for a new history of the FBI, forthcoming from Verso Books.

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