(Reuters) - While one focus of the leak crackdown announced on Friday by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is on journalists who receive leaked information, another is on suspected leakers.

Republican President Donald Trump has complained for months about leaks to the news media, but his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, also took a hard line on leaking.

Eight of the 12 cases where federal prosecutors charged individuals with violating the Espionage Act, a World War One-era law aimed at keeping sensitive information out of the hands of the United States' enemies, were brought under Obama. Here are the 12 cases, dating back 46 years.

Daniel Ellsberg became the first such case in 1971 when prosecutors accused the national security analyst and his colleague, Anthony Russo, of providing what would become known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and other media outlets. The secret documents revealed the extent of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Charges against the two men were dismissed when a judge found that the government had wiretapped Ellsberg, possibly illegally.

Samuel Morison, a former Navy intelligence analyst, was charged in 1984 with illegally passing secret photographs of Soviet ships to a magazine, Jane's Defence Weekly. He pleaded not guilty, but a jury convicted him, making him the first person convicted under the Espionage Act for divulging secrets to the press. He was sentenced to two years in prison but paroled. President Bill Clinton pardoned him.

Lawrence Franklin, a Defense Department employee, was charged in 2005 with passing classified information about Iran to two pro-Israel lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. Franklin pleaded guilty and received a 12-year sentence. Eventually, after the government's case against Rosen and Weissman collapsed, a judge reduced Franklin's sentence to 10 months in a halfway house.

Shamai Leibowitz was an FBI translator when material that he heard while translating ended up on a blog. He reached an agreement with prosecutors before he was charged, and pleaded guilty in 2009 to one count of disclosing classified information. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake was suspected in 2010 of revealing information about the agency's warrantless wiretapping program. He was indicted under the Espionage Act but said the only information he leaked was about waste in an NSA program, which he gave to the Baltimore Sun. The 10 felony counts were dropped when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and received no prison time.

Chelsea Manning, an Army private first class formerly known as Bradley Manning, turned over more than 700,000 classified files to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in the biggest breach of secret data in U.S. history. Manning was found guilty of 19 counts but acquitted of the most serious one, aiding the enemy. She was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years in a military prison but was released in May after Obama, in his last days in office, commuted the final 28 years of Manning's sentence.

Stephen Kim, a U.S. State Department contract analyst, allegedly divulged to a Fox News reporter what U.S. intelligence believed about how North Korea would respond to new sanctions. A grand jury indicted him in 2010 for disclosing defense information and making false statements. He pleaded guilty in 2014 and was sentenced to thirteen months in prison. He was released in May 2015.

Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was charged in 2011 with illegally disclosing classified information about Iran to James Risen, a New York Times reporter, for his book "State of War." A jury convicted Sterling in 2015. A judge sentenced him to 42 months in prison.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was charged in 2012 with divulging to journalists secret information about the CIA's interrogation program, including the identity of a covert officer. In an agreement with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to one count and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He was released in February 2015 on condition that he serve three months of house arrest.

U.S. officials said in June 2013 they had filed sealed criminal charges against former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for unauthorized leaks and theft of government property. Snowden prompted a worldwide debate after he gave documents to newspapers showing the extent of U.S. surveillance programs. Russia granted him asylum.

Former FBI bomb analyst Donald Sachtleben agreed in September 2013 to plead guilty to disclosing national defense information for telling an Associated Press reporter details of a failed airline bombing attempt by Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A judge sentenced Sachtleben that year to a 43-month prison term for the national security offenses and a consecutive 97-month term for unrelated child pornography charges.

The Justice Department charged U.S. intelligence contractor Reality Leigh Winner with violating the Espionage Act for leaking a classified report on Russian interference in U.S. elections to The Intercept. The NSA report described Russian efforts to launch cyber attacks on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and send "spear-phishing" emails to more than 100 local officials days before the Nov. 8, 2016 election.

Reporting by Jan Wolfe, Joseph Ax and David Ingram; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Jonathan Oatis

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Factbox: Long history of US leakers to media facing charges - Reuters

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning is a person of conscience and bravery who has withstood the most humiliating of punishments. If anyone can claim to have spoken truth to power and suffered the consequences, its her.

From 2007 to 2009, Manning, an intelligence analyst for the US military, had access to tens of thousands of documents that detailed the nature of the US wars of occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq. As she trawled through video, statistics and data, she had a revelation:

Once you come to realise that the co-ordinates in these records represent real places, that the dates are our recent history and that the numbers represent actual human lives with all of the love, hope, dreams, hate, fear and nightmares with which we all live then you cannot help but be reminded just how important it is for us to understand and, hopefully, prevent such tragedies in the future.

Manning began to see through the fog of impersonal statistics to the brutal reality of the occupations. She began to comprehend the levels of barbarism involved in 21st century asymmetric warfare. She saw that the torture and murder of civilians were fundamental elements of these wars.

Furthermore, she began to understand the impunity with which the US military operated. War crimes were committed and systematically covered up with lies and deception. For Manning, it was too much. Her conscience would not allow compliance. She decided to act. In November 2009, Manning reached out to several news sources, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the whistleblower site WikiLeaks, to see whether they would be prepared to publish files documenting US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only WikiLeaks expressed interest.

In early 2010, Manning downloaded 400,000 documents that became known as the Iraq War logs, and 91,000 documents from the Afghanistan database. She smuggled these out of her base on a CD she had titled Lady Gaga. The files were transferred to an SD card. While on leave in Maryland, she went to a Barnes & Noble bookstore and uploaded the files to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks then proceeded to release the information. The first high profile release featured video of a US helicopter attack in Baghdad in July 2007. The attack killed 12 people, including two Reuters journalists. The footage was particularly shocking because it contained audio of the helicopter gunmen revelling in the attack. As one of them opens fire, he yells, Hahaha. I hit em! and Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards. As other civilians rush in to help the wounded, one of the helicopters starts shelling again.

In July and November 2010, two further tranches of material were released. One focused on Afghanistan, the other on Iraq. Not only did these files reveal further massacres; they also demonstrated that US authorities knew about them and did nothing.

Another set of documents revealed that the Iraqi army, with the knowledge of the US authorities, had been engaging in systemic torture of prisoners, who had been shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks.

The leaks, published by the Guardian, revealed other important information. For instance, the US and its allies had long maintained that there were no hard statistics on the number of casualties in Iraq. Mannings leaks put paid to that lie. The field reports revealed that between 2004 and 2009 there was a total of 109,000 violent deaths in Iraq.

More than 66,081 of these were non-combatant deaths. These staggering figures underlined the depths of barbarism associated with the war. Mannings leaks played a vital role in exposing the lie that the Iraq was a war of liberation. In fact, it was a violent war of occupation in the service of empire.

The November cache of secret diplomatic cables not only revealed deep levels of corruption among the US ruling class; they also demonstrated the extent to which companies and governments across the Middle East were pilfering public money, engaging in underhand deals and making billions of dollars in the process. The information in these files added fuel to the fire of the Arab revolutions the following year. Here was hard evidence of the contempt the rich and powerful held for their own populations.

The Manning leaks caused a global furore and left the US ruling class scrambling. Its mask of civility had slipped. The brutal reality of war, occupation and empire was on full display. This was something the US state could not abide. Capitalism maintains itself through a pretence of law, order and morality. The ruling class claims that its system is rational and humane, but when evidence proves the contrary, someone has to pay a price. In this instance it was Chelsea Manning.

After the release of the Iraq War logs, Manning was taken into military custody. She was flown from Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad to a prison camp in Kuwait. In this scorching, sandblasted place she was locked in a cage inside a tent. In July, she was charged with leaking information and transferred to a military prison at Quantico, Virginia. This was where the torture really began.

The New York Times reported that Manning was humiliated and degraded. They revealed that the guards had stripped her and left her naked in her cell for seven hours, and that she was required to stand naked outside her cell during inspection.

She was put into solitary confinement and was under constant surveillance. Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald declared that Manning was being imprisoned under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture.

In 2011, Mannings first pre-trial hearing began. She spent two long years in military prison before her case was heard in 2013. For nine months of this time, she was kept in solitary confinement.

The UN special rapporteur who wrote on her imprisonment in 2012 said: [I]mposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence.

Accompanying this physical torture was a campaign of public vilification. News outlets pilloried Manning as a traitor. Right wing shock jocks called for her execution. President Barack Obama, the darling of liberals everywhere, declared that Manning had broken the law and had to face the consequences.

She was prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, which allows whistleblowers to be given the harshest of punishments. Manning pleaded guilty to leaking military information, but not guilty to other charges, including aiding the enemy. These crimes carried a maximum punishment of life imprisonment.

On 21 August, Manning was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act and was sentenced to 35 years in the Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas. Greenwalds description of visiting Manning in prison gave a glimpse of how isolated she was from the rest of the world:

In 2015, I visited her at Fort Leavenworth. To get there, one must fly to Kansas City, then drive more than an hour into the woods of Kansas, in the proverbial middle of nowhere. One arrives at a sprawling, completely militarised base, Fort Leavenworth, where it was quite difficult to gain access.

Upon entering, one drives another 15 to 20 minutes deep into the military base to arrive at the military brig, which itself is a labyrinth of cages and security measures that must be navigated in order to finally meet her somewhere in the bowels of that prison.

The day after her conviction, Manning announced to the world that she no longer identified as Bradley Manning and requested that she be supported to undergo treatment to transition from male to female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible, she wrote. I hope that you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun.

To begin such a transition is difficult in the best of circumstances, with the most supportive of colleagues, friends or family. To attempt it in an intensely regulated, abusive and isolated environment requires a special kind of strength.

Unsurprisingly, the military was not going to grant Manning hormone therapy without a fight. Manning organised a petition campaign from prison and went on hunger strike. The prison authorities became more and more hostile. To break her spirit, they put her under constant surveillance. She described the experience:

For 17 hours a day, I sat directly in front of at least two Marine Corps guards seated behind a one-way mirror. I was not allowed to lay down. I was not allowed to lean my back against the cell wall. I was not allowed to exercise. Sometimes, to keep from going crazy, I would stand up, walk around, or dance, as dancing was not considered exercise by the Marine Corps.

She became so disillusioned and desperate that she attempted suicide. As one article commented, the military authorities punished her for trying to live and also for trying to die. In the wake of her suicide attempt she was threatened with indefinite solitary confinement.

The campaign outside the prison stepped up the pressure and, in 2016, the army finally agreed to some of her demands. She was allowed the hormone therapy but they forcibly shaved her head to prevent her from growing her hair.

While in prison, Manning kept up her engagement with the outside world. She wrote a regular column for the Guardian, in which she commented on a variety of issues. She became an active and outspoken campaigner for LGBTI rights. Her writing reveals a person of political commitment. She wasnt naive. She knew the consequences. She claimed that she wanted to release the documents to prompt worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are, because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public, she wrote.

Just before the end of his term, Obama commuted her sentence. This was welcome, but in no way makes up for the years of overseeing her imprisonment and torture. Furthermore, Obama cannot be allowed off the hook for the crucial role he played in continuing the occupation of Afghanistan and in fomenting sectarian tension in Iraq.

Since her release, Manning has continued her political engagement. In a recent piece on the legacy of the Obama years, she comments on the necessity of an uncompromising politics:

We need someone who is unafraid to be criticised, since you will inevitably be criticised. We need someone willing to face all of the vitriol, hatred and dogged determination of those opposed to us. Our opponents will not support us nor will they stop thwarting the march toward a just system that gives people a fighting chance to live. Our lives are at risk especially for immigrants, Muslim people and black people.

We need to stop asking them to give us our rights. We need to stop hoping that our systems will right themselves. We need to actually take the reins of government and fix our institutions. We need to save lives by making change at every level.

Chelsea Mannings story of self-sacrifice and unyielding persistence should steel the rest of us in our fight for a better world. If someone buried in the dungeons of US military prisons can fight their way to clear air, then we can too. If Manning could take the path of humanity and justice, despite the personal risk she faced, then so can the rest of us.

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Chelsea Manning's story should inspire us to fight for a better world - Red Flag

Risk. Directed and produced by Laura Poitras. Featuring Julian Assange. Rating: 7 (out of 10)

People can be split into three disparate groups when it comes to Julian Assange: those who view the WikiLeaks founder as a freedom-of-information demigod, those who revile him for helping Trump win the election, and those who get him mixed up with Edward Snowden.

If you are in the latter camp, you may be forgiven: there is more than a little crossover between the two men, including the filmmaker herself. Laura Poitras was the recipient of encrypted emails revealing the governments covert-surveillance programs, emails sent by none other than Snowden. (She flew to Hong Kong and filmed the entire thing in her award-winning documentary Citizenfour.) That meeting, and Poitras refusal to post the information to

WikiLeaks, is what ends the much longer collaboration between Assange and the filmmaker, a relationship that began in 2010.

Poitras film plays not unlike a season of Homeland: there are episodic stops in Cairo during the Arab Spring aftermath, conversations with White House staffers warning them of impending security breaches, allegations of sexual assault, elaborate disguises (complete with hair dye and coloured contact lenses), and endless surveillance and stakeouts by governmental agencies.

Assange started hacking as a teenager and founded WikiLeaks in 2006. There were early leaks about Guantanamo Bay and the Church of Scientology, and 90,000 classified documents from the war in Afghanistan and civilian casualties. Critics pointed to the security risks while advocates saw Wikileaks as a means to expose increasingly covert U.S. operations and surveillance on its public. The news value is paramount in everything we do, says Assange.

A video of an Apache helicopter mowing down Iraqi reporters and civilians is sent to Wikileaks via Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning). We see Assange watching the trial with dismay, and later calling Hilary Clinton a war-monger.

Sometimes I cant believe what Julian allows me to film, Poitras says during one of her production-log voiceovers. This includes a phonecall to his mum in Australia (with girlfriend Sarah Harrison on the extension), and a sad in-person meeting between mother and son where she wipes down their fingerprints in a hotel room while he dons a disguise.

And after allegations emerge by two women in Sweden of sexual assault, Assange cracks a tasteless half-joke about how the charges elevated his profile: a sex scandal every six months is the way its a platform. Assange muses about a lesbian nightclub and radical feminist conspiracies while being coached by a frustrated lawyer on how to talk about the allegations to the press.

There are the rock-star moments: more than a half-dozen people fawning appreciatively as Assange gets a haircut; a bizarre interview with Lady Gaga, during which Assange says not without irony lets not pretend for a minute that Im a normal person.

The narrative unravels somewhat (and Poitras loses some credibility) after Jacob Appelbaum with whom Poitras admits to having a brief relationship is accused of sexual misconduct and forced to leave the non-profit where he works. When asked to be interviewed for the film Appelbaum declined, saying he wanted the film to have a different ending. So do I, says the filmmaker.

Its an amazing insiders look at the WikiLeaks founder, who remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Unlikeable and narcissistic as he appears, Assange is still a prime example of how flawed people can accomplish important things, and Poitrass free access to Assange makes her documentary an important piece of filmmaking.

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Documentary captures tumultuous life of Julian Assange - North Shore News

Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren admitted during a Obamacare debate last weekend with avowed liberal Chelsea Handler that she gets insurance through her parents, a revelation that drew great deal of attention.

In an op-ed published by The Hill on Wednesday, Lahren responds to the criticism by slamming the 'liberal media.'

She expresses despair over the Washington Post's assertion that she, "bashes Obamacare while benefiting from it," commenting, "Leave it to the mainstream media to ruin an otherwise pleasant morning."

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Ya know just laying here on my President Trump blanket being American AF... new Final Thoughts on traitor Chelsea Bradley Manning posted now on my official FB page. #TeamTomi #MAGA #merica #Trump

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#ThankYouMaddow that was a big league jackass moment in your career! New Final Thoughts posted now. #TeamTomi #MAGA #trumptaxes #liberaltears

Did you miss the debut of The Snowflake Awards? Don't worry because they are streaming on my official FB page NOW! This extended edition includes our bloopers because unlike Snowflakes, we can laugh at ourselves! The Snowflake Awards was established to honor notable hypersensitive citizens, those who, when subjected to the slightest pressures of life, begin to melt! For too long the entertaining societal contributions of these delicate celebrities were overlooked! Sadly, we were content to take them seriously instead of recognizing their greatest gift; a never-ending goldmine of mock-able material that helps us realize how wonderful our lives are! No more. @docthompsonshow and I take on pop culture elitism and hypocrisy like youve never seen before! Visit https://dnc-trophy.myshopify.com/collections/all to get your commemorative Snowflake Awards tshirt! #TeamTomi #TheFlakies #snowflakes #SnowflakeAwards

After last night's speech it's safe to say OUR President Trump is indeed Making America Great Again. The radical notion Americans come first in our own damn country (established November 8th, 2016). I'll be on with @seanhannity tonight to discuss the speech! P.S. The hat is from @drunkamerica and it's my new favorite! #TeamTomi #godblessamerica #drunkAmerica

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I stand by Don because he doesn't back down. I respect that. Wouldn't it be nice if America stopped backing down and started doubling down like DJT? Sorry, I'm not the type of woman to sit in the corner and cry over spilled milk and the "p" word. Final thoughts on #trumptapes posted now. #TeamTomi #MAGA #standup #election2016 #neverhillary

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Lahren goes on to admit that she does, indeed, gain from the health care law but takes umbrage with the overall assumption that the bulk of Trump supporters and Republicans, "believe that every single tenet of ObamaCare is bad."

She supports that statement with Kaiser Family Foundation poll results showing that the majority of Republicans do approve of the provisions involving protections for pre-existing conditions and "allowing young adults to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26."

Lahren then comments, "But facts won't get in the way of the media's liberal crusade."

During Politicon Saturday, Lahren and Handler touched upon a number of divisive matters, including transgender members of the military and health care. While discussing the latter, 24-year-old Lahren admitted that she is still on her parents' plan, eliciting jeers from the audience.

Handler came to her defense, telling the crowd, "Stop, stop, stop, she's being honest."

Lahren later told Fox News that she found their exchange "civil" and said she, "would do it again in a heartbeat."

In her op-ed for The Hill, Lahren further noted, "my debate with Chelsea was an important step for free speech, which has been under assault from liberal snowflakes for years on America's college campuses. Our sit-down proves a respectful dialogue between people with whom we disagree is still possible and should be encouraged by both sides."

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Tomi Lahren fires back at 'liberal media' after criticism over benefiting from Obamacare - AOL