The Government's Case Against Julian Assange Is Falling Apart. With popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt spinning along, each with a certain amount of world-reshaping potential, there's been a lot of new attention focused on the role that WikiLeaks has played in these events. Ian Black, the Middle East editor of The Guardian, one of the key newspapers disseminating diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks' trove, told NPR last night that he didn't feel the leaked cables were the primary driver of these uprisings. Nevertheless, WikiLeaks seems to have helped to remove the people now demonstrating on the streets from their isolation by providing a "confirmation of what people in these countries know and feel intuitively," about the conditions under which they have lived.
If you spend any time at all reading about Bradley Manning, the young U.S. U.S. officials have been gamely attempting to make the case that Assange induced Manning to provide WikiLeaks with government documents. New findings suggest Pfc. I've bolded the two parts I believe are relevant. Wikileaks: no proof that Julian Assange encouraged leak. U.S. Struggles to Build Case Against WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange. US Investigators Can't Find Any Direct Connection Between Manning And Assange. NBC: U.S. can't link Army private to Assange - U.S. news - WikiLeaks in Security. U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure. Assange, an Australian national, is under house arrest at a British mansion near London, facing a Swedish warrant seeking his extradition for questioning on charges of rape. Assange has denied the allegations. WikiLeaks' release of secret diplomatic cables last year caused a diplomatic stir and laid bare some of the most sensitive U.S. dealings with governments around the world. U.S. U.S.