Private Manning acquitted of aiding enemy in WikiLeaks case

Medina Roshan, 0/30/13

FORT MEADE, Maryland (Reuters) - A military judge on Tuesday found U.S. soldier Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy - the most serious charge among many he faced for handing over documents to WikiLeaks.

But Col. Denise Lind, in her verdict, found Army Private First Class Manning, 25, guilty of 19 of the other 20 criminal counts in the biggest breach of classified information in the nation's history.

The U.S. government was pushing for the maximum penalty for the intelligence analyst's leaking of information that included battlefield reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It viewed the action as a serious breach of national security, while anti-secrecy activists praised it as shining a light on shadowy U.S. operations abroad.

Army prosecutors contended during the court-martial that U.S. security was harmed when the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website published combat videos of an attack by an American Apache helicopter gunship, diplomatic cables and secret details on prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay that Manning provided to the site while he was a junior intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.

Manning, who early this year pleaded guilty to lesser charges that carried a 20-year sentence, will still be looking at a long prison term when the trial's sentencing phase gets under way on Wednesday.

"This is a historic verdict," said Elizabeth Goitein, a security specialist at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice.

"Manning is one of very few people ever charged under the Espionage Act prosecutions for leaks to the media ... Despite the lack of any evidence that he intended any harm to the United States, Manning faces decades in prison. That's a very scary precedent," she added.

A crowd of about 30 Manning supporters had gathered outside Fort Meade ahead of the reading of the verdict.

'CHILLING EFFECT'

The guilty verdict on most of the counts could make it difficult for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to persuade future sources of information to share classified details with the website.

"That is going to make it more difficult for people who want to deal with Assange. They are going to be at greater risk and that will put his operation at risk," said Michael Corgan, a professor of international relations at Boston University and former officer in the U.S. Navy.

"It will have a very chilling effect on WikiLeaks," he said ahead of the verdict.

Manning, originally from Crescent, Oklahoma, opted to have his case heard by a judge, rather than a panel of military jurors.

During the court-martial proceedings, military prosecutors called the defendant a "traitor" for publicly posting information that the U.S. government said could jeopardize national security and intelligence operations.

Defense lawyers described Manning as well-intentioned but naive in hoping that his disclosures would provoke a more intense debate in the United States about diplomatic and military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than three years after Manning's arrest in May 2010, the U.S. intelligence community was reeling again as a result of leaked security documents. The latest revelations came from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has been holed up in the transit area of a Moscow airport for more than a month, despite U.S. calls for Russian authorities to turn him over.

WikiLeaks founder Assange surfaced again as a major player in the newest scandal, this time offering aid to Snowden in eluding authorities while seeking asylum abroad.

Assange has been living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for more than a year to avoid extradition to Sweden, where two women have accused him of sexual assault. He fears that if sent there, he could be extradited to the United States, where he would likely face charges related to the classified documents published by his website.

The cases of Manning and Snowden illustrate the difficulties of keeping government secrets at a time the Internet makes it easy to disseminate them quickly and widely. In addition, more people are granted access to classified data.

(Writing by Scott Malone; editing by Gunna Dickson)

http://news.yahoo.com/u-soldier-braces-judges-verdict-wikileaks-case-090713484.html

Army is pressed on why it kept trusting Manning

DAVID DISHNEAU and PAULINE JELINEK, 12/19/11

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — An Army investigator says he found more than 10,000 State Department cables and other classified material on a computer used by an intelligence analyst charged with giving those secrets to WikiLeaks.

In the most damaging testimony heard at the pretrial hearing at Fort Meade, Special Agent David Shaver said Sunday the files were linked to the user profile of the defendant, Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Shaver says he also found assessments of Guantanamo Bay detainees and several versions of a 2007 helicopter attack video that WikiLeaks also posted.

Manning's lawyer will cross-examine Shaver when the hearing resumes Monday.

http://news.yahoo.com/army-pressed-why-kept-trusting-manning-212500825.html

美國政府官員以前批評陳水扁和台獨，眾人皆知。美國官員罵人那裏需要借他人之口。

事實上，美國政府一向進行兩手策略，沒有美國政府(和中國政府)過去的支持，台獨怎麼會有前幾年的勢力。只是中國崛起之後，美國的政策不願意公開和中國齟齬，而陳水扁因為自己的利益，不再配合演出，惹得美國官員跳腳而已。

就算美國官員罵陳水扁和台獨，也是基於美國本身利益的考量。這是邱吉爾說的：

大英帝國沒有永久的朋友，也沒有永久的敵人，只有大英帝國的利益。

wikileaks的"解密"動作是最近發生的事，從標題的"藉"字看，好像美國"還在"罵陳水扁或台獨。這是我的重點。

本文於 修改第 1 次

這個標題的邏輯有問題。與現實也難以印證。

首先，陳水扁不但已卸任，而且已是階下囚。美國政府官員還理他幹嘛?吃撐了?

其次，我不認為wikileaks是美國政府的工具。這個事件和Assange這個人都不在美國掌握或控制之中。

Michael Moore, other high-profile individuals offer support to Assange

Brett Michael Dykes

Even though Julian Assange was passed over by Time magazine for its "Person of the Year" honor, the WikiLeaks founder  remains the international person of the moment. And naturally, that means he's also become the darling of some bold-faced names along the way — famous folk who hail his role as a thorn in the side of the world's power establishment.

For example, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore helped to fund Assange's release from a British jail. In addition to contributing money for Assange's bail, Moore explained that he was extending him "the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving."

Moore said that he thinks that if a site with the influence and reach of WikiLeaks had been around a decade ago, the course of American history would be very different.

"We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead," Moore wrote on his website. "Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have been able to pull it off. The only reason they thought they could get away with it was because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy. That guarantee has now been ripped from them, and I hope they are never able to operate in secret again."

[Related: Assange's Internet dating profile surfaces]

Addressing the problem some might have with his actions considering that rape charges are currently hanging over Assange's head in Sweden, Moore insisted that people shouldn't be "naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey." He added, "Please -- never, ever believe the 'official story.' "

British socialite Jemima Khan -- perhaps best known in the United States for having once dated actor Hugh Grant -- is another outspoken Assange supporter. In an op-ed for The Guardian, Khan explained why she's offering her time and money to "provide surety for an alleged rapist, a man I have never met."

Assange has not even been charged, let alone convicted. Swedish prosecutors do not have to produce any evidence that he committed the alleged sexual offences to justify the warrant. On the basis of the allegations that I heard read out in court, the evidence seems feeble, but I concede that I don't know the full facts. Neither does Assange. Stockholm's chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, who heard the evidence against Assange in August, threw the case out of court, saying: "I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape."

That is not the reason I was there. I was there because I believe that this is about censorship and intimidation. The timing of these rehashed allegations is highly suspicious, coinciding with the recent WikiLeaks revelations and reinvigorated by a right-wing Swedish politician. There are credible rumours that this is a holding charge while an indictment is being sought in secret for his arrest and extradition to the US. An accusation of rape is the ultimate gag. Until proved otherwise, Assange has done nothing illegal, yet he is behind bars.

There is a fundamental injustice here. There are calls for the punishment (execution even) of the man who has reported war crimes, but not for those that perpetrated or sanctioned them.

Also among the celebrity backers of Assange is Bianca Jagger, the activist former wife of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. Jagger, like Khan, was present at Assange's bail hearing and, like Moore and Khan, contributed money to secure his release. Her Twitter stream abounds with pro-Assange tweets; in one typical offering, she writes that she fears the Swedish authorities charging Assange have a "hidden agenda" and that his legal saga "is turning into persecution, rather than prosecution."

In addition to winning influential friends, it sounds like Assange may have scored some luxurious accommodations upon his release from jail; he's expected to be bivouacked at Ellingham Hall, an elegant 10-bedroom Georgian mansion owned by Vaughan Smith, a restaurateur and funder of independent journalism.

Not surprisingly, Assange's detractors on the right are taking frequent aim at a well-flogged rhetorical adversary -- the "limousine liberals" of the entertainment industry.

"I agree that there are important speech issues involved here, but I think it really has far more to do with the fact that Hollywood types love celebrity, danger and anti-Americanism," conservative muckraker and Sarah Palin ally John Ziegler told Fox News. "Assange now represents all three of those."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101215/ts_yblog_thelookout/michael-moore-other-high-profile-individuals-offer-support-to-assange

開欄文的標題可視為意譯。我在此正式表示支持wikileaks解除美國外交電文機密性的行動。

美國政府的行為及其唆使財團所採取的動作，已接近違反言論自由的行徑。理應譴責。