WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been indicted on charges accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analysis Chelsea Manning to share leak classified information.

The indictment and arrest came the same day Ecuador rescinded asylum for Assange, who had been staying in its embassy in London to avoid extradition to the United States.

The charges were revealed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The one-count indictment includes allegations of conspiring to illegally accessing a computer and concealing Manning's identity as the source of the leak. In fact, the allegations in the indictment begins with Manning's name.

The case already is being compared to the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg was charged after the release of the documents tracing the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, but the case was dismissed. News media were not prosecuted for publication.

Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a statement Thursday: “Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks' publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest.”

Assange's legal team includes Washington attorney Barry Pollack, who left Miller & Chevalier last year to become a partner at the boutique Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber.

Read the indictment: