>The government did prosecute Ellsberg under the Espionage Act Right. I was trying emphasize the "all the parts of the papers that didn't explicitly prove war

>The government did prosecute Ellsberg under the Espionage Act Right. I was trying emphasize the "all the parts of the papers that didn't explicitly prove war crimes, but skipped the bits that proved them" part. In other words, once you remove the known-bad bits then what is left seems innocuous and so it's much harder to prove that a specific leak was a "good" thing. The intent here seems clear: the US wants to ensure Wikileaks isn't allowed to talk about the actual evidence of warcrimes at the trial. They will claim that because Wikileaks isn't being charged with leaking THOSE documents, they are not relevant.