US says Julian Assange put people ‘in danger,’ likens him to drunk driver

WASHINGTON

The State Department likened Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to a drunk driver Wednesday, saying he put innocent people "in danger" with his disclosures of sensitive US documents, hours after he was set free in a plea deal with the Justice Department.

Spokesperson Matthew Miller said Assange "put the lives of our partners, our allies and our diplomats at risk, especially those who work in dangerous places like Afghanistan and Iraq." Miller said Wikileaks "just threw them out there for the world to see," referring to Wikileaks' failure to redact names from sensitive diplomatic cables before they were published online.

"The documents they published gave identifying information of individuals who were in contact with the State Department that included opposition leaders, human rights activists around the world whose positions were put in some danger because of their public disclosure. It also chilled the ability of American personnel to build relationships and have frank conversations," he said.

The releases set off a flurry of activity at the State Department to alert people whose identities had been exposed to get them "out of harm's way," Miller said.

"If you drive drunk down the street and get pulled over for drunk driving, the fact that you didn't crash into another car and kill someone doesn't get you out of the reckless actions and the endangerment that you put your fellow citizens in. The same principle applies here," he added.

Assange rose to fame in the 2010s for leaking classified US documents on the internet, gaining international accolades and detractors when he exposed sensitive American diplomatic correspondence and military records, including a video of a 2007 US airstrike in Baghdad that killed several people, including two Reuters journalists.

He also gained notoriety for exposing confidential data seen as helping then-candidate Donald Trump win the US presidency and for allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Assange doggedly opposed extradition to the US and spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in a bid to stay free.

​​​​​​​He was ejected from the diplomatic compound in 2019 and has spent the last five years in a British prison as he fought an extradition order to the US.

He was freed after formally accepting a plea deal in a federal court on the Northern Mariana Islands, a remote US territory in the western Pacific, that saw him plead guilty to a felony charge of violating the Espionage Act related to his publication of military and diplomatic documents.

He then flew on to his native Australia where he was greeted by his wife, Stella.