Criminal conspiracy in the US is defined in Title 18, U.S.C. § 371: "If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States,

Criminal conspiracy in the US is defined in Title 18, U.S.C. § 371: "If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." The elements of the crime of conspiracy are: 1. Two or more people 2. Intentionality 3. An agreement 4. An underlying crime 5. An overt act The discussion you post seems to point to all 5 being met, although additional evidence would be needed to prove it. Obviously there are two people here discussing "cracking" something. Assange agrees to the overt step of taking the data and forwarding it to his team, ostensibly with the intention that this team would do the cracking. When asked for an update, Assange states "no luck so far". Do we take that to mean they are currently working on it and have not succeeded? Or is Assange saying that there's no luck, but he hasn't really done anything with the data? It really doesn't matter according to the statute, which defines the overt act as any act done to further the conspiracy. So it doesn't matter if there was no other access to any machine or if there is no evidence cracking was attempted. If Assange took that data and sent it to anyone else, then he's part of the conspiracy. Actually, according to the statute, it doesn't even matter if he took an overt action. If he agreed with Manning to implement the crime, and Manning on her own did the cracking, then Assange would still be part of the conspiracy due to the first 4 elements.