Assange, founder of Wikileaks, published the classified documents stolen by Bradley Mannings. According to US legal precedent, a journalist who publishes classified documents is in the legal clear, so long as he did not break the law to obtain them. The Pentagon papers, for instance, were illegally swiped, but delivered anonymously to various newspapers; the newspapers did not ask someone to steal them. So, as long as Manning sent Assange the documents on his own volition, then Assange would have not legal troubles with the US.
Ooops.
Assange to face US spy charges
It seems that Manning didn’t work alone… Assange apparently solicited the documents and coached Manning in how to break passwords. In other words, “conspiracy to commit espionage.” This would make Assange eligible for prosecution in the US, and would not exactly be an unprecedented sort of thing. Foreign nationals who commit crimes against the US while not within the US have certainly been legally pursued before… imagine a British national who used the internet to solicit for a hitman on Craigslist to whack an American citizen in, say, Boston. If the hitman was actually procured and did the deed, I’m pretty sure the US legal system would be very, very interested in the British national, and would ask for extradition.
An example: Alfred Zehe. Didn’t even break any laws, and still convicted in the US of espionage even though he was a foreign national in a foreign country when he simply reviewed some classified US documents. Seems to have been a screwy case, but apparently it stood up.
