In one corner is an oft used claim of national security; in the other stands the First Amendment, assuming this contest ever made it to a Court of law.  Previously reported was the arrest of the Army Intel officer who leaked information to a web publisher.  Now comes the report that the Pentagon is hunting for this publisher, Julian Assange, who appears to be on the verge of printing allegedly secret papers which “contained information related to American diplomatic and intelligence efforts in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.”  “Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security, government officials tell The Daily Beast….Pentagon investigators are convinced that Assange is in possession of at least some classified State Department cables leaked by a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is now in custody in Kuwait.”

Previously, Mr. Assange published a “an explosive 2007 video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters.”

 Here is a link which provides the latest on the hacker hunt: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-10/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-hunted-by-pentagon-over-massive-leak/

Michael