Sen. Graham: Prosecute WikiLeaks for ‘Undermining the War Effort’

With the Obama Administration still trying to contain the damage a massive leak of classified documents has done to their Afghanistan war narrative, Sen. Lindsey Graham is calling on the administration to step up to the plate and attack WikiLeaks directly.

In an interview with Fox News, Sen. Graham declared that WikiLeaks had “no immunity” for its actions and that they should be prosecuted for “undermining the war effort,” though it does not appear that this, in and of itself, is a crime.

Most officials have suggested that the administration should pursue the prosecution of government officials involved in leaking the documents, and Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, is already facing charges for a past leak to WikiLeaks. Few have argued in favor of going after the organization directly, however, and the legal basis for targeting a Swedish-based international whistleblower organization appears flimsy at best.

Sen. Graham appeared to go even further than WikiLeaks, however, and later insisted that “we need to go after anyone who was involved in the leak,” which might include a number of media outlets which publicized the 92,000 classified documents.

Though the damage to “the war effort,” or rather to the selling of the war to the American public cannot be undone, the prospective prosecution and persecution of WikiLeaks and others for their roles seems to be targeted at scaring away more potential leaks, as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange insisted today, in an interview with Antiwar Radio, that a number of other high level leakers have come forward to the group since they released the “Collateral Murder” video of US troops killing Iraqi civilians.