Bipartisanship at Last

„Whether the people behind WikiLeaks are journalists or outlaws is at the heart of free-press debate. In July, after the publication of Wikileaks’s Iraq War Logs, Democratic senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, of New York and California, respectively, proposed an amendment to the media-shield bill designed to exclude the WikiLeaks team from the same free-press protections—including the right, i some cases, to keep one’s sources confidential—enjoyed by traditional reporters. WikiLeaks should not be spared in any way from the fullest prosecution possible under the law, Schumer said.

In July 2010, also following the release of the Iraq War Logs, a Wall Street Journal reporter interviewed University of Virginia law professor Fred Schauer about the Web site and the First Amendment. The Journal reported that Supreme Court decisions, including the 1971 ruling that upheld the legality of The New York Times’s publication of the Pentagon Papers, all suggest that the person at WikiLeaks who got the information would likely elude criminal prosecution or liability unless that person was, said Schauer, involved in getting the material in the first place.

Just how WikiLeaks obtained the diplomatic cables remains, like many other WikiLeaks particulars, unknown. However, in a press conference this afternoon, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that the Obama administration is taking aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information.”