Do you want to know a secret? WikiLeaks and the constitution
Classified military documents obtained by WikiLeaks and provided
to The New York Times and other news organizations gave the
public this week new and detailed accounts of prisoners held at
Guantanamo Bay. The assessments written by military intelligence
officers evaluated the histories of detainees and gave the
public a glimpse of the evidence against them. Publication of
the documents raised anew the controversy surrounding the
WikiLeaks whistle-blower website. And it shined a spotlight on
the dilemma raised by its distribution of classified material:
What to do when government officials say that information
valuable to informed public debate should be kept secret from
the public in the interests of national security? It’s a complex
issue with free-speech dimensions that Geoffrey Stone, a law
professor at the University of Chicago, explored in recent
testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. Stone is a National
Constitution Center Visiting Schola