Don't make Assange a martyr

When WikiLeaks began making public a quarter-million leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, many of them classified, the Obama administration and the diplomatic establishment were outraged. Foreign relations would be damaged, it was said. People named in the documents might be killed.

So a question arises. Should WikiLeaks or its grandiose founder, Julian Assange, be prosecuted under U.S. law?

Many questions surrounding WikiLeaks are hard, but this one is not. Assange may appear to have violated America's hoary Espionage Act. But there are bigger issues at stake here that preclude bringing charges. America has little to gain - but a great deal to lose - by prosecuting Assange or his organization, such as it is.

A criminal case risks making a martyr of someone who until now has been merely troublesome. And prosecuting Assange or WikiLeaks could lead to prosecution of news organizations that have reported responsibly on the stolen documents, a potentially dreadful outcome for democracy.

There is a good chance, moreover, that any prosecution will fail. The scarily broad Espionage Act of 1917 has been used to convict leakers, but not those who disseminated what was leaked. In this case the suspected leaker, a lowly soldier, is already in custody - properly so.

Diplomacy can only flourish sheltered by a certain amount of secrecy. But even a successful prosecution of Assange or WikiLeaks won't suppress the cables - and what's been revealed so far does not seem all that damaging. Some of it has shed light on our dealings with Afghanistan and China. And some of the surprises are pleasant ones - U.S. diplomats, for example, mostly come across as reasonable and professional.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks has bowed to reality. Despite the brouhaha over 250,000 cables, it has only posted a tiny fraction of the documents evidently in its possession - and appears to be following the lead of news outlets that have taken care to black out the names of individuals whose lives could be endangered when the material goes onto the Internet.

Several new WikiLeaks-inspired sites are emerging, some run by governments purporting to encourage whistle-blowers, but others independent. One is OpenLeaks, reportedly organized by disillusioned ex-WikiLeaks staffers. Rather than just releasing documents, it intends to match leaks with appropriate journalistic partners for publication.

Assange has also encountered reality, discovering that living in some imaginary transnational cocoon won't protect him from the laws of nations. He's been arrested in England on a Swedish sex-crimes warrant that appears unrelated to the WikiLeaks saga. He should face those charges, but our government should confine itself to criticism. It would be better for Uncle Sam to focus on the security of its secrets - and to greatly reduce the number of them, the better to safeguard the essential ones that remain.hN