Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who will be chairing the House's Homeland Security Committee come January, sent letters to Obama administration officials on Sunday, asking that Wikileaks and its public face, Julian Assange, be declared both terrorists and spies for "gathering, transmitting or losing defense information." The Defense Department's determination is that the previously leaked materials had provided "material support" to a large number of terrorist organizations.
Assange has an Interpol notice out on him for "sex crimes" in Sweden. The gloves have come all the way off now among the commentariat, and while it would normally be unusual to see public calls for a targeted assassination of an Australian citizen, such calls now appear routinely in the media.
Comments made on the CBC this week by Canadian political scientist Tom Flanagan, who has also served as an adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "Well, I think Assange should be assassinated, actually," Flanagan said in his TV appearance. "I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something." Delivered as something of a jest, it was hard to tell how serious Flanagan was with this statement. When called on it, Flanagan renounced his statement.
As one US law enforcement official put it when speaking to The Daily Beast, "the Russians will be ruthless in stopping WikiLeaks" if the site digs into Russian corruption. A hit on Assange might raise concerns in the West, but one British professor believes the real risk would be to informants inside Russia. "I doubt that they would consider assassination against Westerners who are involved in WikiLeaks, but as for informants in Russia, they would be in very serious danger," Anatol Lieven told The Daily Beast.
The U.S. Justice Depart. has indicated it is considering criminal charges against WikiLeaks steming from the Espionage Act of 1917 or from other unspecified laws. Legal scholars have stated that charges under the Espionage Act could be possible, but such a move has been characterized as "difficult" by former prosecutors because of First Amendment rights in the United States.
In Australia, the government and the Australian Federal Police have not stated which Australian law may have been broken by WikiLeaks, but Julia Gillard has stated that the foundation of Wikileaks and the stealing of classified documents from the US administration, is illegal in foreign countries
There are also calls from high places, even from conservative Fox media commentator Bill O'Reilly, for whoever leaked the cables to Wikileaks - alleged to be a conflicted and perhaps mentally unstable lowly US Army private named Bradley Manning - to be executed as a traitor. The same sentiments have been expressed by key conservative Republicans Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, who said Mr Assange should be hunted down and treated like the Taliban.