Assange, Manning Had Reason to Believe Leaks Would Damage US, Prosecutors Say

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning had reason to believe that leaking U.S. military reports “would cause injury” to the country, federal prosecutors alleged in a newly unsealed court filing on April 15. In the affidavit submitted to federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, prosecutors said U.S. military reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq included information about the “identity and significance of local supporters of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.” When U.S. forces raided the compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was hiding out, for example, they found a letter that showed the al-Qaeda leader was interested in copies of Pentagon documents published on WikiLeaks, the prosecutors said. According to prosecutors, leaked reports on the Afghan war included information on militants’ improvised explosive device designs and attacks, including details of U.S. and coalition countermeasures against such home-made explosive devices and their limitations.

Indictment The prosecution’s affidavit is dated Dec. 21, 2017, but was made public on April 15. It follows the unsealing last week of a U.S. indictment charging Assange with conspiring with Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history. Manning provided Assange with nearly 750,000 classified or sensitive military and diplomatic documents, which Assange then published on WikiLeaks, the online disclosure platform he founded in 2006. Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange in Washington, said: “Encouraging sources to provide information, and using methods to protect their identity, are common practices by all journalists. There is no new information in the affidavit that was unavailable to the Department of Justice when it decided in the Obama administration that pursuing criminal charges against Mr. Assange would be contrary to the First Amendment.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/assange-manning-had-reason-to-believe-leaks-would-injure-us-prosecutors-say_2882633.html