Dec. 2: Assange Is No Daniel Ellsberg

By Sylvia Gurinsky

There's probably no way for the United States to ever make WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange face justice for any treasonous acts concerning recent posts on the site - not without help from other countries. Assange isn't American, for one thing.

That means the court of public opinion will weigh in on him. Some have called him a traitor. Others have compared him to Daniel Ellsberg, the one-time military analyst who passed along the so-called Pentagon Papers - a look at most of the United States involvement in Vietnam during the 1950s and 60s - to the New York Times and the Washington Post, which published them in 1971.

Calling Assange a traitor may be stretching it, although those who have been leaking to him may certainly deserve the term.

Comparing Assange to Ellsberg is really stretching it. Ellsberg, who is American, paid a heavy price for coming forward with the Pentagon Papers.

Julian Assange may be a criminal, but he's certainly a smart alec, interested less in writing wrongs than in publicity for himself. He is no Daniel Ellsberg.