Rep. King urges U.S. to take action against WikiLeaks

WASHINGTON - After WikiLeaks' unauthorized release of a quarter of a million State Department documents Sunday, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) called for the Swedish website to be designated a "foreign terrorist organization" and its founder Julian Assange to be charged as a spy.

"WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States," he wrote Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I strongly urge you to work within the administration to use every offensive capability of the U.S. government to prevent further damaging releases by WikiLeaks," said King in the letter he made public Sunday.

King's idea was among the most aggressive options offered as the White House and Congress criticized WikiLeaks while trying to figure out what to do about the posting of sensitive and embarrassing U.S. documents.

After WikiLeaks' third major document dump this year - the first two contained records on Iraq and Afghanistan - some New York lawmakers urged the Justice Department to prosecute Assange.

But they stopped short of endorsing King's proposal to designate WikiLeaks as a foreign terrorist organization, or FTO.

"This man [Assange] has put his own ego above the safety of millions of innocents. He should be extradited, tried for espionage and given the most severe penalty possible," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) said he "would support Justice Department efforts to investigate and pursue legal action against WikiLeaks."

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Roslyn Heights) said many questions are raised by the publication of the documents, from the "new norm" of "electronic voyeurism on an international scale" to who is leaking the data and how they're getting it.

Each question raises different issues of law that must be "puzzled out." He added, "And if you get the guy here, can you even charge him with a crime?"

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said, "We must use all means available to prosecute and punish this man for putting countless American lives at risk."

In the letter to Clinton, King said WikiLeaks "appears to meet the legal criteria" for being designated a foreign terrorist organization: It's a foreign group and it's aiding terrorists and harming national security by revealing U.S. secrets that terrorists are mining.

The State Department said it would review the letter.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, King urged Justice Department attorneys to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act for his "purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror" but to undermine the "safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The Justice Department declined to comment on the letter. But spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler condemned the leaks and said, "We will continue to aggressively pursue anyone found to be violating the law."

Scott Silliman, a law professor and executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University, said both King proposals might be a stretch.

"I personally don't see how WikiLeaks would be designated FTO," Silliman said. "They've got to do more than what the congressman suggested. They've got to engage in terrorist activities."

And Silliman compared Assange and WikiLeaks to Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers case of the 1970s - despite its attempts, the Justice Department failed to prosecute Ellsberg or stop publication.

"If there were a simple answer to this," Silliman said, "I think it would have happened."