One of the nation’s leading champions of press freedoms does not consider WikiLeaks’ classified-document dumps to be journalism. But First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams insisted that any efforts to limit its free speech rights would imperil the ability of journalists to do their job.

Abrams, who famously defended The New York Times’ right to publish the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago, made his remarks after accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s annual fundraising dinner on May 16. Before an audience at The TimesCenter in New York that included veterans from many major news organizations, including some he has represented, the longtime lawyer for Cahill Gordon & Reindel said WikiLeaks’ release of tens of thousands of pages of classified documents on the Iraq war and U.S. foreign policy had threatened national security – but still must be protected.

He contrasted WikiLeaks’ actions with The Times’ handling of the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret military account of the Vietnam War. He told the story of a federal judge who asked The Times to think carefully before printing portions of the documents. The newspaper meticulously reviewed the dossier and ultimately determined that only some of the material was safe to publish.

“That’s what I think is the system working,” he said. Meanwhile, he contended, WikiLeaks’ decision to publish unedited diplomatic and intelligence files undermined U.S. foreign policy and put informants’ lives at risk. He cited an interview in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange acknowledged that his group only inspects a fraction of the documents it posts on its website.“To my mind,” Abrams said, “WikiLeaks has often behaved in a reckless way.”

Considered the foremost First Amendment attorney, Abrams has defended a wide range of clients, from New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who went to jail in 2005 for refusing to reveal her sources in a CIA leak case, to the Brooklyn Museum, to the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s. In 2009, during the Citizens United Supreme Court case, he argued that even corporations are entitled to unrestrained speech.

The awards ceremony doubled as a scholarship fundraiser for the Journalism School, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. Four graduates from the Class of 2010 were also honored: Simone Sebastian and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh each received a Dean’s Award for Excellence in Journalism, while Christine Prentice won the Frederic Wiegold Award for Business Journalism and Sherry Mazzocchi was presented with the School’s first Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for Social Justice Reporting.

After the speech, Abrams said that if Assange is tried for publishing classified materials, he deserves a top-notch lawyer – just not Abrams. “He needs a lawyer who believes in him as well as his rights,” Abrams said. “I don’t believe in him, just his right to free speech.”

Tags: 2011 May Gala, awards, Christine Prentice, Floyd Abrams, May Gala, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, Sherry Mazzocchi, Simone Sebastian