The US State Department on Wednesday renewed its allegation that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange put people at risk for revealing secrets, after he was freed in a plea deal.
“The documents they published gave identifying information of individuals who were in contact with the State Department — that included opposition leaders, human rights activists around the world — whose positions were put in some danger because of their public disclosure,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
“It also chilled the ability of American personnel to build relationships and have frank conversations,” Miller said.
Assange had published hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents on the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website from 2010.
The Australian agreed to plea guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information and was sentenced to the time he had served in London — five years and two months — and given his liberty.
Assange has become a hero for activists who point to his role in divulging information about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but critics fault him for putting out vast quantities of government documents without any filtering.
Miller said that the State Department at the time “had to scramble to get people out of danger, to move them out of harm’s way.”
Pressed on whether anyone was harmed in the end, Miller said, “If you drive drunk down the street and get pulled over for drunk driving, the fact that you didn’t crash into another car and kill someone doesn’t get you out of the reckless actions and the endangerment that you put your fellow citizens in.”
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