Chelsea [Bradley] Manning Wikileaks Court Martial Trial

The Bradley Manning - Wikileaks Court Martial Trial

More than three years after his arrest, Army Private First Class Bradley Manning faces court martial Monday, a military proceeding that has been widely criticized for its secretive nature.

Manning, a 25-year-old former intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty to several charges in February, but still faces 21 counts, the most serious of which is aiding the enemy. He has admitted releasing hundreds of thousands of secret government files to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

He has been held in military confinement since July 2010. The trial will be held at Fort Meade, Maryland.

As the trial unfolds in the US, the recipient of Manning's purloined classified material and founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is ensnared in his own legal problems in Britain.

He has been holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London since June 2012 after he exhausted his appeals against extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted on sex abuse allegations. Ecuador has granted Assange asylum, but in order to travel there he would have to cross British territory and could be seized and extradited.

In a pre-trial hearing on May 21, prosecutors dropped one of the counts against Manning, but said they would press ahead with the others. The decision reduced his potential prison sentence by eight years, but if he is convicted on the other counts, he could be sent away for more than 150 years.

The trial is expected to last up to 12 weeks and could involve hundreds of witnesses, including 24 who will testify in closed court, according to a ruling by the judge, Colonel Denise Lind.

The 24 witnesses include several ambassadors and military officers who possess classified information, according to Lind. She said closure was necessary to prevent "spillage" of government secrets and to protect overriding national security interests.

Lind's ruling also ordered a transcript of the testimony be prepared and published after classified information is redacted. Civil liberties groups have filed petitions seeking greater access to court records, but their efforts have largely been stymied.

A member of the team that raided Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan in May 2011 could be among the witnesses to testify in closed court. Prosecutors identified the witness as a Department of Defence "operator" and said he might appear in light disguise and testify under a pseudonym.

He is expected to provide evidence that al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden saw the secret documents posted on WikiLeaks.

Prosecutors will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mannning had reason to believe the information he leaked - diplomatic cables, assessment files of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and logs of military incident reports from Iraq and Afghanistan posted on WikiLeaks - could be used either to the detriment of the US or to the advantage of any foreign nation.

Manning has said he gave the classified documents to WikiLeaks to expose what he considered abuses by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he thought carefully about the information he was releasing to ensure it would not cause harm.

Supporters of Manning have been active ahead of his court martial and plan a mass demonstration at Fort Meade on Saturday.

They say 1,000 people will descend on the military base to show their support for the whistle-blower. They will march, perform skits and offer other "creative visuals" to protest against his imprisonment.

Daniel Ellsberg, the whistle-blower in the Pentagon papers case that exposed the US military's activities in Vietnam, is among the scheduled speakers.

They support Manning for exposing the true number of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, US-sanctioned torture in Iraq, and a pattern of corporate influence on US foreign policy worldwide.

His supporters also point out that Manning was subjected to solitary confinement in a windowless cell for nine months early in his detention period in violation of international law. During that time he was allowed out once a day for a short period of time.

The bin-Laden evidence was picked up in the May 2011 US raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader in his Pakistan compound. The digital media seized there included a letter from bin Laden asking an al-Qaeda operative to gather Department of Defence material posted to WikiLeaks.


Source : Sapa-dpa /pk
Date : 30 May 2013 09:06

While I support the concept/ideology behind Wikileaks, I would have to agree that Manning broke the military's rules and must be disciplined for that.

Difficult situation.

blunomore said:

While I support the concept/ideology behind Wikileaks, I would have to agree that Manning broke the military's rules and must be disciplined for that.

Difficult situation.

Click to expand...

No whistleblower protection/mitigation?

US Govt Settles separate Case with Manning's Advocate

The American Civil Liberties Union says the federal government has agreed to destroy all data obtained from a computer and other electronic devices seized from an advocate of the U.S. Army soldier accused of sending classified documents to Wikileaks.

The settlement comes in a lawsuit in which David House accused authorities of violating his constitutional rights when he was stopped in 2010 at a Chicago airport while returning home to Massachusetts. House helped found The Bradley Manning Support Network.

The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment. A copy of the settlement said the government does not admit to any wrongdoing.

Manning has been charged with indirectly aiding the enemy by causing classified material to be published on WikiLeaks. His case is headed for trial Monday at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.


Source : Sapa-AP /ma
Date : 31 May 2013 01:27

The court martial hearing of a US soldier charged with leading classified documents to the WikiLeaks website opened in the US state of Maryland Monday.

Private Bradley Manning sat at a desk between members of his defence at the start of proceedings at a military base in Fort Meade, which had been delayed by about an 45.


Source : Sapa-dpa /sdv
Date : 03 Jun 2013 16:24

Prosecutors said Monday that Pfc. Bradley Manning put U.S. military secrets into the hands of Osama bin Laden himself, as the Army intelligence analyst went on trial over leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

Manning's lawyers countered by arguing that he was a "young, naive but good-intentioned" soldier whose struggle to fit in as a gay man in the military made him feel he "needed to do something to make a difference in this world."

Manning, 25, has admitted turning over the material to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, pleading guilty earlier this year to charges that could bring 20 years behind bars. But the military pressed ahead with a court-martial on more serious charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.

Prosecutors said they will present evidence that bin Laden requested and obtained from another al-Qaida member Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department cables published by WikiLeaks.

"This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases and then dumped that information onto the Internet into the hands of the enemy," prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow said.

He said the case is "about what happens when arrogance meets access to sensitive information."

The material WikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 documented complaints of abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. tally of civilian deaths in Iraq, and America's weak support for the government of Tunisia - a disclosure that Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

The Obama administration has said the release of the material threatened to expose valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America's relations with other governments.

Manning's supporters have hailed him as a whistleblowing hero and political prisoner. Others say he is a traitor who endangered lives and national security.

Wearing his dress blue uniform, the slightly built Manning peered through his small eyeglasses at a slide show of the prosecutor's hour-long opening statement, watching on a laptop computer at the defense table. The slide show also was projected on three larger screens in the courtroom, which had seats for only about 50 people.

Later, almost motionless, the soldier from Crescent, Oklahoma, sat forward in his chair, looking toward his defense attorney, David Coombs, throughout his 25-minute opening statement.

Coombs said Manning struggled to do the right thing as "a humanist," a word engraved on his custom-made dog tags. As an analyst in Baghdad, Manning had access to hundreds of millions of documents but selectively leaked material, Coombs said. He mentioned an unclassified video of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack that mistakenly killed civilians, including a Reuters photographer.

"He believed this information showed how we value human life. He was troubled by that. He believed that if the American public saw it, they too would be troubled," Coombs said.

Coombs did not address whether bin Laden ever saw any of the material. The soldier has said he did not believe the information would harm the U.S.

Coombs said Manning struggled privately with gender identity early in his tour of duty, when gays couldn't openly serve in the military.

"His struggles led him to feel that he needed to do something to make a difference in this world," Coombs said. "He needed to do something to help improve what he was seeing."

Later in the day, the court also heard from two Army investigators and Manning's roommate in Iraq, who testified the soldier was online whenever he was in their quarters.

Manning chose to have his court-martial heard by a judge instead of a jury. It is expected to run all summer. Much of the evidence is classified, which means large portions of the trial are likely to be closed to reporters and the public.

Federal authorities are looking into whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can also be prosecuted. He has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex-crimes allegations.

"This is not justice; never could this be justice," Assange said in a statement Monday. "The verdict was ordained long ago. Its function is not to determine questions such as guilt or innocence, or truth or falsehood. It is a public relations exercise, designed to provide the government with an alibi for posterity. It is a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience."

In February, Manning took the stand and read from a 35-page statement in which he said he leaked the material to expose the American military's "bloodlust" and disregard for human life in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The case is the most high-profile prosecution for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for its crackdown on leakers. The six cases brought since Obama took office are more than in all other presidencies combined.

The WikiLeaks case is by far the most voluminous release of classified material in U.S. history, and certainly the most sensational since the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers showed that the U.S. government repeatedly misled the public about the Vietnam War. Their leak to The New York Times set off an epic clash between the Nixon administration and the press and led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment.

Some 20 Manning supporters were in the courtroom, including Princeton University professor and civil rights activist Cornel West and Medea Benjamin, a member of protest group Code Pink.

"I think it's a show trial," Benjamin said. She and others complained about the small courtroom, saying the government was trying to make it look as if Manning had less support than he really has.


Source : Sapa-AP /mjs
Date : 04 Jun 2013 05:02

Something tells me that there's a super sized bottle of Sodium Pentothal with PFC Bradley Mannings name on it

Bradley Manning generates more sympathy abroad

It's rare for an American to generate more sympathy abroad than he or she does at home, but Bradley Manning and his trial are unique in a host of ways.

With Manning's trial heating up in the United States, where he is accused of aiding the enemy by leaking classified material to WikiLeaks, his vocal supporters in Britain and Europe are once again rallying to his side.

While support for the imprisoned soldier may be weak in the U.S., Manning - a dual U.S. and British national by virtue of his Welsh mother - has a solid band of supporters in Britain.

In countries with no national secrets at stake in the trove that WikiLeaks unleashed on the Internet, many have seized upon Manning's case as a focal point for a wide range of human rights issues, from the ethics of waging preemptive wars abroad to the protection of individual freedoms on the Internet. Many saw his harsh treatment in a U.S. military prison as a violation of his own human rights.

"Every solder in every nation has a duty to expose war crimes. That's what Bradley Manning did," said Peter Tatchell, a British gay rights activist who has taken part in the "support Manning" movement. "In many ways, Manning is a true patriot because he's sought to uphold the U.S. constitution. Thanks to Bradley, the American people now know the truth."

Manning - a 25-year-old former intelligence analyst from Oklahoma who is accused of leaking more than 700,000 U.S. battlefield reports and diplomatic cables - has also drawn support from members of the Occupy movement, an international grassroots campaign that has opposed corporate greed.

Naomi Colvin, an Occupy activist who has also rallied for Manning, said peoples' attitudes toward Manning, an openly gay soldier, are more open-minded in Britain than in America.

"It's much less politicized here than in the U.S. It's not really about 'Is Manning a traitor or not?' - that's never been the central question here," she said.

Instead, Colvin said she and her fellow activists were more concerned with the rights abuses that Manning exposed - and the humiliation he was subjected to in his detention. When the group first starting lobbying on Manning's behalf, its focus was on the mistreatment of a U.K. citizen abroad, she said.

Manning's assertion that he was kept in isolation for months and stripped to his underwear every night while in pretrial detention helped build support for him from rights organizations around the world.

Some Americans have taken the same stand in support of Manning, and free speech advocates have backed his cause, but in general they are harder to find in the U.S.

Manning admitted in court in February that he had provided a vast number of documents to WikiLeaks.

In London, protesters have held vigils and demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy to demand better treatment for Manning, most recently on Saturday. More rallies are planned in the coming weeks, Colvin said.

Nathan Fuller, a campaigner for the Support Bradley Manning Network, said from Fort Meade in Maryland that when the group marked Manning's 1,000th day in prison in February, half of its events took place outside the U.S., in countries ranging from Uganda to Australia and Germany.

Backing for Manning has come from an official level, too. In a 2011 report, Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty praised Manning for uncovering information about the secret rendition of terror suspects. Marty blasted the "cult of secrecy" in western governments and defended the "fundamental role" that whistleblowers like Manning play in society.

Left-leaning segments of Britain's diverse press have been largely sympathetic to Manning's cause, particularly when compared to media coverage in America.

The Guardian newspaper, which has given the Manning and WikiLeaks cases extensive coverage, said 2,500 of its readers voted in favor of Manning winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 - more support than any other candidate received.

On Tuesday, commentators in The Guardian again praised Manning, with one saying he had risked everything to stand up for truth.

It may be easier for the British press, and newspapers in other countries, to be sympathetic to Manning's point of view because the secrets he made public deal with the American military and U.S. diplomats and not their own soldiers and envoys.

Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said American press coverage has been more "uniformly unsympathetic" than press reports from abroad.

"Part of that is the mainstream press here doesn't cover the same ideological turf that it does in the U.K. or elsewhere," he said. "But I'd suspect most of it is the mundane fact it's American interests he's accused of threatening, and that people accused of 'aiding the enemy,' rightly or wrongly, tend not to get the most flattering coverage in their home country."

Tim Price, a British playwright who wrote a sympathetic play about Manning's teenage years in Wales called "The Radicalization of Bradley Manning," said the harsh media coverage in the United States had exposed a blind spot in the U.S. press.

"I think the U.S. media has been unable to make the leap that Bradley might actually be the one soldier defending American ideals and principles - and the U.S. military is the party guilty of putting soldiers at risk on a daily basis by waging wars with little idea how to end them," he said.


Source : Sapa-AP /sdv
Date : 04 Jun 2013 14:10

The Olly North of the tweenies.

A one-time computer hacker who told authorities that a U.S. soldier was giving information to WikiLeaks testified that Bradley Manning never said he wanted to help the enemy during their online chats.

Manning is on trial for giving hundreds of thousands of documents to the secret-spilling website - by far the largest release of classified material in U.S. history.

The case is the most sensational release of classified material in U.S. history since the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The case is also the most high-profile prosecution for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for its crackdown on those who leak information.

Manning has pleaded guilty to charges that could bring 20 years behind bars, but the military has pressed ahead with a court-martial on more serious charges, including aiding the enemy. That charge carries a potential life sentence.

The material WikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 documented complaints of abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. count of civilian deaths in Iraq, and America's weak support for the government of Tunisia - a disclosure that Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

The Obama administration has said the release of the material threatened to expose valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained U.S. relations with other governments.

Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker, said Tuesday he started chatting online with Manning on May 20, 2010, and alerted law enforcement the next day about the contents of the soldier's messages, including his mention of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He said he continued chatting with Manning on and off for six more days.

Lamo said Manning never told him he wanted to help the enemy and did not express disloyalty to America.

"At any time, did Pfc. Manning ever say he wanted to help the enemy?" defense attorney David Coombs said.

"Not in those words, no," Lamo said.

Prosecutors have said they will show the 25-year-old Army intelligence analyst effectively put U.S. military secrets into the hands of the enemy, including Osama bin Laden. They said they will present evidence that bin Laden requested and obtained from another al-Qaida member the Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department cables published by WikiLeaks.

Manning has said he did not believe the information would harm the U.S. and he released the information to enlighten the public about the bitter reality of America's wars.

More than 40 years ago, the 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers showed that the U.S. government repeatedly misled the public about the Vietnam War. Their leak to The New York Times set off an epic clash between the administration of President Richard Nixon and the press and led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects free speech.

Manning's attorney has also said the soldier struggled privately with gender identity early in his tour of duty, when gays couldn't openly serve in the military. Those struggles led Manning to "feel that he needed to do something to make a difference in this world," Coombs said.

Lamo testified Manning had contacted him because of his notoriety in the hacking community and because of his open support and leadership in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Lamo pleaded guilty in 2004 of computer fraud after he was arrested for hacking the computer networks of The New York Times and Microsoft. He was sentenced to six months of house arrest and two years of probation.

Much of the evidence in Manning's military trial is classified, which means large portions are likely to be closed to reporters and the public.

U.S. authorities are looking into whether Assange can also be prosecuted. He has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex crimes allegations.

"This is not justice; never could this be justice," Assange said in a statement Monday.


Source : Sapa-AP /mjs
Date : 05 Jun 2013 02:53

Privately Funded Stenographers record Court Proceedings

In a room full of reporters at a US military base, two stenographers tapped away Wednesday to transcribe the court-martial against Bradley Manning, the US soldier who passed secret files to WikiLeaks.

With no official transcript available to the public, the stenographers are being paid for their work not by the military court but by private donations.

The unusual arrangement is the work of activists with the Freedom of the Press Foundation who accuse US military authorities of making life difficult for media outlets trying to cover the proceedings.

"The US military has refused to release transcripts of Bradley Manning's trial. In addition, they've denied press passes to 270 out of the 350 media organizations that applied," said the group, which is critical of the government's case against Manning.

"Without public transcripts or a press pass, it's virtually impossible for media organizations to accurately cover the trial and for the public to know what the government is doing in its name."

The Manning trial, which began Monday, is scheduled to last at least through August 23, though a good part of the testimony will be held behind closed doors, to avoid any inadvertent disclosure of classified information.

The group, which posted transcripts from this week's proceedings, said the service could cost between $60,000 to $120,000, depending on how long the trial lasts.

More than a 1,000 people have donated more than $58,000 to cover the costs of the stenography so far, according to the press freedom group.

At the request of 23 news organizations and the press foundation, Judge Denise Lind has permitted the stenographers to follow the trial in a room reserved for the media, with a closed circuit video feed of the proceedings.

But the note-takers are not allowed to sit in the gallery of the courtroom at Fort Meade, just outside Washington.

Court authorities have recently started to post some documents related to the case online, after having earlier declined to release papers during pre-trial hearings that ran for about a year and a half.

Backed by numerous US news organizatons, the Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a suit demanding public access to the trial and court documents.

The center has argued that authorities have kept the court-martial proceedings opaque, depriving the public of the ability to hold the court and the government accountable.

Manning faces a possible life sentence if he is found guilty of "aiding" Al-Qaeda. He has already admitted to passing a trove of secret military and diplomatic files to the WikiLeaks whistleblower website.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mjs
Date : 06 Jun 2013 01:52

Budza said:

No whistleblower protection/mitigation?

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Seems there is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Whistleblower_Protection_Act

Manning would have to be a whistleblower though in the first place :erm:

Hosehead said:

Something tells me that there's a super sized bottle of Sodium Pentothal with PFC Bradley Mannings name on it

Click to expand...

Voices in your head? You have that checked out

Wikileaks Trial in Spotlight of new US Leak Case

U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning's court-martial for giving hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to the WikiLeaks website has entered its second week in a fresh spotlight cast by the case of another low-level intelligence employee who claims to be exposing wrongdoing.

Edward Snowden, like Manning, could find himself taken to court by the U.S. government after he unmasked himself Sunday as the person who exposed the nation's secret phone and Internet surveillance programs to reporters.

Legal experts closely following both cases said they were shocked to find out young, low-ranking people had such access to powerful government secrets. Manning was 22 when he turned over the military and diplomatic cables about three years ago. Snowden is 29.

"In that respect, these cases suggest we should be much more careful about who is given security clearances," said David J.R. Frakt, a former military prosecutor and defense lawyer.

Legal experts saw differences between the two cases, namely that Manning's secret-spilling was more random, while Snowden appeared more selective.

"I'm not awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom here," Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, said of Snowden. "I'm just saying you could say it is something more akin to educating the American public about sensitive surveillance issues that have some level of First Amendment concern attached to them."

Fidell said Snowden's revelation probably won't influence the military judge in Manning's case, but "it ratchets up the entire subject in the public eye." Fidell said it could spur outrage about government secrecy in general, but it also could underscore the dangers of leaks - and that, he said, won't help Manning.

Manning is charged under federal espionage and computer fraud laws. The most serious charge against him is aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.

Manning's attorney said he was young and naive but a good-intentioned soldier who wanted to make the world a better place by exposing the way the U.S. military was conducting itself.

Snowden said his motives were similar but told The Guardian newspaper of London: "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest."

Manning never publicly acknowledged his actions until more than two years after his arrest. He was seized after an informant turned him in. Snowden was hiding out in Hong Kong, perhaps eventually hoping for asylum somewhere.

On Monday, Manning's defense team won an intense battle over the admissibility of a piece of evidence supporting his claim that he leaked secrets to expose wrongdoing by the U.S. military and State Department.

The evidence was WikiLeaks' "Most Wanted Leaks of 2009." Army criminal investigator Mark Mander testified he found several versions of the list, including one prefaced by an explanation that the records were sought by "journalists, activists, historians, lawyers, police or human rights investigators."

That's the version the defense sought to admit; prosecutors offered a version without the preface. They objected strenuously to the defense's version but the military judge said both versions were equally relevant.

---

Associated Press writers David Dishneau and Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.


Source : Sapa-AP /pk
Date : 11 Jun 2013 09:11

Manning's Lawyers Dispute Illegal Software Charges

US Army Private Bradley Manning's defense team sought Monday to cast doubt on some of the charges he faces for passing hundreds of thousands of secret government files to WikiLeaks.

At the start of the second week of Manning's trial, the court heard that one software program he is said to have downloaded illicitly while stationed in Iraq was used by everyone in the intelligence cell where he worked.

Manning has admitted sending diplomatic cables and battlefield reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks but he denies "aiding the enemy," chiefly Al-Qaeda, a charge that could see him jailed for life if convicted.

Chad Madaras, who worked alongside Manning at Forward Operating Base Hammer in eastern Baghdad, sharing the same computer on alternating shifts, testified that an Internet chat program, known as mIRC, was widely used.

"Everybody had it" on their computers, Madaras, who held the rank of sergeant when he left the army in January this year, said at Manning's court-martial, which is being held at Fort Meade military base in Maryland.

Asked by Manning's civilian defense lawyer if the program had been banned by army commanders, Madaras replied: "No, sir."

The slew of charges that Manning faces, 21 in total, includes counts that he breached army regulations by using unauthorized software for unintended purposes and that he circumvented security systems by acting beyond his authority.

WikiLeaks's decision to publish some of the material it received from Manning caused deep embarrassment to US political leaders and led to his arrest in Iraq in May 2010. He has been held in military detention ever since.

The government argued in the first week of the trial that Manning had set out to leak information almost from the start of his deployment -- he arrived in Iraq in November 2009 -- but the defense disputes this.

The court heard on Monday from Special Agent David Shaver, the prosecution's lead forensic examiner, that Manning had probably first searched the Internet in early December 2009 for information about WikiLeaks and Assange.

Analysis of Manning's computer showed that a slightly later search, made on December 29, 2009, and relating to "websites that had information pertaining to WikiLeaks," had proven "successful," Shaver said.

He also testified that Manning had used a widely-available program, WGet, to download hundreds of reports on detainees being held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

However under cross-examination from Coombs, Shaver, of the army's Computer Crimes Investigative Unit, admitted that use of WGet had not been forbidden.


Source : Sapa-AFP /mv
Date : 10 Jun 2013 20:59

Alan said:

Manning would have to be a whistleblower though in the first place :erm:

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Meaning ?

blunomore said:

Meaning ?

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I dont think he is a whistle blower actually, he just leaked a bunch of confidential information with no specific purpose of exposing criminal behavior IMO

blunomore said:

While I support the concept/ideology behind Wikileaks, I would have to agree that Manning broke the military's rules and must be disciplined for that.

Difficult situation.

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At the end of the day, the majority of the matters exposed by Wikileaks are going to breaking someone's rules or some laws or agreements by the person providing the information.

It seems a bit odd to voice support for Wikileaks, but then go on to say that the people leaking the info should be punished - Strikes me as somewhat missing the point and purpose of an organization like Wikileaks in the first place.

Newspapers regularly expose state secrets, should those journalists also be punished?

Should Edward Snowden be nailed for what he did, do you think?

sox63 said:

I dont think he is a whistle blower actually, he just leaked a bunch of confidential information with no specific purpose of exposing criminal behavior IMO

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Five minutes on Google, will take you straight to his actual opinions on the matter, which will save you the trouble of making things up.

copacetic said:

Five minutes on Google, will take you straight to his actual opinions on the matter, which will save you the trouble of making things up.

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From a quote earlier

Manning's attorney said he was young and naive but a good-intentioned soldier who wanted to make the world a better place by exposing the way the U.S. military was conducting itself.

Releasing a mass of confidential data, the vast majority of which did not contain illicit activities because of some naive notion of "making the world a better place" does not a whistleblower make.

Those documents were sent to an organization that offered the US government a chance to help them redact any sensitive information (they of course refused), and Wikileaks in turn employed many newspapers to help them do so.

To deny that at least portions of what Manning exposed were not useful in any sense, strikes me as a little absurd.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/14/bradley-manning-deserves-a-medal

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/28/104404/officials-may-be-overstating-the.html#.UbbsP5z5Lcc

Throughout this year I’ve devoted substantial attention to WikiLeaks, particularly in the last four weeks as calls for its destruction intensified. To understand why I’ve done so, and to see what motivates the increasing devotion of the U.S. Government and those influenced by it to destroying that organization, it’s well worth reviewing exactly what WikiLeaks exposed to the world just in the last year: the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world’s most powerful factions.

As revealing as the disclosures themselves are, the reactions to them have been equally revealing. The vast bulk of the outrage has been devoted not to the crimes that have been exposed but rather to those who exposed them: WikiLeaks and (allegedly) Bradley Manning. A consensus quickly emerged in the political and media class that they are Evil Villains who must be severely punished, while those responsible for the acts they revealed are guilty of nothing. That reaction has not been weakened at all even by the Pentagon’s own admission that, in stark contrast to its own actions, there is no evidence — zero — that any of WikiLeaks’ actions has caused even a single death. Meanwhile, the American establishment media — even in the face of all these revelations — continues to insist on the contradictory, Orwellian platitudes that (a) there is Nothing New™ in anything disclosed by WikiLeaks and (b) WikiLeaks has done Grave Harm to American National Security™ through its disclosures.

It’s unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and criminality, rather than those who perpetrate them. Every political leader would love for that self-serving piety to take hold. But what’s startling is how many citizens and, especially, “journalists” now vehemently believe that as well. In light of what WikiLeaks has revealed to the world about numerous governments, just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen — and especially a “journalist” — to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it’d be better if we didn’t know; and, most of all, to demand that those who made us aware of it all be punished (the True Criminals) while those who did these things (The Good Authorities) be shielded:

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http://www.salon.com/2010/12/24/wikileaks_23/

Getting into a semantic debate about whether he can be termed a whistleblower or not seems somewhat irrelevant.