Speaking at a campaign rally on October 28, Ron Paul offered another erratic speech on foreign policy and, disturbingly, referred to whistleblowers such as Wikileaks as “true patriots” and “political heroes.”
In remarks against “government secrecy,” Paul suggested the following:
What about giving immunity to the whistleblowers? They’re the ones who need immunity. We have a few brave souls, especially in the foreign policy area — it came up in Vietnam, it’s come up more recently, Wikileaks … technically yes, they’re breaking a rule, but what is the government doing? They’re breaking the law.
If we have an American citizen that is willing to take the consequences and practice civil disobedience and say, “This is what our government’s doing,” should he be locked up and imprisoned? Or should we see him as a political hero? Maybe he is a true patriot who reveals what’s going on in government.
Leaving aside the moral objections most people would have to calling Wikileaks patriotic, Paul lets his zeal blind him from the fact that an American citizen, such as Bradley Manning, working with Wikileaks isn’t just “technically breaking a rule” but in fact breaking the law — the Espionage Act, specifically, as well as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, for, among other counts, “disclosing classified information concerning the national defense with reason to believe that the information could cause injury to the United States.”
The video can be seen here.