The Espionage Act of 1917 — a wartime statute originally drafted to prosecute German spies during World War I — has, since the 1970s, been turned almost exclusively against U.S. journalists, publishers, and government whistleblowers. The list is now long: Daniel Ellsberg (1973, dropped), Samuel Loring Morison (1985), Stephen Kim, Jeffrey Sterling, Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, James Hitselberger, John Kiriakou, Reality Winner, Henry Kyle Frese, Terry Albury, Joshua Schulte, Daniel Hale, and the only publisher in U.S. history convicted under the Act — Julian Assange (June 2024).

The statute as written makes no distinction between leaking secrets to a foreign government and disclosing material to The New York Times. Federal courts have refused to recognize a public-interest defense. Press-freedom organizations including the Knight First Amendment Institute, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Committee to Protect Journalists have warned for two decades that the trend is unsustainable for a country with a working First Amendment.

We ask the Attorney General and Congress for: (1) an immediate halt to new Espionage Act prosecutions of journalists, publishers, and whistleblowers; and (2) the passage of statutory reform creating an explicit public-interest defense and excluding publication and source-protection activities from the Act's reach.