WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged with 17 new counts under the Espionage Act for “unlawfully obtaining” and disclosing national defense information, including a potentially controversial allegation that his publishing of some secrets was criminal.

Such a charge under the Espionage Act has never been successfully prosecuted, according to CNN legal analyst Steve Vladeck.

The indictment alleges that Assange worked with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain thousands of pages of classified material and that Assange published information on WikiLeaks that identified human sources and put them “at a grave and imminent risk” of harm or detention.

Justice Department officials emphasize how different Assange is because he published human source names knowing they could be hurt.

“Julian Assange is no journalist,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers, who heads the department’s national security division.

He’s “not charged simply because he’s a publisher,” said US attorney Zach Terwilliger, or for passively retaining national defense information.

Vladeck says this will be “major test case” on both sides of the Atlantic.

Vladeck explains there’s an exception in the US-UK treaty for political charges. The new charges bolster Assange’s argument that some of them could fall within the exception for political offenses.

“If that fails, he will surely argue in the US courts that the Constitution forbids criminal prosecution for publishing information that someone else leaked,” Vladeck said

Vladeck says that the government will likely argue that Assange prompted the leaks, so he isn’t strictly a third-party publisher.

Assange had already been charged with computer intrusion. </s> WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finds himself more legal trouble today as federal prosecutors have charged him with 17 new counts. Among them is an espionage charge for publishing classified information — the first such indictment ever handed down against a non-government employee by the U.S. Justice Department.

The new charges under the Espionage Act already are rankling some, including the ACLU and Citizenfour subject and Moscow reisdent Edward Snowden, on constitutional grounds. To that end, WikiLeaks responded to the indictments by tweeting: “This is madness. It is the end of national security journalism and the first amendment.”

A Virginia grand jury found that Assange unlawfully got then-Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning to obtain classified documents that included the names of sources who provided information to U.S. officials. Today’s charges are in addition to the single count against Assange that he worked with Manning to learn a password used by the Defense Department.

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Jailed For Nearly A Year By British Court For Breaching Bail

“Today the government charged Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for encouraging sources to provide him truthful information and for publishing that information,” Assange’s attorney Barry J Pollack said in a statement. “The fig leaf that this is merely about alleged computer hacking has been removed. These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the U.S. government.”

The DOJ, however, made it clear during a news birefing today that it does not consider what Assange does as journalism. “The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy,” John Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, told reporters today.

After forcibly being removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London last month, Assange is being held by British authorities for jumping bail. U.S. Justice Department officials believe he had a role in “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.” </s> WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged by the US Justice Department with receiving and publishing classified information.

The charges are contained in an 18-count indictment announced on Thursday.

The new charges go far beyond an initial indictment against Assange made public last month that accused him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in a conspiracy to crack a Defence Department computer password.

The new indictment says Assange conspired with Manning to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents, including State Department cables and reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It says his actions "risked serious harm" to the United States.

The 47-year-old is in prison in London after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in April. The US is seeking his extradition. </s> US prosecutors said on Thursday they had charged Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, with conspiracy in trying to access a classified US government computer with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010.

[WASHINGTON] US prosecutors said on Thursday they had charged Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, with conspiracy in trying to access a classified US government computer with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010.

Assange, arrested by British police in London and carried out of Ecuador's embassy there, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on the American charges, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.

His London arrest paved the way for his possible extradition to the United States.

Assange's indictment arose from a long-running criminal investigation dating back to the administration of former President Barack Obama. It was triggered in part by the publication by WikiLeaks in 2010 of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and American diplomatic communications.

The Justice Department said Assange, 47, was arrested pursuant to the US/UK Extradition Treaty, and accused him of involvement in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.

The indictment said that Assange in March 2010 engaged in a conspiracy to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on US Department of Defence computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet), a US government network used for classified documents and communications.

He was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

The department said Manning had access to the computers as an intelligence analyst and was using them to download classified records to transmit to WikiLeaks. Cracking the password would have enabled Manning to log on to the computers under a username other than her own, making it more difficult for investigators to determine the source of the illegal disclosures, the department said.

The Obama administration decided not to prosecute WikiLeaks on the grounds that the work of WikiLeaks was too similar to journalistic activities protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller also underscored the role of WikiLeaks in his 22-month investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 US election. The website published emails damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that Mueller and US intelligence agencies have said were stolen by Russia in a bid to boost Republican Donald Trump's candidacy.

The Justice Department said Manning and Assange engaged in real-time discussions concerning Manning's transmission of classified records to Assange in which Assange encouraged Manning to provide more information.

The department's statement quoted an exchange between the two in which Manning told Assange that "after this upload, that's all I really have got left," with Assange replying that "curious eyes never run dry in my experience."

Assange was earlier convicted on Thursday by a London court of skipping bail in 2012 after an extradition order to Sweden over an allegation of rape.

Assange, who pleaded not guilty, will be sentenced a later date when he will face a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison for the offence. </s> The Department of Justice announced 17 new charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday, including a virtually unprecedented move to charge him with publishing classified material — a move that could pose challenges to First Amendment protections.

In a superseding indictment, a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has accused Assange of breaking the law by inducing Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning to send him classified documents — and then publishing material that included the names of confidential sources who provided information to American diplomats.

The 17 counts were tacked on to a single count accusing Assange of conspiring with Manning to crack a Department of Defense password. Assange, who was taken out of the Equadorian embassy in London in April, is being held in a London jail for jumping bail on a sex charge and awaiting extradition to the United States.

The government says Manning provided Assange and WikiLeaks with databases containing about 90,000 Afghanistan War-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq War-related reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables.

The material, which began to be published in 2010, made headlines across the world and shed light on U.S. government activities.

The decision to charge Assange in connection with publishing secrets crosses an important line. The U.S. government has never successfully prosecuted anyone other than a government employee for disseminating unlawfully leaked classified information, according to University of Chicago Law Prof. Geoffrey Stone, even though the Espionage Act has long been on the books.

Journalists publish classified material regularly, yet the government has opted not to prosecute a journalist — even when government officials have been deeply angered by the revelations of classified intelligence information.

"Today the government charged Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for encouraging sources to provide him truthful information and for publishing that information," Assange's attorney Barry J Pollack said in a statement. "The fig leaf that this is merely about alleged computer hacking has been removed. These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the U.S. government."

In a briefing for reporters, Justice Department officials said they do not consider Assange a journalist, and they took pains to say they will not target journalists.

“The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said.

Demers and other officials said they only charged Assange with publishing a narrow subset of material that included the names of confidential sources, including people who risked their lives talking to the U.S. government.

“Assange thereby is alleged to have created grave and imminent risk to their lives and liberty,” Demers said.

While that action by Assange and Wikileaks has long been criticized, press freedom advocates have worried that criminalizing the act of publishing opens the door for the government to charge journalists who make publishing decisions government officials don’t like.

For example, CIA officials were furious when The New York Times in 2015 published the true name of a longtime CIA counterterrorism official, Mike D’Andrea, who had been in charge of the agency’s targeted killing program. The Times said the move was justified because of his leadership role in one of the government’s most significant paramilitary programs and because his name was known to foreign governments and many others.

WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization Assange founded, tweeted, “This is madness. It is the end of national security journalism and the first amendment.”

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked secrets and is now living in Moscow, tweeted, “The Department of Justice just declared war––not on Wikileaks, but on journalism itself. This is no longer about Julian Assange: This case will decide the future of media.”

Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S. attorney who brought the charges, told reporters that the United States “has not charged Assange for passively obtaining or receiving classified information.”

Rather, he said, Assange is charged “for his alleged complicity in illegal acts to obtain or receive voluminous databases of classified information.”

“Any government use of the Espionage Act to criminalize the receipt and publication of classified information poses a dire threat to journalists seeking to publish such information in the public interest, irrespective of the Justice Department’s assertion that Assange is not a journalist,” said Bruce Brown, executive director Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Manning is in jail in Alexandria, having refused to testify before the grand jury in the case.

After Assange helped Manning purloin classified documents, the superseding indictment charges, Assange published on WikiLeaks material “that contained the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to U.S. State Department diplomats around the world. These human sources included local Afghans and Iraqis, journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents from repressive regimes.”

The indictment says that act “put the unredacted named human sources at a grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention.”

Asked by a reporter whether they could point to an example of a U.S. source who had been harmed by the publication, the Justice Department officials were unable to do so. But they said they were prepared to prove that the sources were at risk. </s> Prosecutors are bringing a slate of new charges against Julian Assange, including alleged violations of the Espionage Act, raising the stakes for his prospective extradition from the United Kingdom.

A grand jury in Northern Virginia has returned a superseding indictment with 17 more charges against the WikiLeaks founder. It follows an earlier case brought against Assange in connection with the alleged help he gave to then-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to compromise U.S. government computer networks.

Assange is being charged for what officials call his "alleged complicity in illegal acts" involving Manning and "for agreeing and attempting to obtain" information that compromised national security.

Manning provided Assange with war logs, State Department cables, assessments of Guantanamo detainees and other materials.

Said U.S. Attorney Zach Terwilliger: "The United States has only charged Assange with publishing a narrow set of classified documents" that included the names of innocent people, such as dissidents and human rights activists.

"Assange is not charged simply because he is a publisher," Terwilliger said.

The charges announced on Thursday all relate to chapters in the history of WikiLeaks before its involvement in Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.

They include allegations that Assange violated the Espionage Act provisions that prohibit a conspiracy to obtain, receive and disclose national defense information; charges related to the attempted cracking of computer passwords; and unlawful receipt of sensitive information such as State Department communications and Defense Department logs.

Prosecutors also added a charge related to the disclosure of national defense information that included the unredacted names of human sources in places such as China, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Court documents described a series of chats between Assange and Manning in March 2010 in which Assange allegedly encourages Manning more than once to obtain documents.

Assange has long argued that he is a journalist no different from any other reporter protected by press freedom rights in the West or the First Amendment in the United States.

The U.S. criminal case boils down to a reporter — Assange — encouraging a source — Manning — to give him a story, Assange and his attorneys argue. That's not only not against the law, they and supporters say, but also going forward would cause a deep chill in the ability of the press to report on the government.

"These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have [been] taken by the U.S. government," said Assange attorney Barry Pollack.

"This is madness," WikiLeaks wrote on its Twitter account.

Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, reiterated the possible risk to journalists.

"Any government use of the Espionage Act to criminalize the receipt and publication of classified information poses a dire threat to journalists seeking to publish such information in the public interest, irrespective of the Justice Department's assertion that Assange is not a journalist," he said.

Ben Wizner — director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project — blamed the president.

"This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism, and a direct assault on the First Amendment," he said.

Manning, meanwhile, is in custody in Northern Virginia after apparently refusing to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the grand jury proceeding that yielded the indictment unsealed on Thursday.

A judge ordered Manning to be jailed after she said she would not testify against Assange.

Assange is in British custody following his ejection earlier this year from his long self-imposed confinement in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. A British judge ordered him to be jailed in connection with bail jumping.

Swedish and American authorities both are asking London to extradite Assange to face criminal charges.

Swedish prosecutors reopened a investigation into rape allegations against Assange once he left the embassy. It isn't clear which capital — Stockholm or Washington — will take priority with British authorities in evaluating whether to extradite him.



The Justice Department today unveiled new charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Right now, Assange is in a British prison for jumping bail there. But he's a wanted man in both the U.S. and Sweden. To talk about how these new charges complicate his situation, we're joined by NPR's national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. She's been following the U.S. investigation for years. Welcome back to the studio, Carrie.

CORNISH: What can you tell us about these new charges against Julian Assange?

JOHNSON: Remember, Julian Assange already faced one charge - conspiracy to engage in computer hacking - for his role in the leak by former Army Private Chelsea Manning. Manning gave WikiLeaks State Department cables, war logs and assessments of detainees at Guantanamo. Today, a grand jury in Virginia slapped Julian Assange with 17 more charges. These are extremely serious, alleging violations of the Espionage Act. That includes conspiracy to obtain, receive and disclose national defense information and attempting to crack a password to help Chelsea Manning get into a database to obtain even more secrets.

CORNISH: These sound way more serious than the first charge related to hacking. So are prosecutors going in a different direction?

JOHNSON: Yeah, in some ways, they are. The new charges describe chats between Manning and Assange in March 2010 where Assange was basically soliciting state secrets, according to the Justice Department. And prosecutors here are also charging Assange with publishing information, something the Obama administration never wanted to do. Normally, prosecutors would charge the leaker of the information, not the person who published it. But authorities at the Justice Department insist Assange is being charged narrowly here. The assistant attorney general for national security, John Demers, told reporters Julian Assange is no journalist. Look at the entirety of his conduct.

CORNISH: Can we go back to that for a second? If he's being charged with publishing material, what are the implications for the First Amendment and for press freedom?

JOHNSON: Yeah. Julian Assange is certain to raise a First Amendment defense. He basically says if he faces prison time, so would The New York Times, The Washington Post and other news outlets. In fact, Bruce Brown, who runs the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, is just out with a statement saying these charges pose a dire threat to all journalists. The fear is this legal theory could be used to criminalize core reporting activity some of us do every day. The Justice Department says there is a difference, that Assange was warned by the State Department at the time not to publish some of these documents. But he persisted, published the names of human sources in Iran, China and Syria. There is no evidence any of those people were killed. But prosecutors say they only have to show there was a potential for harm to those people in order to succeed in court.

CORNISH: In the meantime, Swedish authorities revived a rape case against Assange, suggesting that they want a turn at prosecuting him. What are the odds that he'll ever make it to the U.S. to face trial?

JOHNSON: That's going to be up to British authorities. Assange will have a chance to make his legal arguments before a British judge. He's argued he's a journalist, and also he's being singled out for political reasons because he exposed secrets about U.S. wrongdoing and alleged war crimes. Here's why that matters, Audie. The extradition treaty between the U.K. and the U.S. has an exception for political offenses. And so if they find that there is a political element here, he may never wind up back here in the U.S., and he may wind up in Sweden first, which also wants him.

CORNISH: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thank you. </s> WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department unveiled 17 new criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange yesterday, saying he unlawfully published the names of classified sources and conspired with and assisted ex-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in obtaining access to classified information.

The superseding indictment comes a little more than a month after the Justice Department unsealed a narrower criminal case against Assange.

Assange was initially charged with conspiring with Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He now faces a total of 18 criminal counts, and could face many decades in prison if convicted.

“These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the U.S. government,” said Barry Pollack, an American attorney for Assange.

The Justice Department said that not only did Assange aid and encourage Manning with the theft of classified materials, but he jeopardized the lives of human sources that included Afghans, Iraqis, journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and political dissidents from repressive regimes by publishing their identities.

Law enforcement officials said on Thursday that the State Department had pleaded with Assange not to reveal the identities of such sources, but Wikileaks ignored the warning.

Manning was arrested in May 2010 and convicted by court martial in 2013 of espionage in connection with the 2010 Wikileaks disclosures.

President Barack Obama reduced Manning’s sentence to 7 years from 35 years, but she is now in jail after repeatedly refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Assange.

Wikileaks describes itself as specializing in the publication of “censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption.”

Assange is now fighting extradition to the United States, after Ecuador in April revoked his seven-year asylum in the country’s London embassy. He was arrested that day, April 11, by British police as he left the embassy.

He is now serving a 50-week sentence in a London jail for skipping bail when he fled to the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012.

The decision to charge Assange with espionage crimes is notable, and unusual. Most cases involving the theft of classified information have targeted government employees, like Manning, and not the people who publish the information itself.

In the wake of Assange’s arrest, prosecutors in Sweden re-opened a criminal investigation into allegations that Assange sexually assaulted a woman during a visit to Sweden. At one point, before his arrest in Britain, Swedish prosecutors charged him with assaulting two women.

The decision regarding which country should have its chance to prosecute him first is now in the hands of Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Britain’s interior security minister.

The Justice Department’s quick turnaround with the filing of a more substantial indictment against Assange is not surprising.

Under extradition rules, the United States had only a 60-day window from the date of Assange’s arrest in London to add more charges. After that, foreign governments do not generally accept superseding charges. </s> U.S. Brings New Charges Against Julian Assange In War Logs, State Cables Case

Enlarge this image toggle caption Matt Dunham/AP Matt Dunham/AP

Updated at 5:54 p.m. ET

Prosecutors are bringing a slate of new charges against Julian Assange, including alleged violations of the Espionage Act, raising the stakes for his prospective extradition from the United Kingdom.

A grand jury in Northern Virginia has returned a superseding indictment with 17 more charges against the WikiLeaks founder. It follows an earlier case brought against Assange in connection with the alleged help he gave to then-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to compromise U.S. government computer networks.

Assange is being charged for what officials call his "alleged complicity in illegal acts" involving Manning and "for agreeing and attempting to obtain" information that compromised national security.

Manning provided Assange with war logs, State Department cables, assessments of Guantanamo detainees and other materials.

Said U.S. Attorney Zach Terwilliger: "The United States has only charged Assange with publishing a narrow set of classified documents" that included the names of innocent people, such as dissidents and human rights activists.

"Assange is not charged simply because he is a publisher," Terwilliger said.

The new charges

The charges announced on Thursday all relate to chapters in the history of WikiLeaks before its involvement in Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.

They include allegations that Assange violated the Espionage Act provisions that prohibit a conspiracy to obtain, receive and disclose national defense information; charges related to the attempted cracking of computer passwords; and unlawful receipt of sensitive information such as State Department communications and Defense Department logs.

Prosecutors also added a charge related to the disclosure of national defense information that included the unredacted names of human sources in places such as China, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Court documents described a series of chats between Assange and Manning in March 2010 in which Assange allegedly encourages Manning more than once to obtain documents.

The defense

Assange has long argued that he is a journalist no different from any other reporter protected by press freedom rights in the West or the First Amendment in the United States.

The U.S. criminal case boils down to a reporter — Assange — encouraging a source — Manning — to give him a story, Assange and his attorneys argue. That's not only not against the law, they and supporters say, but also going forward would cause a deep chill in the ability of the press to report on the government.

Enlarge this image toggle caption Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

"These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have [been] taken by the U.S. government," said Assange attorney Barry Pollack.

"This is madness," WikiLeaks wrote on its Twitter account.

Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, reiterated the possible risk to journalists.

"Any government use of the Espionage Act to criminalize the receipt and publication of classified information poses a dire threat to journalists seeking to publish such information in the public interest, irrespective of the Justice Department's assertion that Assange is not a journalist," he said.

Ben Wizner — director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project — blamed the president.

"This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism, and a direct assault on the First Amendment," he said.

Manning, meanwhile, is in custody in Northern Virginia after apparently refusing to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the grand jury proceeding that yielded the indictment unsealed on Thursday.

A judge ordered Manning to be jailed after she said she would not testify against Assange.

The defendant

Assange is in British custody following his ejection earlier this year from his long self-imposed confinement in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. A British judge ordered him to be jailed in connection with bail jumping.

Swedish and American authorities both are asking London to extradite Assange to face criminal charges.

Swedish prosecutors reopened a investigation into rape allegations against Assange once he left the embassy. It isn't clear which capital — Stockholm or Washington — will take priority with British authorities in evaluating whether to extradite him. </s> The Justice Department on Thursday charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with violating the US Espionage Act by publishing military and diplomatic files in 2010, rejecting his claim that he is a journalist.

The department unveiled 17 new charges against Assange, accusing him of directing and abetting intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in stealing secret US files, and also recklessly exposing confidential sources in the Middle East and China who were named in the files.

The charges against Assange, now 18 in total, reject his claim that he was simply a publisher receiving leaked material from Manning, an action that is protected under the US Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press.

A new indictment alleges that Assange actively conspired with Manning to steal the hundreds of thousands of classified files “with reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation,” the Justice Department said.

It also said that Assange rejected the US State Department’s warning in 2010 to redact the names of its and the US military’s confidential sources in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and China, sources it said included journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents.

“Assange’s actions risked serious harm to United States national security to the benefit of our adversaries and put the unredacted named human sources at a grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention,” the department said.

“The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.

A native of Australia, Assange, 47, is currently in prison in Britain for jumping bail, and faces a US extradition request when he is released 11 months from now.

But it is not yet clear whether the British government will honor that request, and the new charges could complicate it.

WikiLeaks blasted the charges, saying the threatened reporters broadly.

“This is madness. It is the end of national security journalism and the first amendment,” the group tweeted.

Wikileaks later denounced the charges as “an unprecedented attack on the global free press” and an “extraterritorial application of US law,” saying in a statement that the “Department of Justice wants to imprison Assange for crimes allegedly committed outside of the United States.”

“The charges brought against Julian Assange under the Espionage Act pose a direct threat to press freedom and investigative journalism, both of which are undermined when those who inform the public are prosecuted for sounding the alarm,” said Reporters Without Borders.

The charges escalate the US government’s effort to crack down on leakers of national security materials.

While the previous administration of president Barack Obama pursued leakers, including Manning, it appeared to draw the line on transparency groups like WikiLeaks, not wanting to enter a battle over press freedom.

But after WikiLeaks played an important role in the Russia meddling operation in the 2016 US election, publishing materials stolen by Russian hackers that were damaging to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Washington officials began to paint the group as acting in concert with US enemies.

In 2017, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, at the time director of the CIA, called WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

WikiLeaks put itself on the map as a potent force in 2010 when it began publishing the files extracted from classified US databases by Manning, then a low-level US army intelligence analyst angered by the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The documents, videos, and communications exposed possible war crimes, torture, and secret military operations, as well as unveiling the often-unseemly behind-the-scenes activities, discussions and analyses of US diplomacy.

The 40-page indictment paints Assange specifically as a co-conspirator of Manning, who was sentenced in 2013 under the Espionage Act to 35 years in prison for the leaks, her claim of being a “whistleblower” rejected.

Her sentence was commuted by Obama in 2017. But she was sent back to jail earlier this year for refusing to cooperate with the investigation into Assange.

The Justice Department said that in 2009, before Manning acted, WikiLeaks publicly solicited specific classified materials involving the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq so that it could publish the materials.

“Assange wanted the ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ list to encourage and cause individuals to illegally obtain and disclose protected information,” the indictment says.

It says Assange went far beyond the actions of a simple publisher.

“No responsible act of journalism would purposely publish the names of individuals he or she knew to be confidential sources in war zones, exposing them to the gravest of dangers,” said Demers.
The United States Department of Justice charges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, including provisions that prohibit a conspiracy to obtain, receive and disclose national defense information, attempting to crack computer passwords, and unlawful receipt of sensitive information such as State Department communications and Defense Department logs.