Two of us, Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, testified for Assange at his extradition hearing last year. In Ellsberg’s words then, the WikiLeaks publications that Assange is being charged for are “amongst the most important truthful revelations of hidden criminal state behavior that have been made public in U.S. history.” The American public “needed urgently to know what was being done routinely in their name, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by unauthorized disclosure.”
It isn’t an act of speech when you directly hack government computers. It is not an act of protected speech to direct people in how to perpetrate crimes.
The notion that he is being charged for speech rather than taking an active role in the crimes is false. You can see it in the charges themselves.
He is being prosecuted for alleged acts he has allegedly taken not for sharing the information obtained from those hacks.