Chicago, April 30 (RHC)-- According to leading analysts, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is an investigative journalist who published documents of U.S. war crimes.  One analyst, Stephen Lendman -- a Chicago-based author and radio host -- described the Australian whistle-blower as a prominent and well-known investigative journalist.  He said that Assange is wanted by U.S. authorities for exposing crimes committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

UK police arrested Julian Assange on behalf of the U.S. government to face a charges that he conspired to hack military computers.  Assange, who spent seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London before his arrest, has now been indicted by a U.S. court for publishing secret documents related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that were leaked by American whistle-blower former soldier Chelsea Manning.

Lendman told Press TV in a phone interview that the war crimes committed by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan were leaked by Manning and published in WikiLeaks by Assange, because that's what an investigative journalist does.  "Assange and Chelsea Manning are very prominent people well-known worldwide, and that is the reason they have been gone after," Lendman said.

 Assange is an investigative journalist," Lendman said, adding: "He not a Russian agent."  The whistle-blowers "exposed U.S. wrongdoings and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan."  Lendman pointed out that "these are high crimes that everyone needs to know about."