Washington/The US government noted on Wednesday that the WikiLeaks leak of classified documents, for which Julian Assange was convicted, forced the State Department to protect American personnel from being put at risk. “When we talk about Assange, it is important to remind the world that the actions he has been accused of and to which he has pleaded guilty put the lives of our partners, our allies, and our diplomats at risk,” Defense Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a news conference.
The US diplomatic representative did not want to comment on the recent release of the WikiLeaks founder, who returned to his home country of Australia on Wednesday, and only said that the United States was “happy” to work with its Australian colleagues.
Assange’s freedom became possible after an agreement with the US Department of Justice was formalized during a court hearing in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands (US territory), in which he pleaded guilty to violating the US Espionage Act of the agreement.
“When we found out these documents would be released, the State Department worked hard to keep people out of harm’s way.”
The American spokesman added, “When we discovered that these documents would be published, the State Department worked hard to keep people out of harm’s way. We looked into what could be published and took the necessary measures.”
The absence of victims, as he stressed, does not absolve him of responsibility for the consequences that could have occurred.
“If you were driving drunk down the street and you were pulled over for drunk driving, the fact that you didn’t hit another car and kill someone does not excuse you from your reckless actions and the danger you put your fellow citizens in. Here the same principle applies,” Miller said.
The spokesman insisted that the documents leaked by WikiLeaks provided information about people who were in contact with the Foreign Office, “including opposition leaders and human rights activists around the world”, who were left at risk.
He added: “Their public exposure also weakened the ability of US personnel to build relationships and have frank conversations with them.”
“Its public disclosure also weakened the ability of US personnel to build relationships and have frank conversations with them. (…) Not to mention WikiLeaks’ future actions to serve as a conduit for Russian intelligence interference in the presidential election.” He confirmed that the elections in the United States.
Following the leak, Sweden issued an arrest warrant for Assange on sexual assault charges, which was later dropped. The WikiLeaks founder took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, until he was arrested by British authorities in 2019, and has spent the last five years in a maximum-security prison.
His latest release ended a 14-year saga that began in 2010 with the largest leak of classified documents in US history, which called into question Washington’s role in the world by revealing attacks on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the mistreatment of prisoners. In Guantanamo, among other cases.
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