In addition, multiple journalists have spoken out to the effect that encouraging sources to leak is standard journalistic practice.
This is not a difficult line drawing exercise. Lawyers do it all the time: you’re protected from disclosing client confidences. But it’s highly illegal to actually assist your client in obstructing an investigation!
Whose morality, ethics, and common practice? The fact that this leaked and almost nobody cares means that people have made a decision. They want the government to have wide latitude to protect them from terrorism, and they care more about that than prosecuting this purported wrongdoing.
Most people have made the decision that the government is corrupt, Assange is an asshole, and there's nothing they can do about any of it because their elected officials are also corrupt.
That is hardly an endorsement of all the horrible things that the US government has been secretly doing in their name.
The US executed people for torture after WWII. (None of its own people, though. That is acknowledged as an unfortunate failing.)
A journalist can receive information from a thief, but if the journalist starts helping the thief cracks safes to steal more stuff, that is a whole other story.
*so Manning could steal the same amount of data with a bit more secrecy. The account in question was a generic Windows account that only had access to thing Manning had clearance for.
Please note that I'm not saying Assange deserves to be prosecuted for any of this by the US government. Saying he stepped over the line (or may have stepped, since he's not proven guilty) is only step 1.
The next step to ask is "is that a crime?" Yes, in the US it is.
But then comes the next question: "Was Assange subject to US law when he did this?" That is much less clear. I don't know where he was physically located when he was involved with this, or international law to know where jurisdictional issues land on this. Personally, I don't think he should be subject to US when he's not a US citizen and wasn't located in the US when he did this. I don't like the idea that countries could prosecute someone for doing something illegal when what they did was legal in their location. To take a simple example, within, within the US that would be like saying that Utah could charge & extradite someone who smoked weed in Colorado, where it's legal, to Utah, where it is not legal.
And more questions after this too, like "Did crossing the line actually provide significant material aid?" In this, I don't think it did.
I can understand your point, but Assange never provided assistance that allowed Manning to break into more things. The assistance provided, if successful, would only let Manning access the data she already had access to, just not leave a log saying she was the one who accessed it.
To use a physical analogy, Manning already had access to a file cabinet and was committed to leaking every document inside, and Assange gave her a pair of gloves to hide her fingerprints. His actions in no way enabled her act, but was an attempt to prevent retaliation.