The watchdog website WikiLeaks is under criminal investigation, Attorney General Eric Holder said during a news conference Monday in Washington.
“There is an active, ongoing criminal investigation that we’re conducting with the Department of Defense,” Holder said. “We are not in a position as yet to announce the result of that investigation.”
Although the news conference was called to announce that federal authorities have shut down websites selling counterfeit goods, Holder quickly was fielding questions about how the Justice Department is approaching the release of classified and confidential State Department documents, the latest such material to be exposed publicly by the website.
On Nov. 28, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing some of the 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks began posted the same day. News organizations reported extensively on the documents in Monday’s print editions.
In October, WikiLeaks released 400,000 secret U.S. files on the war in Iraq and in July published tens of thousands of secret U.S. military documents on the war in Afghanistan.
Holder, who held out the possibility of criminal charges being brought after the earlier disclosures, said the most recent disclosure is a security risk, adding that DOJ will prosecute anyone found to have violated U.S. law in the WikiLeaks case.
“To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law, who put at risk the assets and the people I have described, they will be held responsible; they will be held accountable,” he said. Although he was not identified by Holder, questions regarding the prosecution of non-U.S. citizens and residents were related to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, an Australian citizen.
He added that there is an ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks’ release of documents and therefore he could not provide details about possible prosecutions.
When asked whether WikiLeaks deserves to be treated like other news organizations, granting it some protections under shield laws and the First Amendment, Holder said that other news organizations have been more responsible than WikiLeaks regarding classified documents.
[...] European officials on Thursday discussed the anti-government secrecy website WikiLeaks, which is under criminal investigation in the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder [...]