The Wall Street Journal reports further on what we've already heard about the difficulties prosecutors are having in the WikiLeaks case:
U.S. investigators have been unable to uncover evidence that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange induced an Army private to leak government documents to his website, according to officials familiar with the matter.
New findings suggest Pfc. Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst accused of handing over the data to the WikiLeaks website, initiated the theft himself, officials said. That contrasts with the initial portrait provided by Defense Department officials of a young man taken advantage of by Mr. Assange.
As Jack Goldstein notes, whatever role Assange may have played in the original leak, prosecuting him for conspiracy in connection with publishing said information would put the most prominent national-security reporters in the country at risk of prosecution. It would have an unbelievable chilling effect on the media's ability to facilitate some form of public accountability over the clandestine actions of the state, and for that reason, I'm glad the government is having trouble making its case.
Manning, of course, is a different story. If he leaked the documents in question, he committed a crime. Either way, he should be charged and not simply left in a brig while the government struggles to make its case.
