7/27/2019 Hammond Letter
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Honorable Loretta A. PreskaChief Judge
Southern District of New York500 Pearl Street
New York, NY 10007
Dear Judge Preska, October 14, 2013
In June of 1773 Anonymously procured letters were published in
the Boston Gazette.Their publication and the whisper campaign that
preceded their publication set thecountryside aflame. Protests were
held as far away as Philadelphia and, back in England, aduel took
place over who was responsible for the Anonymous leak. No one died
in the initialduel so a second duel was duly scheduled. Before it
could take place, Benjamin Franklin, thenacting on behalf of
Massachusetts in London, stepped forward to admit that he had sent
theletters to Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and others in the
Massachusetts legislature. Those ofus who are heirs to the American
Revolution know of these events as the Hutchinson LettersAffair.
Thomas Hutchinson, then Governor of the British Province of
Massachusetts, was oneof the correspondents involved in penning the
packet of twenty letters. I would like tosubmit to the Court that
what happened in the Hutchinson Letters Affair might
proveinstructive as the Court considers the length of sentence it
will level for Jeremy Hammond'sadmitted responsibility in pilfering
a large number of electronic letters from Stratfor andpassing them
along to Wikileaks.
My name is Doug Johnson Hatlem. I was born in California,
studied at LibertyUniversity in Virginia and Duke Divinity School
in North Carolina. Most recently, I spent
eight years as a street pastor working with people who are
homeless or otherwisemarginalized for the Mennonite Central
Committee Ontario (MCCO). MCCO placed me towork at Sanctuary, a
church, drop-in center, health clinic, and arts collective in the
heart ofdowntown Toronto. Recently, I moved back to the United
States as my wife has taken a job ata seminary in Chicago. Much
more has been written about me publicly in two embarassinglykind
articles in the Toronto Star that describe me as a diligent and
conscientiousprofessional with an Old Testament sense of justice
that can sometimes boil over.Besides having moved to the city where
Jeremy Hammond lived and worked before hisarrest, I can identify
with him and with his plight for a number of reasons. Most
especially, Ifeel a deep resonance with his various passions for
justice and his intolerance for corruptionof any sort.
Perhaps the British would have been within their then blinkered
understanding ofjustice if they had put Ben Franklin away for a
decade to punish him for his treachery in theHutchinson Letters
Affair, but our experience as Americans and, in fact, as citizens
all overthe world, would certainly be quite different if Ben had
been behind bars in the years thatfollowed. Mr. Franklin is said to
have stood silently as he was upbraided by the SolicitorGeneral as
a dishonorable thief at a Privy Council meeting which, among other
items,considered how he ought to be disciplined. Interestingly,
Franklin spent no time in jail for his
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misdeeds. He was, however, relieved of his position as
Postmaster General of the colonies atthe Privy Council meeting.
While silent at the hearing, Franklin initially defended
hispublication of the purloined letters precisely on the grounds
that their contents intended toinfluence public policy and were
therefore in the public interest.
Jeremy Hammond has plead guilty before this Court. As I
understand it, however,
there is not a shred of a question surrounding Mr. Hammond's
intentions. Mr. Hammond,like Franklin, Samuel Adams, and John
Hancock before him, firmly believed that hisinvolvement in the
Stratfor eLetters Affair was undertaken in the public interest.
More to thepoint, John Hancock, speaking to the conclusion of the
Massachusetts legislature, specificallystated that the Hutchinson
Letters showed that the Governor was involved with plans
to"overthrow the Constitution of this Government, and to introduce
arbitrary Power into theProvince." Mr. Hammond acted, by all
accounts, from similar concerns. Now, it may turn outthat Mr.
Hammond is wrong about what is happening behind the scenes with
private militarycontractors. Just the same, it could have turned
out that Hancock, Franklin, Sam Adams andothers were wrong. Or even
just unsuccessful.
But they weren't.
It is worth noting that Franklin never had to give up the
Anonymous method or sourceby which he originally came into
possession of the Hutchinson Letters. Fort Meade was then,indeed,
no Fort at all and wouldn't become such until 1917. Likewise, the
FBI, which didn'texist until 1908. More ironically, among the
rights for which the colonies fought against theBritish were the
rights to Freedom of the Press, Speedy Trial, and against Cruel and
UnusualPunishment. The British might be said now to have a better
grasp of these inalienble rights asDeclared three years after the
publication of the Hutchinson Letters and cemented thirteenyears
after that in our Bill of Rights. Jake Davis, Jeremy Hammond's
Lulzsec co-conspirator in
the UK for instance, has not only already been tried and
sentenced, but has actually alreadyserved the entirety of his term
behind bars. In the name of Franklin, Adams, and Hancockand even
more so in the name of a rational and moral application of justice,
I ask that theCourt sentence Jeremy Hammond to the time he has
already served.
With all due respect,
Doug Johnson Hatlem
