damage to the national security. Further, under the Executive Order, classified information can generally only be disclosed to those persons who have been granted an appropriate level of United States government security clearance and possess a need to know the classified information in connection to their official duties.
4. Julian Paul Assange was the founder and leader of the WikiLeaks website. The WikiLeaks website publicly solicited submissions of classified, censored, and other restricted information.
5. Assange, who did not possess a security clearance or need to know, was not authorized to receive classified information of the United States.
6. Between in or around January 2010 and May 2010, Manning downloaded four, nearly complete databases from departments and agencies of the United States. These databases contained approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 U.S. Department of State cables. Many of these records were classified pursuant to Executive Order No. 13526 or its predecessor orders. Manning provided the records to agents of WikiLeaks so that WikiLeaks could publicly disclose them on its website. WikiLeaks publicly released the vast majority of the classified records on its website in 2010 and 2011.
7. On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, a United States government network used for classified documents and communications, as designated according to Executive Order No. 13526 or its predecessor orders.
8. Manning, who had access to the computers in connection with her duties as an intelligence analyst, was also using the computers to download classified records to transmit to
2
