Federal prosecutors accused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of violating the Espionage Act as part of a new indictment charging him on 17 counts in addition to the single count unsealed in early April.
The Justice Department said that the charges filed on Thursday “relate to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
The indictment alleges Assange, 47, and WikiLeaks “actively solicited United States classified information, including by publishing a list of ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ that sought, among other things, classified documents” starting in late 2009. This includes leaks by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
Describing Assange as “the public face of WikiLeaks,” the Justice Department said he founded the website with the purpose of it being “an intelligence agency of the people.”
DOJ said “Manning responded to Assange’s solicitations by using access granted to her as an intelligence analyst to search for United States classified documents, and provided to Assange and WikiLeaks databases containing approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables.”
The indictment also said the information that WikiLeaks published “included names of local Afghans and Iraqis who had provided information to U.S. and coalition forces,” which prosecutors alleged “created a grave and imminent risk that the innocent people he named would suffer serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention.”
The Justice Department said the disclosures from WikiLeaks put sources working with the U.S. “at great risk to their own safety,” including “journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents who were living in repressive regimes and reported to the United States the abuses of their own government.”
John Demers, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for national security, said “Julian Assange is no journalist” and claimed he was involved in “explicit solicitation of classified information.”
The original single-count indictment, unsealed in April, revealed Assange had not been charged in connection with Russian interference in the election nor had he been charged for publishing government secrets contained in the documents leaked by Manning almost a decade ago. Instead, prosecutors charged him with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion by agreeing to help Manning crack a password that would have given Manning access to a classified military network.
The single-count conspiracy indictment against Assange carried a maximum penalty of five years in prison, but national security experts had speculated that there could be a slew of additional charges — including espionage — leveled at Assange if and when he is extradited to the U.S.
Assange’s attorney slammed the indictment as a threat to press freedom.
“Today the government charged Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for encouraging sources to provide him truthful information and for publishing that information,” Barry Pollack said. “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.”
Edward Snowden, a former contractor who in 2013 leaked hundreds of thousands of highly classified National Security Agency documents, reacted to the indictment on Twitter. “The Department of Justice just declared war—€ not on Wikileaks, but on journalism itself,” Snowden said. “This is no longer about Julian Assange: This case will decide the future of media.” Snowden was charged under the Espionage Act and is living in exile in Russia.
Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was convicted at a court martial trial in 2013 of leaking a trove of documents to WikiLeaks. Sentenced to 35 years in prison, Manning’s sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama just days before the end of his presidency in January 2017. Manning was recently imprisoned again after refusing to provide grand jury testimony in relation to the WikiLeaks case.
Assange is being held in the United Kingdom and serving a 50-week sentence connected to violating the terms of bail and hiding out in Ecuador’s embassy in London in order to avoid sexual assault charges in Sweden. Extradition proceedings are underway but could take months.
