WASHINGTON — The Justice Department continued to investigate WikiLeaks last year even after the secret indictment of its founder, Julian Assange, seeking to question at least two of the antisecrecy organization’s volunteers about their activities, according to interviews and a letter obtained by The New York Times. One day after prosecutors charged Mr. Assange with a single count of conspiracy to unlawfully hack into a computer, the Justice Department asked Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks activist, if it could question him about the possibility that he violated American laws prohibiting “the receipt and dissemination of secret information.” The language, in a letter to him in his native German, suggested that prosecutors had not, at least at that point, abandoned the possibility of charges based on WikiLeaks’ publication of United States government secrets. Prosecutors last summer also sought out David M. House, a former researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked as a volunteer for WikiLeaks from 2009 to 2013. Mr. House spoke for about 90 minutes to prosecutors and also testified at length to the grand jury, according to a person who has spoken with prosecutors and agreed to an interview on the condition of anonymity. They pressed him for information about debates inside WikiLeaks over whether to redact from government documents posted online the names of vulnerable people, such as foreign citizens who worked confidentially with American military officers or diplomats, to protect them from harm.

Source: New York Times April 16, 2019 23:35 UTC