Bill O'Reilly took a hard line against the leakers of the classified State Department cables released by WikiLeaks this week, saying they were traitors who "should be executed or put in prison for life."
Speaking on his Monday show, O'Reilly said that the leaking of the cables, which have sparked a global diplomatic crisis and unearthed scores of revelations about the inner workings of the State Department, was an outrage.
"Whoever leaked all those State Department documents to the WikiLeaks website is a traitor and should be executed or put in prison for life," he said. "The guy who runs the website is a sleazeball named Julian Assange, who is bent on damaging America. Since he's not a U.S. citizen, it's hard for American authorities to move against him. But we can prosecute those who leak the documents to Assange."
O'Reilly then turned to Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst who has been widely tipped as the source for WikiLeaks. If guilty, he said, Manning "is a traitor and should be given life and hard labor in a military prison."
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