Wikileaks' Julian Assange Honored at London Press Conference

[Joanne98]

For OpEdNews: Ray McGovern - Writer

You are not likely to learn this from "mainstream media,' but WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange have received the 2010 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award for their resourcefulness in making available secret U.S. military documents on the Iraq and Afghan wars.

If the WikiLeaks documents get the attention they deserve, and if lessons can be learned from the courageous work of former CIA analyst Sam Adams--and from Daniel Ellsberg's timely leak of Adams' work in early 1968--even the amateurs in the White House may be able to recognize the folly of widening the war from Afghanistan to adjacent countries. That leak played a key role in dissuading President Lyndon Johnson from approving Gen. William Westmoreland's request to send 206,000 more troops--not only into the Big Muddy, but also into countries neighboring Vietnam (further detail below in the description of SAAII).

This year's award was presented Saturday, with the customary "corner-brightener candlestick," by SAAII awardee, and former UK ambassador, Craig Murray, after Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg discussed WikiLeaks' release of almost 400,000 classified battlefield reports from Iraq. The award reads as follows:

It seems altogether fitting and proper that this year's award be presented in London, where Edmund Burke coined the expression "Fourth Estate." Comparing the function of the press to that of the three Houses then in Parliament, Burke said:

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