A US Representative who in 2010 called Wikileaks a “terrorist website” is stepping down next year.
Candice Miller (R-Mich.), the chair of the House Committee on Administration and the only Republican woman to lead a House committee, announced Thursday that she will not be seeking re-election at the end of the 114th Congress.
“None of us know what the future will bring, but I hope God grants me grace to continue to give back to this magnificent place we call Michigan,” she said in a statement.
It’s not likely that her seat will be flipped–Miller beat her Democratic opponent in 2014 by almost 40 percentage points.
Congress will, however, soon be without one of the more crass, authoritarian opponents of freedom of speech.
In December 2010, after Wikileaks published hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and war logs that revealed a hidden tally of civilian death and US-backed torture in Iraq, and decades of lying by the US, its allies, and governments around the world, Rep. Miller called on the Justice Department to shutter it for publishing classified information–a perfectly acceptable act under federal law.
“I think that Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, should also be facing criminal charges,” she said, referring to Chelsea Manning who, she claimed, “has committed treason.”
Wikileaks, she charged, is used “to aid and abet our terrorist enemies.”
Three and a half weeks later, Tunisians revolted against their US-backed authoritarian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The uprising was fueled, in part, by Wikileaks’ publication of cables from Tunisia.
The dispatches detailed both the staggering corruption-fueled opulent lifestyles of Ben Ali’s family, and praise from American diplomats who, in the words of The New York Times, “valued Mr. Ben Ali’s cooperation.”
Tunisians, previously, were certainly well aware that their rulers were on the take. But one Tunisian dissident who helped spread the Wikileaks documents about his country later described the publication as having a “psychological effect of an establishment confronted so publicly with its ugly own image.”
A few weeks later, popular rebellions against corruption and undemocratic systems were sparked all over the Arab world and beyond.
But if Rep. Miller had her way, information that played some role in those movements never would have been released.
“There is absolutely no justification for the release of these documents as the prime beneficiaries of this release are the al Qaeda terrorist organization and the terror supporting regime in Iran,” she had said in another speech from the House floor, in late November. “I fully support the effort of the incoming Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Peter King (R-N.Y.) to have Wikileaks declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States Government.”
“In addition,” she added, “I fully support Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to prosecute the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, under the Espionage Act. Mr. Assange has unnecessarily placed our nation and our military in harms way and he needs to be held to the fullest extent of the law.”
Ultimately, the soon-to-be former Rep. Miller might get her wish. In court documents filed Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington noted that “the Department of Justice and FBI’s multi-subject investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information published on WikiLeaks…is ‘still active and ongoing’ and remains in the investigative stage.”
