“In the view of the US government, many of the WikiLeaks documents are still classified, and reading classified documents without clearance is illegal”
That’s idiotic. Makes a mockery of what “classified” means when the documents have been made public and are readily available.
People with clearances are supposed to know how to stay in the lane for which they are cleared. Just because someone can get on a secure network doesn’t mean that person can troll around looking for whatever they wish. That is what Manning did, and I really hope they stand him up against the wall for that.
Any government or contract employee signs an agreement to stay in their lane, and only look at what they need to in order to accomplish the mission at hand. It doesn’t matter if this stuff has been leaked. The key point is it hasn’t been declassified. Disclosure does not declassify anything, there is a process for doing that.
I will not look at anything WikiLeaks puts out. I can read about it in the papers, but I will not read a paper that prints any of the leaked documents. This is the way it is supposed to be.