"The case appears destined to stand as a warning to any government employee who is tempted to make public vast numbers of secret documents."
Related: Manning Trial Verdict Leaked
"Army Private First Class Bradley Manning’s fate was in the hands of a military judge on Friday after nearly two months of conflicting portrayals of the soldier: a traitor who gave WikiLeaks classified secrets for worldwide attention or a young, naive intelligence officer who wanted people to know about war’s atrocities."
"Manning said to have betrayed trust; Prosecutor closes case in leak trial" by Charlie Savage | New York Times, July 26, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — A military prosecutor portrayed Private First Class Bradley Manning on Thursday as an egotist who betrayed the trust of the US government when he leaked vast archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks, lifting a veil on diplomatic and military activities.
As closing arguments began in the high-profile court martial trial, the prosecutor, Major Ashden Fein, argued that leaking to “established journalistic enterprises like The New York Times and the Washington Post would be a crime,” but, “that is not what happened in this case and under these facts.
Then there are a lot of criminals in the administration and Congress because my newspapers is full of leaks.
Private First Class Manning deliberately disclosed classified information to WikiLeaks knowing WikiLeaks would disclose it to the world in exactly the form they would receive it.”
Wikileaks redacted the names, but why bother with tiresome and troublesome facts?!
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Manning’s defense lawyer, David Coombs, has portrayed him as a well-intentioned and principled — if naïve — protester motivated by a desire to help society better understand the world and who was selective about which databases he released to avoid causing harm.
Earlier Thursday, the judge, Colonel Denise Lind, rejected a defense request that she immediately acquit Manning of five theft-related counts before the closing arguments.
The trial has been unusual because Manning has already confessed to being the source and has pleaded guilty to lesser versions of the charges he faces. As a result, there has never been much doubt about most of the basic facts, and the primary open question has been how his actions should be understood.
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"Manning found not guilty of giving aid to enemy; Leaker convicted of espionage breaches" by Charlie Savage | New York Times, July 31, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — A military judge found Private First Class Bradley Manning not guilty Tuesday of “aiding the enemy” for his release of hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks for publication on the Internet, rejecting the government’s unprecedented effort to bring such a charge in a leak case.
But the judge in the court-martial, Colonel Denise R. Lind, convicted Manning of six counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and most of the other charges he faced. He could be sentenced to a maximum of 136 years in prison, although legal experts said the term was likely to be much shorter.
Not much.
While advocates of open government celebrated his acquittal on the most serious charge, the case appears destined to stand as a warning to any government employee who is tempted to make public vast numbers of secret documents.
Related: Snowden a Sharp S.O.B.
Sure looks that way now.
Manning’s actions lifted a veil on US military and diplomatic activities around the world and engendered a broad debate over what information should become public, how the government treats leakers, and what happens to those who see themselves as whistle-blowers.
“We always hate to see a government employee who was trying to publicize wrongdoing convicted of a crime, but this case was unusual from the start because of the scope of his release,” said Gregg Leslie of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, adding, “Whistle-blowers always know they are taking risks, and the more they reveal the bigger the threat is against them.”
I give up on the AmeriKan corporate media.
Lind said she would issue findings later that would explain her ruling on each of the charges. But she appeared to reject the government’s theory that an employee who gives information about national security matters to an organization that publishes it online for the world to see is guilty of aiding the enemy.
The premise of that theory is that the world includes not just ordinary people who might engage in socially valuable debate but also enemies like Al Qaeda. Critics have said it is not clear how giving information to WikiLeaks is different for legal purposes from giving it to traditional news organizations that publish online.
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor who testified in Manning’s defense, praised the judge for making an “extremely important decision” that he portrayed as denying “the prosecution’s effort to launch the most dangerous assault on investigative journalism and the free press in the area of national security that we have seen in decades.”
Related: Concert Over
But, he said, the decades of imprisonment that Manning could face “is still too high a price for any democracy to demand of its whistle-blowers.”
The sentencing phase will begin Wednesday, with more than 20 witnesses scheduled to appear for the prosecution and the defense. It could last for weeks; there are no sentencing guidelines or minimum sentences in the military justice system. Manning’s appeals could go on for years, legal experts said....
The case has arisen amid a crackdown by the Obama administration on leaks and a debate about government secrecy. Manning is one of seven people to be charged in connection with leaking to the news media during the Obama administration; during all previous administrations, there were three.
This from the transparent administration.
The Justice Department recently won an appeals court ruling forcing James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times and an author, to testify in the criminal trial of a former intelligence official accused of being his source.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: General Leaks
And it has used aggressive tactics in secretly subpoenaing communications records of reporters for Fox News and the Associated Press.
Corporate pre$$ rolled over on that scandal, too!
Most reporters watched the proceedings from a closed-circuit feed in a filing center. One who was inside the small courtroom said Manning, 25, appeared relaxed when he entered the room. But as the hour drew near he grew more stoic, and he showed no emotion as he stood while Lind marched through the litany of charges.
The “aiding the enemy” charge was the first in the list, and she said “not guilty.” But she quickly moved into a long list of guilty findings for the bulk of the remaining charges, including six counts of violating the Espionage Act, five of stealing government property, and one violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Each carries up to a 10-year sentence.
Lind accepted Manning’s guilty pleas on two lesser counts, one of which involved leaking a video of a US helicopter attack in Baghdad. She found him not guilty of leaking in 2009 a video of an airstrike in Afghanistan; he had admitted leaking it but said he did so later than the time in the charge.
Steven Aftergood, the director of the project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, called Manning’s many other convictions “a weighty verdict that the prosecution would count as a win,” but he argued that the “larger significance of the case” for open government might be limited, since most leakers do not disclose entire databases.
Months before the trial, Manning confessed to being WikiLeaks’ source for videos of airstrikes in which civilians were killed; incident reports from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars; dossiers on detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and about 250,000 diplomatic cables.
Manning also pleaded guilty to a lesser version of the charges against him, although that was not part of any bargain with prosecutors. The move was unusual, and it appeared aimed at trying to persuade the judge to view Manning as having taken responsibility for his actions, while recasting the trial as a test of whether the government had brought excessive charges in the case.
Hours before the verdict, about two dozen supporters of Manning gathered at the main gate to Fort Meade displaying signs with messages like “whistle-blowers keep us honest.” After the verdict, his supporters announced a protest rally Tuesday in front of the White House.
Manning deserves a medal.
But Representatives Mike Rogers of Michigan and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, praised the verdict.
“Justice has been served today,” they said in a statement. “Pfc. Manning harmed our national security, violated the public’s trust, and now stands convicted of multiple serious crimes.”
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"Manning leaks said to bruise US military relationships" by David Dishneau | Associated Press, August 01, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — The classified information Private First Class Bradley Manning revealed through WikiLeaks fractured US military relationships with foreign governments and Afghan villagers, a former general said Wednesday at the soldier’s sentencing hearing.
It was the first time testimony about the actual damage the leaks may have caused has been allowed at trial.
Retired Army Brigadier General Robert Carr said the material Manning leaked identified hundreds of friendly Afghan villagers by name, causing some of them to stop helping US forces.
Except Wikileaks blacked out the names.
‘‘One of our primary missions is to protect the population over there,’’ said Carr, who led a Defense Department task force that looked at the risks of the leaks. ‘‘We had to get close to the population, had to understand that population and we had to protect them. If the adversary had more clarity, as to which people in the village were collaborating with the US forces, then there is a chance that those folks could be at greater risk.’’
That is so Orwellian.
Yup, we had to invade, destroy the village, and kill people to protect them.
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Carr said the Taliban executed one Afghan national, saying it had tied the man to the list of villagers, but the general couldn’t find his name in the material Manning leaked.
‘‘We went back and searched for his name in the disclosures. The name was not there,’’ Carr said.
The defense objected and the judge said she would disregard that part of his testimony.
Carr also said the leak of cables hurt relationships with other countries because the United States had to negotiate with them to bring supplies into war zones.
Some of the cables ‘‘were very blunt and sometimes critical of how that particular host nation responded, so that created some fractures between our ability to get in there and communicate.’’
Military prosecutors said they would call up to 20 witnesses for the sentencing phase. The government said up to half of the prosecution witnesses would testify about classified matters in closed court. They include specialists on counterintelligence, strategic planning, and terrorism.
The release of diplomatic cables, warzone logs, and videos embarrassed the United States and its allies. US officials warned of dire consequences in the days immediately after the first disclosures in July 2010, but a Pentagon review later suggested those fears might have been overblown.
I feel like I'm watching the same movie over and over again.
The judge also restricted evidence about Manning’s motives. Manning testified during a pretrial hearing he leaked the material to expose US military ‘‘bloodlust’’ and diplomatic deceitfulness, but did not believe his actions would harm the country. He didn’t testify during the trial, but he could take the stand during the sentencing phase.
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"Manning’s possible sentence for leaks cut to 90 years; In win for defense, judge says certain offenses related" by David Dishneau | Associated Press, August 06, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — Major General Michael Nagata testified for the prosecution Tuesday that the leaked cables had an impact on US military operations in Pakistan, where he was deputy commander of a defense office within the US embassy in Islamabad. Nagata saved the details of the impact for a closed court session to protect classified information.
Related: Wikileaks Target: Pakistan
The leaked cables revealed a closer US-Pakistani military relationship than Pakistan had publicly acknowledged. The cables also disclosed US concerns that Islamist militants could get their hands on Pakistani nuclear material to make an illicit weapon. One leaked cable revealed that instructors at a prestigious Pakistani defense institution were giving anti-American lessons to senior officers.
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"Expert says militants could have used WikiLeaks files; Testimony given in Manning case" Associated Press, August 09, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — A US military expert on militant Islamism testified Thursday that Al Qaeda members could have used the classified information Army Private First Class Bradley Manning disclosed through WikiLeaks to plan attacks on US forces, but said there’s no evidence they did.
Navy Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein, author of the book, ‘‘Militant Islamist Ideology,’’ and an adviser at the Pentagon’s Defense Combatting Terrorism Center, noted that the leaked information included reports of significant battlefield activities.
Based upon Al Qaeda’s previous use of training materials obtained from adversaries, ‘‘one can only deduce that out of the thousands of [significant battlefield activities] that have been leaked, they could possibly, potentially deduce a pattern of behavior by United States combat forces,’’ Aboul-Enein said.
Al Qaeda members could then create countermeasures and plan ambushes, Aboul-Einen said, testifying as a prosecution witness during Manning’s sentencing hearing at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.
The researcher testified on cross-examination that Al Qaeda has never claimed any tactical victories because of the information that WikiLeaks began publishing on its website in 2010.
Manning, a 25-year-old native of Crescent, Okla., faces up to 90 years in prison for giving more than 700,000 documents and some battlefield video to the antisecrecy group while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010.
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Also see: Bradley Manning deserves punishment, but not life sentence
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Prosecution rests in Bradley Manning sentencing case" by David Dishneau | Associated Press, August 10, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — The classified information that Army Private First Class Bradley Manning disclosed through WikiLeaks put entire Afghan villages at risk of harm from the Taliban for cooperating with US forces, a Pentagon official testified Friday at the soldier’s sentencing hearing.
Navy Rear Admiral Kevin Donegan, director of warfare integration, was director of operations for US Central Command, including Iraq and Afghanistan, when WikiLeaks began publishing the leaked information on its website in 2010.
Donegan was among the last two witnesses in the prosecution’s sentencing case. He was followed by another Pentagon official, Marine Corps Major General Kenneth McKenzie, who testified in a closed session about the classified impact on long-range battle plans of the government secrets that Manning disclosed.
Manning’s defense team will begin presenting evidence Monday in the court-martial. Defense attorney David Coombs said Manning will give a statement before the defense rests on Wednesday.
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Also see:
"Lawyers fault Manning deployment" by David Dishneau | Associated Press, August 13, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — Lawyers for Army Private Bradley Manning opened their case Monday in the sentencing phase of his trial by attacking commanders’ decisions to send the young intelligence analyst to Iraq and let him keep his top-secret security clearance despite his emotional outbursts and concerns about his mental health....
Manning had a history of violent outbursts and psychological evaluations during his military training before and after he deployed in 2009. During his stateside training as an intelligence analyst, he had to give a classroom presentation about the dangers of disclosing classified information after he provided secret details about his schooling in online communications with relatives.
So he was already showing signs of leaking?
His brigade commander, Colonel David Miller, testified that the Second Brigade of the Tenth Mountain Division deployed in the fall of 2009 with 10 to 15 percent fewer intelligence analysts than the number authorized by the military. But Miller denied feeling any pressure to take soldiers who should not have deployed.
However, Major Clifford Clausen, who headed the brigade’s intelligence branch, said there was pressure to take every soldier.
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Amazing how they have kept Manning's sexual orientation such a secret.
Another example:
"MIT report’s findings mixed in Aaron Swartz case; No wrongdoing on activist, but leadership was lacking" by David Abel | Globe Staff, July 30, 2013
MIT officials said in a long-awaited report Tuesday that administrators engaged in no wrongdoing and did not press authorities to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide in January after being charged with hacking into university computers and illegally downloading millions of academic articles....
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology said it never sought punishment or jail time or opposed a plea bargain for Swartz, whose suicide triggered a national debate over whether prosecutors were overzealous....
The self-serving report cleared themselves.
Swartz’s father, Robert, who studied at MIT and is a consultant to the school’s Media Lab, applauded the university for what he called its “commitment to self-examination.”
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Swartz’s former girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, who blames MIT for not doing more to protect Swartz, called the report a “whitewash.”
“The fact is that all MIT had to do was say publicly, ‘We don’t want this prosecution to go forward,’ ” she wrote on her blog.
MIT officials acknowledged that their notion of neutrality was admittedly complicated.
“The trouble is that neutrality has multiple meanings,” said Peter Diamond, the MIT economist and a coauthor of the report. “The world is a complicated place.”
No, not really. There is right, and there is wrong.
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Also see: In Swartz case, MIT’s ‘neutrality’ contributed to unjust outcome
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Speaking Up For Swartz
He can't hear you.
