Related:
Snowden Slips Into Oblivion
Snow(den) in July
Government Snow Job?
House Settles With Homeland Security
Burying Bradley Manning
Start shoveling:
"Judge allows ‘aiding enemy’ charge in Manning case; If found guilty, Army private could face life" by Erin Banco | New York Times, July 19, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — The military judge in the trial of Private First Class Bradley Manning decided Thursday not to drop a charge accusing Manning of “aiding the enemy.” If found guilty, Manning could face life in prison plus an additional 154 years.
That ought to shut him up.
In February, Manning, 25, an Army intelligence analyst, admitted to having leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks. He denied that he was guilty of 12 counts, including aiding the enemy, but pleaded guilty to 10 lesser offenses that could have put him in prison for up to 20 years.
The aiding-the-enemy charge carries the death penalty, but the government had said it will pursue life in prison with no chance of parole. Under military law, aiding the enemy applies to “any person who aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to, or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly.”
The judge, Colonel Denise Lind, said the government had provided sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Manning knowingly gave information to certain enemy groups such as Al Qaeda when he passed hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks in 2009.
This is an attempt to plug unapproved leaks!
The defense argued in court Monday that Manning did not act voluntarily and deliberately in aiding the enemy when he leaked the documents. But Lind concluded that Manning did have “actual knowledge” that the intelligence he leaked would end up in the hands of the enemy. Lind also decided not to drop a lesser charge, an offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
In his testimony in February, Manning conceded to possessing and willfully communicating to an unauthorized person all the sources of the WikiLeaks disclosure, including diplomatic cables, parts of the Iraq and Afghanistan War logs, files on detainees in Guantánamo, two intelligence memos, and the “collateral murder” video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq.
And yet the first leak we were told about was Iran building a bomb.
As for the leaks regarding Israel... pfffft!
“I found the video troubling at the time, your honor, and I still do, but it’s just my opinion, though,” Manning said in February. “As I hoped, others were just as troubled — if not more troubled.”
David E. Coombs, the lead defense lawyer, said Monday that Manning divulged the information simply to “spark reform and debate.”
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said despite Manning’s intention, some of the information should not have been leaked.
“The video arguably was a matter of overriding public interest. But many other records released by Manning and WikiLeaks had no obvious news value or larger public interest,” he said.
“Manning had privileged access to restricted information,” Aftergood said. “Not only did those records expose individuals to potential retaliation, but their publication signaled that the US could not guarantee confidentially to others.”
Professor Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, told the court in testimony last week: “Once you accept that WikiLeaks is a new journalistic organization, if handing materials over to an organization that can be read by anyone with an Internet connection means that you are handing over to the enemy — that essentially means that any leak to a media organization that can be read by any enemy anywhere in the world becomes automatically aiding the enemy.”
Do I need to take a guess at his religious ethnicity?
Related:
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
I agree. They are aiding the enemy.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Witness says Bradley Manning felt no fealty" Associated Press, July 20, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — A former supervisor of Private First Class Bradley Manning testified Friday that Manning told her the American flag meant nothing to him and he had no allegiance to the United States.
Yup, the whistleblowing hero was a traitor through and through.
The testimony of Jihrleah Showman was elicited by prosecutors, who have charged Manning with aiding the enemy by leaking reams of classified documents to the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks with a ‘‘general evil intent,’’ knowing it would be seen by Al Qaeda members.
During a lengthy cross-examination, defense attorney David Coombs sought to discredit Showman. He implied she made up the conversation because she disliked Manning, partly because he is gay.
Showman, a former Army specialist, said Manning made the comments in a conversation they had a couple months before they deployed to the war zone in late 2009.
‘‘I tapped the flag on my shoulder and asked him what it meant,’’ she said. ‘‘He said the flag meant nothing to him and he did not consider himself to have allegiance to this country or any people.’’
She said she was ‘‘distraught’’ by the statement and suspected Manning was a spy.
Showman? That's a Jewish name, isn't it?
Coombs suggested that what Manning really said was that people shouldn’t have ‘‘blind allegiance to a flag’’ and that ‘‘you cannot be an automaton.’’ Showman said she didn’t remember Manning saying those things.
Coombs also asked Showman why she didn’t write up Manning in a ‘‘counseling statement,’’ a military disciplinary document, since she had counseled Manning in writing about excessive smoke breaks and drinking too much coffee. She acknowledged she had also recommended him at one point for soldier of the month.
If a soldier made disloyal comments, ‘‘that would be a serious matter,’’ Coombs said.
Showman said she reported the comments verbally to her supervisor, Sergeant First Class Paul Adkins. Adkins, now retired, testified that he didn’t remember such a conversation, but also said his memory is impaired because of a fall he suffered during one of his deployments. Adkins also said he didn’t recall hearing Manning making any disloyal remarks before his arrest in May 2010.
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Related: Is The Military Fabricating Testimony in the Bradley Manning Trial?
And here it is in my newspaper, too!!!
Nothing about the calls for a mistrial, Globe?
