The Espionage Act of 1917 is an extremely broad - and almost certainly unconstitutional - law passed during WWI, which gives the government broad power to go after anyone who publishes government secrets, including journalists. WWI was a low point in the history of freedom of expression in the US, and this law is a holdover from that era.

It's bad enough that there's a law on the books that allows the US government to go after American journalists, but in this case, the US government is asserting the right to prosecute a foreign journalist who operated from outside the US. As far as I understand it, if Julian Assange is extradited, he will not be able to argue in court that WikiLeaks' publications were in the public interest.

>>The Espionage Act of 1917 ... almost certainly unconstitutional

Good luck getting the Supreme Court agreeing with that. That greatest disappointment in the entire American Experiment has to be the US Supreme Court.

That was the founders greatest mistake, vesting soo much power in this single branch

In a lot of ways, they vested practically nothing in that branch. It's by far the shortest section of the Constitution, which basically comes down to "Supreme Court: We oughta have one."

They made up their own powers. There's nothing about judicial review in the Constitution. They basically decided that they had that power, and everybody else agreed with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

So perhaps their greatest mistake wasn't vesting too much, but vesting too little. That left the court open to write its own job description. And also to create lifetime appointments, in theory to de-politicize it, but in practice to enshrine ideologies for many decades.

Assange is not a whistleblower, it's not like he worked for the army. He's a journalist.

That said, whistleblower protection rarely covers confidential information anyway.