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Thread: US Army Pfc. Bradley "Chelsea" Manning

  1. #11
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    Bradley Manning Court-Martial Starts Today

    The court-martial for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning begins today in Fort Meade, Md. Manning is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of military and State Department documents that ended up being published by online organization WikiLeaks, in what has been described as the most extensive leak of classified information in U.S. history.

    Manning, 25, faces life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy. The trial is expected to last three months.

    In the three years since first being detained during a combat deployment to Iraq, the former Army intelligence analyst has become a cause célèbre for civil liberties and anti-secrecy advocates who consider him a whistle-blower.

    Army prosecutors consider him a traitor. The most serious of the 22 charges he faces is for aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence. Prosecutors chose not to pursue the death penalty for the charge.

    The additional charges include wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet knowing that it is accessible to the enemy; theft of public property or records; transmitting defense information; fraud and related activity in connection with computers.

    Manning pleaded guilty in February to 10 of the lesser charges that carried a 20-year prison sentence. At a pre-trial hearing, Manning read for an hour from a 35-page statement in which he explained his motivations in providing 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks.

    The documents included military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of thousands of State Department cables.

    Manning explained that he had leaked the documents to WikiLeaks in order “to spark a debate about foreign policy” and show “the true cost of war.”

    Army prosecutors decided soon after that they would continue to pursue prosecution for the most serious charges against him.

    Prosecutors will try to prove that Manning’s leaks aided the enemy by calling as a witness a Navy SEAL who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. They say that copies of the documents Manning leaked to WikiLeaks were found on the computer hard-drives recovered by U.S. special operations forces during the raid.

    That portion of the trial will likely be closed to the public and the media.

    The circumstances surrounding Manning’s detention at the Marine brig at Quantico, Va., became a focal point of allegations that they amounted to cruel and unlawful punishment, which his attorneys said merited dismissing the case against him.

    After a lengthy pre-trial hearing, the judge in the case found there was validity to some of the allegations and reduced his potential prison sentence by four months.

    David Coombs, Manning’s attorney, posted a statement on his website Sunday night thanking supporters for their financial support and for raising awareness of the case.

    “On behalf of both myself and Pfc. Manning,” he said, “I would like to thank everyone for their continued support over the last three years.”

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...-starts-today/
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  2. #12
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Bradley Manning Defense Rests With Challenge to "Aiding the Enemy" Claims

    Defense attorneys for Army whistleblower Bradley Manning have rested their case after calling three witnesses over 10 days. The defense’s final witness, Harvard law Professor Yochai Benkler, warned that finding Manning guilty of "aiding the enemy" for handing material to WikiLeaks could lead to similar charges against any media outlet publishing online. Manning attorney David Coombs also revealed in court a key counterpoint to U.S. claims that Manning’s leaked helped al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. According to Coombs, previously undisclosed testimony shows bin Laden asked his aides to see the leaked WikiLeaks material only after he saw the U.S. government openly describing WikiLeaks as a group helpful to U.S. foes. Coombs said: "[The] rhetoric is what drives the enemy to actually go look at WikiLeaks, not the actual publication of the information." Manning never took the stand to testify in his own defense, but did give a lengthy statement at his pre-trial hearing earlier this year. The trial continues next week with arguments over defense motions to have seven of Manning’s 22 counts dismissed.

    http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/11/headlines
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  3. #13
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Manning Charges 'Hammer' Whistle-Blowers, Lawyer Says

    Charging WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning with "aiding the enemy" is a "very slippery slope" that threatens to put the "hammer down on any whistle-blower," his defense attorney told a military judge on Monday.

    The former intelligence specialist faces 22 charges connected with the disclosure of more than 700,000 military and diplomatic files, including battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. embassy cables, and footage of airstrikes that killed civilians.

    Manning said he hoped the publication of this information would spark widespread debate, reforms and reportage about the way the U.S. conducts warfare and diplomacy.

    Although the "aiding the enemy" charge against him is a possible capital offense, prosecutors are not seeking a life sentence in this case rather than the death penalty. The charge has ignited controversy for having journalistic sources risk their lives by approaching journalists with information they believe to be in the public interest.

    News outlets from the New York Times and the New Republic condemned the charge as dangerous overkill, and Amnesty International recently called upon the U.S. military to withdraw it.

    Manning's attorney David Coombs noted Monday that the statute is typically used to punish cases when "the accused goes to somebody that he believes or she believes to be an enemy."

    This includes the case of former National Guardsman Ryan Anderson whose efforts to help al-Qaida were intercepted by undercover agents; former FBI agent Robert Hanssen who secretly spied for the USSR and Russia; and Antonio Guerrero, a member of the so-called Cuban Five arrested in Miami for espionage. All three are serving life sentences.

    Capt. Angel Overgaard, one of the prosecutors, hearkened back to the Civil War case of Pvt. Henry Vanderwater who leaked a roster of Union soldiers to an Alexandria, Va., newspaper.

    The military judge, Col. Denise Lind, asked whether Vanderwater was trying to help the Confederacy, in that instance.

    Overgaard replied that she did not know. Vanderwater served three months of hard labor and a dishonorable discharge for his leak to the press.

    Prosecutors accuse Manning of aiding al-Qaida and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula through his leaks. They do not contend that he intended to do this, only that he allegedly knew that disclosure could have had this effect and ignored that threat.

    Coombs countered that Manning actually wanted "to spark reform, spark debate, to get a discussion on what we're doing and why we're doing certain things."

    Responding to this with one of the most serious charges in U.S. jurisprudence is a "very slippery slope," Coombs said.

    "Basically, [it's] putting a hammer down on any whistle-blower, on anybody who wants to put information out," he added. "In order to avoid that, there should be an intent requirement."

    Overgaard said that it "would be nice if we had a videotaped confession" of Manning stating that he knew his leaks could have aided the enemy. Instead, she said that the government provided a "mountain of circumstantial evidence" that Manning's training alerted him to the risks of disclosure.

    Coombs countered that the government already has its sought-after confessions in the form of online chats with Adrian Lamo, a former hacker who turned Manning into law enforcement, and a WikiLeaks contact thought to be its chief, Julian Assange.

    These conversations centered on informing the public, not helping terrorists, Coombs said.

    Judge Lind indicated that she would rule Thursday on whether she would exonerate Manning on this charge, as well as a more minor charge of "exceeding authorized access" to his computer.

    Afterward, prosecutors can call three witnesses for a rebuttal case, but they cannot use an unnamed witness they tried to shoehorn in Monday, Lind said.

    The government witnesses will attempt to undermine testimony defending WikiLeaks as a legitimate news outlet and casting Manning as driven by the public good.

    One witness will purportedly testify that Manning told him, "I would be shocked if you were not telling your kids about me 10 to 15 years from now."

    Prosecutors hope to use the remark to depict Manning as driven by "notoriety."

    Maj. Thomas Hurley, who is one of Manning's military defenders, slammed the rebuttal witnesses as an "ambush."

    Prosecutors have known for several months that Manning planned to call Yochai Benkler, a Harvard professor whose study "A Free Irresponsible Press: WikiLeaks and the battle for the soul of the networked fourth estate" contains his well-known thoughts on the whistle-blowing website.

    Hurley particularly bristled at an attempt to refute Benkler's testimony with the unidentified witness.

    "The defense will express its frustration that we're talking about a mystery guest that we can't identify with any specificity," Hurley complained, with visible agitation.

    Overgaard said that prosecutors had not pursued their rebuttal earlier because they did not know whether Benkler's opinions would be admitted.

    Lind asked pointedly: "That means you do no preparation [until you] get your relevance ruling, then start?"

    http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/16/59406.htm
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  4. #14
    m!<god
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    That hammer analogy is tiring, especially, when it was Manning who was attempting thus.

    From the short story, Goosberries, 1898, by Anton Chekhov:

    "It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a happy man, one whose dearest dream had come true, who had attained his goal in life, who had got what he wanted, and was pleased with his destiny and with himself. In my idea of human life there is always some alloy of sadness, but now at the sight of a happy man I was filled with something like despair. And at night it grew on me. A bed was made up for me in the room near my brother's and I could hear him, unable to sleep, going again and again to the plate of gooseberries. I thought: 'After all, what a lot of contented, happy people there must be! What an overwhelming power that means! I look at this life and see the arrogance and the idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak, the horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, drunkenness, hypocrisy, falsehood. . . . Meanwhile in all the houses, all the streets, there is peace; out of fifty thousand people who live in our town there is not one to kick against it all. Think of the people who go to the market for food: during the day they eat; at night they sleep, talk nonsense, marry, grow old, piously follow their dead to the cemetery; one never sees or hears those who suffer, and all the horror of life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is quiet, peaceful, and against it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so many go mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die of starvation. . . . And such a state of things is obviously what we want; apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. It is a general hypnosis. Every happy man should have some one with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws, and some misfortune will befall him -- illness, poverty, loss, and then no one will see or hear him, just as he now neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind -- and everything is all right.'
    Last edited by m!<god; 07-17-2013 at 08:39 AM.

  5. #15
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Judge in Manning Case Allows Charge of Aiding the Enemy

    The military judge in the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning decided on Thursday not to drop a charge accusing Private Manning of “aiding the enemy.” If he is found guilty of the charge, he faces a possible life sentence in military custody with no chance of parole.

    In February, Private Manning, a 25-year-old 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 jail for up to 20 years.

    The government has said it will not pursue the death penalty against Private Manning.

    The decision of the judge, Col. Denise Lind, centered on the prosecution’s evidence that some of the classified documents Private Manning admitted giving to WikiLeaks were posted on the Internet and later reached Osama bin Laden.

    The judge heard a request from the defense on Monday to drop the charge. David E. Coombs, the lead defense lawyer, argued that Private Manning did not have “actual knowledge” that by leaking the documents to WikiLeaks he was aiding the enemy.

    In the past, the government had argued that through his extensive training, Private Manning should have known that the information could end up with groups that wanted to harm American military personnel. But the government acknowledged Monday that “should have known” was not enough to define “actual knowledge.”

    Ben Wizner, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said that despite the arguments, he does not think “actual knowledge” is enough to charge Private Manning with aiding the enemy.

    “There has to be specific intent,” he said.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/us...nemy.html?_r=0
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  6. #16
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Verdict expected today.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  7. #17
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Bradley Manning acquitted of aiding the enemy

    FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) -- More than three years after U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was arrested for giving classified secrets to WikiLeaks, a military judge acquitted the former intelligence analyst Tuesday of aiding the enemy but convicted him of espionage, theft and computer fraud charges.

    The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, deliberated for about 16 hours over three days before reaching her decision in a case that drew worldwide attention as supporters hailed Manning as a whistleblower. The U.S. government called him an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor.

    Manning stood and faced the judge as she read the decision. She didn't explain her verdict, but said she would release detailed written findings. She didn't say when she would do that.

    The charge of aiding the enemy was the most serious of 21 counts Manning faced and carried a potential life sentence. His sentencing hearing on the convictions begins Wednesday. He faces up to 128 years in prison.

    Manning's court-martial was unusual because he acknowledged giving the anti-secrecy website more than 700,000 battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, and video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. In the footage, airmen laughed and called targets "dead bastards."

    Manning pleaded guilty earlier this year to lesser offenses that could have brought him 20 years behind bars, yet the government continued to pursue the original, more serious charges.

    Manning said during a pre-trial hearing in February he leaked the material to expose the U.S military's "bloodlust" and disregard for human life, and what he considered American diplomatic deceit. He said he chose information he believed would not the harm the United States and he wanted to start a debate on military and foreign policy. He did not testify at his court-martial.

    Defense attorney David Coombs portrayed Manning as a "young, naive but good-intentioned" soldier who was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay service member at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. military.

    He said Manning could have sold the information or given it directly to the enemy, but he gave them to WikiLeaks in an attempt to "spark reform" and provoke debate. A counterintelligence witness valued the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs at about $5.7 million, based on what foreign intelligence services had paid in the past for similar information.

    Coombs said Manning had no way of knowing whether al-Qaida would access the secret-spilling website and a 2008 counterintelligence report showed the government itself didn't know much about the site.

    The defense attorney also mocked the testimony of a former supervisor who said Manning told her the American flag meant nothing to him and she suspected before they deployed to Iraq that Manning was a spy. Coombs noted she had not written up a report on Manning's alleged disloyalty, though had written ones on him taking too many smoke breaks and drinking too much coffee.

    The government said Manning had sophisticated security training and broke signed agreements to protect the secrets. He even had to give a presentation on operational security during his training after he got in trouble for posting a YouTube video about what he was learning.

    The lead prosecutor, Maj. Ashden Fein, said Manning knew the material would be seen by al-Qaida, a key point prosecutor needed to prove to get an aiding the enemy conviction. Even Osama bin Laden had some of the digital files at his compound when he was killed.

    Some of Manning's supporters attended nearly every day of two-month trial, many of them protesting outside the Fort Meade gates each day before the court-martial. They wore T-shirts with the word "truth" on them, blogged, tweeted and raised money for Manning's defense. One supporter was banned from the trial because the judge said he made online threats.

    Hours before the verdict, about two dozen demonstrators gathered outside the gates of the military post, proclaiming their admiration for Manning.

    "He wasn't trying to aid the enemy. He was trying to give people the information they need so they can hold their government accountable," said Barbara Bridges, of Baltimore.

    The court-martial unfolded as another low-level intelligence worker, Edward Snowden, revealed U.S. secrets about surveillance programs. Snowden, a civilian employee, told The Guardian his motives were similar to Manning's, but he said his leaks were more selective.

    Manning's supporters believed a conviction for aiding the enemy would have a chilling effect on leakers who want to expose wrongdoing by giving information to websites and the media.

    Before Snowden, Manning's case was the most high-profile espionage prosecution for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for its crackdown on leakers. The espionage 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. Manning's supporters included Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, who in the early 1970s spilled 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.

    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 said the release threatened to expose valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America's relations with other governments.

    Prosecutors said during the trial Manning relied on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange for guidance on what secrets to "harvest" for the organization, starting within weeks of his arrival in Iraq in late 2009.

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

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...NING_WIKILEAKS

  8. #18
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Monotonous, rigid military prison life awaits Manning

    Bradley Manning, the soldier convicted in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, faces the prospect of years of monotony with no Internet access in a small military prison cell but he would likely be allowed to mix with other inmates and exercise outdoors.

    The 25-year-old Manning, who has yet to be sentenced, would be able to nominate friends and relatives for visits pending official approval. A handshake, a brief kiss or a hug that does not involve touching below the waist are allowed during visits, and visitors and inmates may hold hands, according to regulations. Prisoners are allowed to telephone friends and family through payphones that may only be used at set times, but they are not permitted to send email or browse the Internet.

    A military judge on Tuesday found the former low-level intelligence analyst guilty of 19 criminal charges, including espionage and theft, for giving about 700,000 classified diplomatic cables and war logs to the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks website in 2010 while he was serving in Iraq.

    The U.S. Army Private First Class was acquitted at his two-month-long court-martial on the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, sparing him a life sentence without parole. But his convictions could draw a maximum term of 136 years.

    Legal experts said the case was highly unusual and they were reluctant to predict the sentence. The judge has already ruled that 112 days will be deducted because Manning was mistreated in the months after his arrest in Baghdad in May 2010.

    The sentencing phase of the court-martial at Fort Meade, Maryland, began on Wednesday and was expected to last at least until August 9, military officials said.

    Any sentence longer than 10 years must be served at the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, U.S. Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel S. Justin Platt said. Manning could also serve time at a Fort Leavenworth military correctional facility, where the spokesman said he had been held pre-trial since April 2011.

    Cells, which have walls rather than bars, contain a bed, a toilet and a sink, a desk and a locker, according to unclassified army regulations. The regulations say cells for one person must have 35 square feet (3.25 square meters) of unencumbered space. When confinement exceeds 10 hours per day, there must be at least 80 square feet (7.4 square meters) of total floor space.

    TIGHTLY STRUCTURED DAYS

    Several people familiar with the prisons described them as clean and relatively safe compared to civilian prisons but said the daily routine was monotonous and tightly structured.

    "Most of those guys there have inculcated the hierarchy, the structure, the discipline the respect for authority," said Raelean Finch, a former army intelligence officer who co-writes a blog called "Captain Incarcerated" with a friend and former army colleague serving six years at the Barracks in Fort Leavenworth. (She asked that her friend not be identified further in order to preserve his pseudonym on the blog.)

    Finch said that although "it's a tinderbox for sure, tempers flare and whatnot, everyone recognizes they're in a pretty safe situation."

    She said many fear being "Fed-Exed" - the term used for being transferred to a civilian federal prison because prisons are perceived as being less disciplined and more violent.

    Another blog, "Prison Pie," by a woman who posts her inmate brother's letters, details the routine: Breakfast starts at 5.30 a.m., work hours are between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m., then lunch at noon and back to work at 1 p.m. until 4 p.m., followed by dinner between 4.30 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. Work includes jobs such as catering, laundry, cleaning and yard maintenance.

    There is a lockdown for head count twice a day and 3-1/2 hours of time is allotted for activities such as games and movies in the evening until 9.30 p.m.

    MOSTLY PAP LITERATURE

    Philip Cave, a lawyer who represents soldiers and visits military prisons, said Manning would be able to borrow from a limited list of books, particularly those with legal information that can help an inmate better understand their case, although there were a few more general-interest titles.

    "Mostly pap," said Cave. He said military prisons were more restrictive than civilian prisons about books and magazines, although inmates are allowed to receive titles from friends and relatives that meet official approval.

    The former officer Finch said her inmate friend uses a 1990s-vintage refurbished electronic word processor that meets prison guidelines to write his posts, which he prints and sends to her by regular mail since he can't use the Internet.

    There is nothing to prevent an inmate writing for publication, the U.S. Army spokesman Platt said, although they may be prevented from receiving compensation for doing so. All correspondence, except between a client and a lawyer, is screened by prison officials.

    Cave said that Manning, a slight man who looks younger than his 25 years and is gay, may encounter homophobia, and some inmates may view him as a traitor, although others convicted of espionage are serving time in Fort Leavenworth.

    "They may take some extra precautions in the beginning to make sure of his safety," Cave said.

    Finch said her inmate friend knew of a number of openly gay inmates. According to him, they do not generally encounter prejudice, tend to socialize among themselves, and sometimes dated within the strictures of a prison environment.

    MANNING IN "CAGE" AFTER ARREST

    Manning's lawyers and civil rights groups complained that he was mistreated during initial detention in Kuwait and nine months he spent in solitary confinement at a U.S. Marine Corps jail in Quantico, Virginia.

    A United Nations special rapporteur on torture formally accused the U.S. government of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of Manning. A government lawyer responded that the United States was satisfied Manning had been placed in the same type of cell as other pre-trial detainees.

    At Quantico, Manning was confined to his cell for 23 hours a day, required to sleep naked and was woken often during the night, military officials said. They said those measures were necessary because of concern that Manning was suicidal.

    To compensate for that treatment, the court-martial judge, Colonel Denise Lind, ruled that 112 days should be deducted from any sentence she imposes.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...97304F20130804

  9. #19
    CaliHornia
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    Given the conditions of his confinement so far, that doesn't sound too bad for Manning.

  10. #20
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    Judge Set to Reveal Bradley Manning Sentence

    A US military judge is set to sentence Army Pfc. Bradley Manning (at 10:00 a.m.), who was found guilty of 20 criminal counts, including espionage and theft. He faces up to 90 years in prison, while prosecutors hope to put the whistleblower away for at least six decades.

    http://rt.com/usa/manning-sentence-live-updates-784/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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