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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to US criminal charges as part of a deal that allows him to go free, according to court documents. Assange, 52, was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information. For years, the US has argued that the Wikileaks files - which disclosed information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - endangered lives. He has spent the last five years in a British prison, from where he has been fighting extradition to the US. According to CBS, the BBC's US partner, Assange will spend no time in US custody and will...

NEW YORK, July 13 (Reuters) - A former CIA software engineer was convicted on Wednesday of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks from the spy agency, in one of the biggest such thefts in CIA history.

The Justice Department has decided not to charge Julian Assange for his role in exposing some of the CIA’s most secret spying tools, according to a U.S. official and two other people familiar with the case. It’s a move that has surprised national security experts and some former officials, given prosecutors’ recent decision to aggressively go after the WikiLeaks founder on more controversial Espionage Act charges that some legal experts said would not hold up in court. The decision also means that Assange will not face punishment for publishing one of the CIA’s most potent arsenals of digital code used...

NEW YORK (AP) - A former CIA software engineer charged with leaking government secrets to WikiLeaks says it’s cruel and unusual punishment that he’s awaiting trial in solitary confinement, housed in a vermin-infested cell of a jail unit where inmates are treated like “caged animals.” Joshua Schulte, 32, has asked a Manhattan federal judge to force the federal Bureau of Prisons to improve conditions at the Metropolitan Correction Center, where he has been held for over two years under highly restrictive conditions usually reserved for terrorism defendants. In court papers Tuesday, Schulte maintained he is held in conditions “below that...

Joshua Schulte, a former CIA employee charged in connection with leaking classified hacking tools to WikiLeaks, will be shackled and subjected to strip searches if he wishes to view classified material related to the government’s case against him, a court ordered Thursday. The conditions appear in a protective order requested by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, where the former CIA computer engineer is being held awaiting trial for espionage. The government has prepared a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, in which Mr. Schulte and his attorney can visit to review classified information concerning his case, prosecutors wrote in a filing...

Joshua Schulte, a former CIA computer engineer suspected of leaking classified hacking tools to WikiLeaks, said he is being subjected to “torture” while awaiting trial for espionage. Mr. Schulte, 30, said he is being inexplicably held in solitary confinement and denied access to his medication, writing materials, legal documents and lawyer, according to a letter addressed to U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty filed in Manhattan federal court Monday. “My fellow slaves constantly scream, pound and claw at their cages attempting to get attention for basic needs to be fulfilled. I count myself lucky to be able to eat,” he wrote...

The ex-CIA software engineer suspected of leaking a massive, highly secret trove of U.S. hacking tools and source code to WikiLeaks has been charged in federal court with a series of Espionage Act violations. Joshua Schulte, 29, allegedly disclosed thousands of top-secret files outlining the extent of the CIA’s cyberwarfare capabilities in an unprecedented breach that triggered an intensive investigation even before WikiLeaks published the information in March 2017.

Joshua Adam Schulte, who worked for a CIA group that designs computer code to spy on foreign adversaries, is believed to have provided the agency’s top-secret information to WikiLeaks, federal prosecutors acknowledged in a hearing in January. The anti-secrecy group published the code under the label “Vault 7” in March 2017. It was one of the most significant and potentially damaging leaks in the CIA’s history, exposing secret cyberweapons and spying techniques that might be used against the United States, according to current and former intelligence officials.