Guardian name Manning as source of their leak

[Happy Face 29]

The army private who is accused of downloading the material in Iraq had “unrestricted access” to millions of classified documents “with virtually no supervision or safeguards”, according to a publication obtained by The Daily Telegraph.

 

The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, of The Guardian, name Specialist Bradley Manning, the soldier being held in a US military jail, as the alleged source of the information which was passed on to The Guardian by WikiLeaks.

 

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has repeatedly refused to confirm that Mr Manning was the source of the information.

 

Last night Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, defended the decision to name Mr Manning as the source of the material, saying it was a matter of record that the soldier had openly admitted to being the source of the data.

 

Mr Manning, 23, was charged last year with the unauthorised disclosure of classified material and faces a jail term of several decades if he is tried and convicted.

 

The book also discloses that Mr Assange wore a wig and dressed as a woman as he tried to evade the media after the release of the US embassy cables last November.

 

The Guardian and WikiLeaks previously worked closely together to release the sensitive American documents but the website is now accusing the newspaper of betrayal over its decision to go public with information about their relationship.

 

The website and the Guardian stopped co-operating following a disagreement over the handling of the story.

 

WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, which is published this week, devotes two chapters to the means by which Mr Manning leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, including US diplomatic cables and military logs relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

At Camp Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, the army intelligence worker was issued with two US laptops, one connected to the US State Department and Department of Defense, the other connected to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, through which secret communications were sent.

 

“From his first day at Hammer, he was puzzled by the lax security,” the authors write. “The door was bolted with a five-digit cipher lock, but all you had to do was knock on the door and you’d be let in.” The soldier is said to have downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents on to computer CDs labelled “Lady Gaga”.

 

He is alleged to have turned to WikiLeaks because he had been impressed by its release of 500,000 pager messages intercepted on the day of the September 11 attacks on New York in 2001, which “made him feel comfortable that he, too, could come forward to WikiLeaks without fear of being identified”.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...ook-claims.html

 

Scumbags

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

Wait a minute HF. Do they name Manning as the source, or the alleged source? If it's the latter, this is no different to what Assange has been doing and won't implicate him, unless I'm mistaken?

[manc-mag 1]

I can see what you're doing there, KSA. Don't think I can't.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/0...ning-uk-citizen

 

The British government is under pressure to take up the case of Bradley Manning, the soldier being held in a maximum security military prison in Virginia on suspicion of having passed a massive trove of US state secrets to WikiLeaks, on the grounds that he is a UK citizen.

 

Amnesty International tonight called on the government to intervene on Manning's behalf and demand that the conditions of his detention, which the organisation has called "harsh and punitive", are in line with international standards. Amnesty's UK director, Kate Allen, said: "His Welsh parentage means the UK government should demand that his 'maximum custody' status does not impair his ability to defend himself, and we would also like to see Foreign Office officials visiting him just as they would any other British person detained overseas and potentially facing trial on very serious charges."

 

Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, which provides legal assistance to those facing capital punishment and secret imprisonment, likened the conditions under which Manning is being held to Guantánamo Bay. "The government took a principled stance on Guantánamo cases even for British residents, let alone citizens, so you would expect it to take the same stance with Manning."

 

Manning is a UK citizen by descent from his Welsh mother, Susan. Government databases on births, deaths and marriages show that she was born Susan Fox in Haverfordwest in 1953. She married a then US serviceman, Brian Manning, stationed at a military base near the city and they had a daughter, Casey, in the same year. Bradley was born in Oklahoma in 1987.

 

Bradley was born in the US and is thus a US citizen. But under the British Nationality Act of 1981 anyone born outside the UK after 1 January 1983 who has a mother who is a UK citizen by birth is themself British by descent.

 

"Nationality is like an elastic band: it stretches to one generation born outside the UK to a British parent. And that makes Bradley Manning British," said Alison Harvey, head of the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association in London.

 

So far, however, Manning's British status has not impinged itself upon the UK authorities. The British embassy in Washington said it had not received any requests to visit Manning in jail. "It hasn't crossed our path yet," an official said.

 

The issue of the soldier's nationality has been bubbling furiously on Twitter in recent days and has been taken up by the UK branch of the Bradley Manning supporters network.

 

Manning has been held in the brig of Quantico marine base in Virginia since last July, having been arrested in Iraq where he was stationed as a US army intelligence analyst two months previously. He is alleged to have been the source of several WikiLeaks exposés of US state secrets, including the massive trove of embassy cables released in November.

 

He has been charged with illegally obtaining 150,000 secret US government cables and handing more than 50 of them to an unauthorised person. Yet campaigners say the conditions in which he is being held are wholly disproportionate.

 

He was recently put on suicide watch for two days, in which he was stripped to his underpants, against the advice of prison psychiatrists. He remains on a regulation that keeps him alone in his cell 23 hours a day and requires him to be checked every five minutes, and he is shackled hand and foot when he has visitors.

 

In December the UN launched an investigation into his treatment to see if it amounted to torture.

 

The Foreign Office said it was unable to release any information on an individual's nationality without that person's consent. In general terms, the government normally will not intervene in cases of dual nationality where the person is held in the other country, but there are exceptions on humanitarian grounds, including claims of inhumane treatment.

[Park Life 71]

We won't do jack.

[Kitman 2204]

We won't do jack.

 

Unless the Americans are suspicious jack's been a naughty boy, in which case we'll arrrest and extradite him so he can be detained in some hellhole without trial

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of providing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, will no longer be held in solitary confinement.

 

The Army announced Thursday that Manning was transferred last week from the Quantico Marine base in Virginia to a detention center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

 

At the Kansas facility, Manning will be housed with other medium-security military prisoners who are awaiting trial. He will have his own 80-square-foot cell, wear standard prison clothing and have access to communal areas during the day, according to the AP.

 

His new living conditions represent a drastic improvement from how he was treated at Quantico, where he was held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, "stripped naked each night and given a suicide-proof smock in which to sleep," USA Today reports.

 

The move suggests that the military no longer believes that Manning is a suicide risk, which was the official reason that military officials gave for his isolation and treatment at Quantico.

 

Manning’s attorneys and supporters called those conditions inhuman and excessively harsh, and Amnesty International said that the military’s treatment of Manning may have violated his human rights. His transfer comes slightly more than a week after a U.N. torture investigator complained that he was denied a request to meet with Manning in private at Quantico.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/04/29/...y_army_say.html

[Park Life 71]

We won't do jack.

 

Unless the Americans are suspicious jack's been a naughty boy, in which case we'll arrrest and extradite him so he can be detained in some hellhole without trial

 

[Happy Face 29]

 

Unauthorized leak of Bradley Manning's statement to the court.

[Happy Face 29]

A Salute to Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, As We Hear His Words for the First Time

 

 

Today, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that I co-founded and of which I'm on the board, has published an audio recording of Bradley Manning's speech to a military court from two weeks ago, in which he gives his reasons and motivations behind leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks.

 

Whoever made this recording, and I don't know who the person is, has done the American public a great service. This marks the first time the American public can hear Bradley Manning, in his own voice explain what he did and how he did it.

 

After listening to this recording and reading his testimony, I believe Bradley Manning is the personification of the word whistleblower.

 

Secrecy surrounding trial

Manning faces some of exact same charges I faced forty two years ago when I leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and eighteen other papers. The only difference is I was a civilian, so I could stay out of jail on bond while the trial was going on, and was able to talk to the media throughout. I took responsibility for what I had done on the day of my arrest, and I was able to explain why I did it.

 

But thanks to the judge's rulings in Manning's case, the public has barely heard anything from Manning at all. No official transcripts of the proceeding are released to the public, and when documents like the judge's court orders are released, it is weeks after the fact -- and only in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

 

Now I hope the American people can see Manning in a different light. In 1971, I was able to give the media my side of the story, and it is long overdue Manning is able to do the same. As Manning has now done, I stipulated as to all the facts for which I was accused. And I did that for several reasons, and I suspect that Manning had the same motives.

 

First, it was to exonerate a number of people who were suspected of helping me, like former Defense Department colleagues Mort Halperin, Leslie Gelb and others. I was able to state flatly they did not know about the release in the midst of President Nixon's anxious desire to indict several of them.

 

And Manning, in saying he took responsibility for the leaks and describing in great detail how he did it, was able to say Julian Assange and Wikileaks had nothing to do with his decision to leak. WikiLeaks had not giving him any special means beyond what a normal newspaper would do.

 

Now, there's really no excuse for the grand jury chasing Julian Assange for conspiracy to commit espionage to continue. If they're not going to indict the New York Times--and there is no constitutional basis for them to do so--there's no reason for them to investigate or indict Assange or WikiLeaks.

 

As the former general counsel of the New York Times James Goodale once said, "Charging Julian Assange with 'conspiracy to commit espionage' would effectively be setting a precedent with a charge that more accurately could be characterized as 'conspiracy to commit journalism.'"

 

The second thing Manning did with his statement -- which you can finally hear today -- was to explain his motives (he could not do that while he was still putting the responsibility on the government -- by pleading not guilty -- to prove what he had done beyond a reasonable doubt).

 

They were the same motives I felt 42 years ago. We both felt the horror of reading about deceptive, and even criminal, activity. We both felt the public needed this information and should have had it years ago. So we both released classified documents about a bloody, hopeless war.

 

Such criminal, dangerous, and deceptive behavior by the government can only be changed if Congress and the public are informed of them. And when official secrecy allows the government to cover these facts up, the only way to bring them to the public is to break secrecy regulations.

 

Torture

Some of the most critical documents leaked by Manning revealed torture by the Iraqi government, which the US knew about, and according to the international treaty on torture, the US should have required investigations.

 

In fact, the Iraq war logs show hundreds of instances of cases of torture, and in every case, the soldiers were given the illegal order not to investigate.

 

In his statement to the court, Manning talks about an incident where he thought men who were apprehended shouldn't have been, and that they were being handed over to the Iraqis to possibly be tortured. He went to his superior and was told to forget about it.

 

Bradley Manning, by releasing this information, is the only solider who actually obeyed this law, the international treaty, and by extension, the Constitution.

 

Manning was discriminating

Critics have alleged that a major difference between my case and Manning's is that I was discriminating in what I leaked, while Manning wasn't. He just dumped some material that doesn't need to be out, they say. This is simply false.

 

First, it's important to point out most of the material he put out was unclassified. The rest was classified 'secret,' which is relatively low level. All of the Pentagon Papers was classified top secret.

 

But in a fact no one seems to observe from his statement, Manning was working within a "SCIF," which stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. To get into a SCIF, a soldier needs a clearance higher than top secret. This means he had access to the highest classified material, such as communications and signals intelligence. This means he could've put out information top secret and higher, and purposely chose not to do so.

 

Aiding the enemy

It's important to remember through all this that Manning has already pled guilty to ten charges of violating military regulations (few of which, if any would be civilian crimes) and faces twenty years in jail. Yet the prosecutors are still going ahead with the absurd charge of "aiding the enemy," a capital offense, of which the prosecutors are asking for life in prison.

 

Nixon could have brought that charge against me too. I was revealing wrongdoing by our government in a public way, and that information could have been read by our enemies in Vietnam. Of course, I never had that intent and Manning didn't either. We both leaked information to provoke a domestic debate about military force and government secrecy. And to say we did so to aid the enemy is absurd.

 

This charge could have huge effects on the free speech of anyone in the military and journalists across the country. Any op-ed that is critical of military tactics or any news story that exposes misdeeds of the government can potentially lead to a capital offense.

Worse, the charge purports to apply to anyone, not just the military. It's blatantly unconstitutional.

 

Peace Prize

For the third straight year, Manning has been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize by, among others, Tunisian parliamentarians. Given the role the WikiLeaks cables played in the Arab Spring, and their role in speeding up the end of the Iraq War, I can think of no one more deserving who is deserving of the peace prize.

 

He's also deserving of the Congressional Medal of Honor. This medal, awarded by Congress--and not the executive branch--is given to military personnel, who during wartime, do what they should do for their country and their comrades, at the greatest risk to themselves.

Of course, there have been many who shown great courage on the battlefield in Afghanistan and Iraq. But some have noted that we don't have the named heroes of the kind we did during World War I and World War II, such as Sergeant York or Audie Murphy.

 

I see a hero in these wars whose example should inspire others. His name Bradley Manning.

 

By Daniel Elsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers, the leak that caused significant embarrassment over vietnam and led to Watergate, The White House Tapes & Nixon's resignation.

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3887]

Never buying the Guardian again.

[Happy Face 29]

Had hoped to entice Parky out of the shadows

 

"Wolfy" must have been his death rattle

[Park Life 71]

Had hoped to entice Parky out of the shadows

 

"Wolfy" must have been his death rattle

 

Ready for duty Sir!

[Happy Face 29]

Barack Obama left behind hints of a progressive legacy. Unfortunately, despite his faith in our system and his positive track record on many issues over the last eight years, there have been very few permanent accomplishments.

 

This vulnerable legacy should remind us that what we really need is a strong and unapologetic progressive to lead us. What we need as well is a relentless grassroots movement to hold that leadership accountable.

 

On the night of 4 November 2008, Barack Obama was elected on a platform of “hope” and “change”. He was hailed as a “uniter” in an age of “dividers”. I experienced a political awakening that night. I watched as the hope that President Obama represented was tempered by the shocking passage of Proposition 8 by a majority of voters in California. This reversed a major marriage equality court victory from earlier that year.

 

Throughout his two terms in office, these types of contradictions would persist. Optimism and hope would be met with backlash and hate. He faced unparalleled resistance from his opponents, many of whom wanted him to fail.

 

I remember during his first inauguration, on an icy January morning in 2009. I sat on the floor of a military headquarters office in Fort Drum, New York. With a dusty overhead television showing the ceremony, I sat, working in support of a half dozen military officers. We had our weapons ready, and our rucksacks heavily packed. Selected as the active duty army unit to deploy to Washington DC in case of an emergency, we were prepared for rapid deployment.

 

 

Ironically, many of the officers and enlisted personnel that were selected for this security detail openly despised President Obama. The seething vitriol and hatred simmered quietly in that room. In retrospect, it was an ominous foreshadowing of things to come.

On domestic issues, his instinct, as former First Lady Michelle Obama explained at the Democratic national convention this past summer, was to “go high” when his opponents would “go low”. Unfortunately, no matter how “high” the former president aimed to be, his opponents aimed to undermine him anyway. There was absolutely no “low” that was too low to go.

Even when they agreed with him on policy, they resisted. For example, when it came to healthcare reform, Obama opened the debate starting with a compromise. His opponents balked. They refused to move an inch. When he would push for the concessions they asked for, they only dug in deeper in opposition. Even when he tried proposing a bill that had been proposed by opponents years earlier.

When it came to foreign policy, even though he was only carrying out the expanding national security policies of the previous administration, they would ceaselessly criticize him for being too weak, or too soft or too sympathetic. After months of comprise on his end, they never cooperated a single time.

In December 2009, I sat in a hot and stuffy plywood room outside Baghdad, Iraq, as President Obama made speeches. He argued that military action was necessary. An unusual statement to present while receiving the world’s most prestigious peace prize. Yet, the people around me still spoke about him quietly, with a strong criticism, and even sometimes, pure disgust.

In November 2012, when President Obama was re-elected, I sat in a civilian jail cell in suburban Baltimore, awaiting a court martial hearing. Surrounded by a different crowd of people, the excitement and elation of his re-election was genuine. Even among those being penalized merely for being disadvantaged or a minority. Even in those unbearably unfair circumstances, there was genuine hope, faith and trust in the president.

For eight years, it did not matter how balanced President Obama was. It did not matter how educated he was, or how intelligent he was. Nothing was ever good enough for his opponents. It was clear that he could not win. It was clear that, no matter what he did, in their eyes, he could not win.

In the aftermath of the deadly shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando that took the lives of nearly 50 queer and brown people, it took Obama over 300 words of his speech to acknowledge the queer community, and even then, as an abstract acronym.

Never did he acknowledge the particularly painful toll on the Puerto Rican and wider community that was also navigating through this horrific tragedy. Even in the midst of a shocking and horrific tragedy, he attempted to comprise with opponents who were uninterested and unwilling to meet him halfway.

Now, after eight years of attempted compromise and relentless disrespect in return, we are moving into darker times. Healthcare will change for the worse, especially for those of us in need. Criminalization will expand, with bigger prisons filled with penalized bodies – poor, black, brown, queer and trans people. People will probably be targeted because of their religion. Queer and trans people expect to have their rights infringed upon.

The one simple lesson to draw from President Obama’s legacy: do not start off with a compromise. They won’t meet you in the middle. Instead, what we need is an unapologetic progressive leader.

We need someone who is unafraid to be criticized, since you will inevitably be criticized. We need someone willing to face all of the vitriol, hatred and dogged determination of those opposed to us. Our opponents will not support us nor will they stop thwarting the march toward a just system that gives people a fighting chance to live. Our lives are at risk – especially for immigrants, Muslim people and black people.

We need to stop asking them to give us our rights. We need to stop hoping that our systems will right themselves. We need to actually take the reins of government and fix our institutions. We need to save lives by making change at every level.

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/25/compromise-doesnt-work-political-opponents-chelsea-manning

 

Clearly she doesn't hold a grudge against The Guardian

[ewerk 30559]

 

In an interview with the Australian current affairs programme The Project, the WikiLeaks founder also qualified his pledge to accept extradition to the US if Manning was granted clemency.

 

After Manning’s sentence was commuted last week, a member of Assange’s legal team said he would not go back on his word.

 

But Assange said in the pre-recorded interview with The Project’s host, Waleed Aly, that any possible extradition would be dependent on striking a deal with the US justice department.

 

“In the end, Barack Obama – wanting, I guess, to look tough – said that my offer had nothing to do with Chelsea Manning being granted clemency, so there is no quid pro quo,” he said.

 

Questioned by Aly over the apparent new terms in his offer to be extradited, Assange said he had not mentioned them before “because I’m not an idiot”.

 

“We had a major strategic victory in liberating Chelsea Manning … but, of course, saying I’m willing to accept extradition doesn’t mean I’m saying that I’m willing to be a complete idiot and throw all my lawyers away and so on,” he said.

 

“We are going to have a discussion with the DoJ about what that looks like. The ball is in their court.”

 

Assange said Obama had commuted Manning’s sentence to get back at him.

 

 

“What’s the result? It is going to make life hard for Assange because either he will be extradited to the US or we will show him [to be] a liar. Therefore, it is OK to pardon Chelsea Manning – that’s what happened.”