US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media

>even asking the US State Department for advice

A disingenuous request.

>and it's clear they adjusted their ways.

This is actually far from clear.

What you have written is libel, and I suggest you remove your comment, since the LA Times has stated exactly how they conducted the investigation.

Ryan, Hamilton and a third colleague, Paul Pringle, kept knocking on doors, and over a period of months, they persuaded more than 20 current and former USC employees and a handful of former patients to talk on an anonymous basis. The story they told was jaw-dropping.

Unlike similar stories about sexual abuse, our investigation did not have the benefit of police records, court filings or other public documents because none existed. It was based almost exclusively on interviews.

The LA Times journalists did not look at patient records for the first story; they based the reporting solely on interviews with patients and with staff. They found these patients by basically just cold-calling people that might have been victims until they found some. Given the hundreds of women the doctor molested, this was actually not that hard to do (though in most cases this would have been like finding a needle in a haystack).

After the story broke, hundreds of women contacted the LA Times and provided permission for the LA Times to access their records as part of the investigation because they didn't trust USC to investigate properly without external pressure.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-times-pulitzer-geo...

1. Julian is not a United States of America Citizen. So USA laws don't apply to him, unless he is in the USA and has committed a crime or offense of some kind

2. Julian is a citizen of another country. How do the laws of USA all of a sudden encompass people outside of the USA? Yes, wikileaks did receive "secret" stuff, but the exposure of these events is for the greater good and exposes how the USA is corrupt and "evil." The USA needs to be held accountable for their actions. The USA has no business in other countries, killing, maiming, destroying their homes and lives. Regardless of what happened on 9/11, which I was present on NYC when it happened. Yes, it was horrible, but our own government and their meddling in the affairs of other nations is to blame

Is there some kind of unknown laws of the USA that apply to people and countries not part of the USA (non-citizens and other countries)?

Peace

I said that I disagree with what that aspect of what they did, and had I been in that situation I would've redacted many more things. But I agree with their publishing of the documents. I'm not sure what response you'd like me to have -- call for him to be in prison for the rest of his life?

> I wonder if you are so charitable towards the US government!

They are the most powerful government in the world, and are blatantly violating the Nuremberg convention and their own constitution. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are not.

> They no doubt would also have claim to have mended their ways since the release of the "collateral murder" video.

They haven't claimed that (Obama claimed that they "tortured folks" and have stopped, but Guantanamo Bay is still "open for business"). But even if they did claim it, we have plenty of evidence they haven't. But we do have evidence that WikiLeaks did start redacting more documents -- because many of their subsequent leaks had more heavily redacted documents.

> A disingenuous request.

So what would've made you happy? That they don't publish anything? Newspapers ask the government to help redact leaked documents all the time (the Guardian even did line-by-line redactions of the Snowden documents with GCHQ). I really don't understand what your bar for "responsible journalism" is, if doing what other journalists do is not enough.

I think endangering the lives of multiple people ought to merit some kind of punishment, yes.

> That they don't publish anything?

That they make a serious attempt to redact sensitive info that it's not in the public interest to reveal. Their official reason for not doing so with the Afghan cables was, essentially, that they couldn't be bothered. Assange plainly and openly didn't give a crap if anyone was hurt as a result. Has there ever been an apology from Wikileaks?

Come on, you don't need cooperation from the US authorities to blank out the name of someone who's mentioned as being, say, a CIA informant.