WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors announced charges on Thursday against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
Assange, arrested by British police in London and carried out of Ecuador’s embassy, faces up to five years in prison on the American charge, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. His 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 former President Barack Obama’s administration.
It was triggered in part by the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and American diplomatic communications, a disclosure that embarrassed the United States and caused strained relations with allies.
The Justice Department said Assange, 47, was arrested under an extradition treaty between the United States and Britain and was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.
The indictment said Assange in March 2010 engaged in a conspiracy to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on Defense Department computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet), a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications.
The Justice 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 under a username other than her own, making it harder for investigators to determine the source of the illegal disclosures, it said.
Assange was secretly indicted in March 2018 and the indictment was unsealed on Thursday, a U.S. law enforcement official said.
Manning, formerly named Bradley Manning, was jailed on March 8 after being held in contempt by a judge in Virginia for refusing to testify before a grand jury in what is widely believed to be related to the Assange investigation.
Manning was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for furnishing more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks while she was an intelligence analyst in Iraq. Obama commuted the final 28 years of Manning’s 35-year sentence.
“Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges,” Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, said in a statement, saying the allegations “boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identify of that source.”
Representatives for Manning had no immediate comment.
The indictment stated that Manning downloaded four massive U.S. government databases containing some 90,000 Afghanistan war reports, 400,000 Iraq war reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs and 250,000 State Department cables. U.S. officials said the leaks endangered the lives of American troops.
SPECIAL COUNSEL INQUIRY
Special Counsel Robert Mueller scrutinized the actions of WikiLeaks in his 22-month investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election. The website published emails damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that Mueller and U.S. intelligence agencies have said were stolen by Russia in a bid to boost Republican Donald Trump’s candidacy.
The Obama administration decided not to prosecute WikiLeaks and Assange on the grounds that the website’s work was too similar to journalistic activities protected by the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of the press.
The indictment quoted from a conversation in which Assange encouraged Manning to provide more information: 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.”
WikiLeaks has faced criticism from U.S. officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a 2017 speech when he was CIA director, Pompeo called Assange a “fraud” and WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”
But Trump praised the website during the presidential race. At a campaign rally shortly before the election, Trump said that “I love WikiLeaks” after it released the hacked Democratic emails that harmed Clinton’s candidacy.
Assange, who took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden in connection with a sexual assault investigation, has said he does not know where the Democratic Party-related emails WikiLeaks published before the election originated, though he has said he did not get them from Russia.
A British government source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the extradition process normally takes two to five years.
The fact that the United States was pursuing charges against Assange emerged in November, when a document errantly filed by federal prosecutors in Virginia in an unrelated terrorism investigation indicated that he had been indicted.
[To read the indictment, click https://tmsnrt.rs/2X4aXlU](Reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington and Nathan Layne in New York; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Alistair Bell)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-charges-wikileaks-founder-assange-conspiracy-131604058.html
A great campaign stunt for Trump would be to pardon or whatever it’s called, Assange.
“Assange’s indictment arose from a long-running criminal investigation dating back to former President Barack Obama’s administration.”
And yet… where was the criminal investigation into the plethora of crimes committed by Obummer?
“… U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and American diplomatic communications, a disclosure that embarrassed the United States and caused strained relations with allies.”
Yeah, the TRUTH has a tendency to do that.
They did nothing wrong (the whistleblowers).
“U.S. officials said the leaks endangered the lives of American troops.”
U.S. officials are full of sh#t.
The only thing it ‘endangered’ was their house of cards/pack of lies about the reasons for being there.
“At a campaign rally shortly before the election, Trump said that “I love WikiLeaks” after it released the hacked Democratic emails that harmed Clinton’s candidacy.”
Naturally… when it worked out in YOUR favor, Chump.
Now, do the right thing, and LET HIM GO.
Yeah… when pigs fly.
“Now, do the right thing, and LET HIM GO.”
If Assange was of the hook nose beanie tribe it’d be different.
‘Zackly!
Here’s a kicker…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-12/hillary-clinton-assange-must-now-answer-what-he-has-done
Okaaaaaaay… we’re DEFINITELY not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
I hope Assange can now get some better medical care and some limited recreation and time outdoors during the 2 to 5 years it will take before his expected extradition. He is a good man, a powerful intellect, and a seeker of truth and honesty. The author of this otherwise good journalism did the reader a disservice by not-mentioning that the haked or leaked emails uncovered election fraud in the Democrat Primary in 2016. That fact is relevant and in fact at ground zero for the story. Omission of this relevant fact is common among the mainstream media reports of events surrounding the leaking or hacking of emails. Just because it is common does not make it right.