While accepting an award for distinction in international law and affairs from the NY Bar Association, Geoffrey Robertson, who will defend Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at his extradition hearings in London in February, warned that the United States "risked irrevocable damage to its reputation if it pursued Assange" by "aiming the blunderbuss of its 1917 Espionage Act, death penalty and all, at a publisher who is a citizen of a friendly nation," according to the The Age: US told to drop Assange pursuit.
The Sydney Morning Herald writes:
Mr Robertson, who was invited to deliver a 45-minute lecture on international law after the presentation, said civil servants had sole responsibility for protecting properly classified information and outsiders who received or communicated it should not be prosecuted unless they had used fraud or bribery.