, an action that is protected under the US Constitution's First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press.A new indictment alleges that Assange actively conspired with Manning to steal the hundreds of thousands of classified files"with reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation," the Justice Department said.
It also said that Assange rejected the US State Department's warning in 2010 to redact the names of its and the US military's confidential sources in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and China, sources it said included journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents. "Assange's actions risked serious harm to United States national security to the benefit of our adversaries and put the unredacted named human sources at a grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention," the department said."The department takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy," said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.