U.S. military declares Assange 'enemy of the state'

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks inside Ecuador's embassy in London on Thursday for a U.N. broadcast. The U.S. military declared Assange an "enemy of state" due to his work disclosing state secrets via WikiLeaks. Photo Credit:AP

The U.S. military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States — the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.

Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy", a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.

The documents, some originally classified "Secret/NoForn" — not releasable to non-US nationals — record a probe by the air force's Office of Special Investigations into a cyber systems analyst based in Britain who allegedly expressed support for WikiLeaks and attended pro-Assange demonstrations in London.