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The charges against Assange on conspiracy to help crack a password are not a surprise, since I've been predicting this would be the government's charge since 2011 when I first broke the story that Manning had asked Assange for help cracking the password wired.com/2011/12/army-m…
I covered the Manning hearing in 2011 and the revelation that Manning had asked Assange to crack a password was a shock, as it only came up at the hearing at the last minute during summary arguments by prosecutors when they flashed bits of the Assange/Manning chat log on screen
In the chat dated March 8, 2010, Manning asked “Nathaniel Frank,” believed to be Assange, about help cracking the main password on his classified SIPRnet computer so he could log on to it anonymously.
He asked “Frank” if he had experience cracking IM NT hashes (presumably he meant NTLM for the Microsoft NT LAN Manager). “Frank” replied yes, that they had “rainbow tables” for doing that. Manning then sent him what looked like a hash.
Here's a tweet thread I wrote about it in March - and in 2017 - when a former DoJ spokes said in a story that the only way he could imagine charges sticking to Assange were if he had helped Manning take the documents
And here's a tweet that @wikileaks wrote in 2011 on the day the prosecution in Manning's hearing first brought up the issue of Manning asking Assange with help in cracking the Army password
