The Treason of Benjamin Franklin

Stop me if youve heard this one before. A public figure receives a cache of leaked government documents whose contents is so explosive that it will embarrass the government, incite insurgents and encourage them to attack government officials. It could even bring on a war. The person leaking these documents is quickly identified and dealt with by authorities. Whom could I be referring to? Perhaps Bradley Manning, the US army soldier arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of passing on restricted material? Or could it be Jillian Assange, who published over 250,000 classified documents on his website, WikiLeaks, that included US diplomatic cables, the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public? And when might I be writing about? Possibly April 5, 2010, when WikiLeaks posted on its site the Iraq video titled Collateral Murder, showing U.S. Army Apache helicopter air strikes in an eastern district of Baghdad in July 2007, killing two staffers for Reuters and a dozen others or more. This was followed by a flood of classified documents from diplomatic and military sources that have rocked the US administration, embarrassed its allies and encouraged Americas enemies. And what about holding those responsible for the leaks to account? Well, Bradley Manning is in a military jail awaiting court-martial proceedings. He faces 22 charges, including "aiding the enemy," which can carry a death sentence. Julian Assange is holed up in England fighting the Swedish government, who are trying to extradite him so they can question him about a sexual assault he allegedly committed in Stockholm. This suits the US, which will find it easier to extradite him from Sweden than from the UK. To this end, the US government has convened a Grand Jury in secret to determine whether the leaks have breached the Espionage Act of 1917. There is every reason to believe that the Grand Jury has prepared charges against Assange, and the US government will start extradition proceedings as soon as he arrives in Sweden, where they judge they will have a better chance of success than in Great Britain. If convicted, Assange may be executed. However, the case Im referring to has nothing to do with WikiLeaks, Assange or Manning. Called the Hutchinson Letters Affair, it began in December 1772, when Benjamin Franklin, who was in England at the time, anonymously received a packet of thirteen letters. They comprised of reports by Thomas Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Thomas Whately, a leading member of the British government. In the letters, Hutchinson made some damning comments about colonial rights. Even more provocative, Hutchinson recommended that popular government be taken away from the colonists "by degrees," and that there should be an "abridgement of what are called English liberties." Specifically, he argued that all colonial government posts should be made independent of the provincial assemblies. Finally, he urged his superiors to send more troops to Boston to keep American rebels under control. Understanding the inflammatory nature of these letters, Franklin circulated them to his American friends and colleagues but on the condition that they not be published. Clearly in the public interest, at least from the point-of-view of American revolutionaries, the letters were published in the Boston Gazette in June of 1773, in defiance of Franklins request. As you can imagine, the patriotic citizens of Boston were furious, and in May 1774, Hutchinson fled the colony back to England before he could be tarred and feathered. As the American colonies were on the edge of rebelling against the authority of the Crown, this could easily have triggered a revolution, and while it didnt, it certainly provided the insurgents with ammunition in their fight against England.

Having been severely embarrassed and its interests in the American colonies compromised, the British government set out to discover the source of the leaks. Three men were arrested, each of whom had informed on the others. As a result, in December 1773, two fought a duel over the matter and, as neither suffered a mortal wound, they were preparing to do so again. As it turned out, they had nothing to do with the Hutchinson letters, and in a letter to the London Chronicle, Franklin confessed: "Finding that two gentlemen have been unfortunately engaged in a duel, about a transaction and its circumstance of which both are totally ignorant and innocent, I think it incumbent on me to declare (for the prevention of farther mischief, as far as such a declaration may contribute to prevent it) that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question." However, he refused to say who gave him the letters. Obviously more benign than the US government of the twenty-first century, Benjamin Franklin was not locked up and held in solitary confinement, as was the case with Manning Bradley, or threatened with charges of espionage, like Assange. On January 29, 1774, Franklin was hauled before the Privy Council to explain why he had leaked the letters in the Hutchinson Affair. Accused of thievery and dishonor, he was called the "prime mover" of Boston's insurgents and charged with being a "true incendiary." Throughout the hearing, Franklin maintained a dignified silence. For his disloyalty to the Crown, the Privy Council held off sending Franklin to the gallows or even sentencing him to an afternoon in the stocks. Instead, Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn felt satisfied with the tongue-lashing he meted out to Franklin, and the next day the Board of Trade dismissed Franklin from his post as Deputy Postmaster General of the North America colonies. Had the Espionage Act been in place in Great Britain in 1774, Franklin would not have been around to lead the War of Independence nor would he have been around to raise vital funds to support the rebellion. And, if that had been the case, we would never have his signature on the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution.