Tag Archives | Bradley Manning

Activists Sign Petition to Award Bradley Manning Nobel Peace Prize

By on April 6, 2013 in News 0

He certainly deserves it more than Obama.  Norman Soloman writes at the Antiwar.com Blog:

During the last week of March, more than 30,000 people signed a petition urging the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Bradley Manning. While the numbers continue to mount on the petition website, so do the comments from individual signers.

Thousands have already written personal notes to explain their support for the petition. I hope the Nobel committee reads the comments carefully when the petition arrives in Oslo later this spring.

As a U.S. Army private — seeing massive evidence of official deception, human rights abuses and flagrant killing of civilians — Bradley Manning did not just follow orders. Instead, he became a whistleblower, supplying vast troves of documents to WikiLeaks, exposing duplicity that had enormous impacts from Iraq and Afghanistan to Egypt and Tunisia.

Manning, now 25 years old, could be in prison for the rest of his life.

… Read the rest

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Pfc. Bradley E. Manning’s Statement for the Providence Inquiry

By on March 17, 2013 in News 5

By Pfc. Bradley Manning, published at alexaobrien.com:

This statement below was read by Private First Class Bradley E. Bradley at a providence inquiry for his formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications. This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O’Brien at the Article 39(a) session of United States v. Pfc. Bradley Manning on February 28, 2013 at Fort Meade, MD, USA.

Judge Lind: Pfc. Manning you may read your statement.

Pfc. Bradley Manning: Yes, your Honor. I wrote this statement in the confinement facility. The following facts are provided in support of the providence inquiry for my court martial, United States v. Pfc. Bradley E. Manning.

Personal Facts.

I am a twenty-five year old Private First Class in the United States Army currently assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, HHC, US Army Garrison (USAG), Joint Base Myer, Henderson Hall, Fort Meyer, Virginia.

… Read the rest

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Audio Recording Of Bradley Manning Speaking At Military Tribunal Leaked

By on March 14, 2013 in News 18

Despite a strict ban on recordings and transcripts at the secretive proceedings, the Freedom of Press Foundation has gotten a hold of a covertly-made tape of Manning’s full speech to the court explaining his motivation for leaking classified government materials. He remarks:

“I am the type of person who likes to know how things work. And, as an analyst, this means I always want to figure out the truth. Unlike other analysts within the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, I was not satisfied with just scratching the surface and producing canned or cookie cutter assessments. I wanted to know why something was the way it was, and what we could to correct or mitigate a situation.”

“I began to become depressed with the situation that we [the U.S. military] found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year…we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists…[I wanted] society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment everyday.”

“I knew that if I continued to assist the Baghdad Federal Police in identifying the political opponents of Prime Minister al-Maliki, those people would be arrested and in the custody of the Special Unit of the Baghdad Federal Police and very likely tortured and not seen again for a very long time – if ever.”

“I read more of the diplomatic cables published on the Department of State Net Centric Diplomacy.

… Read the rest

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Bradley Manning Says He Tried To Leak To New York Times And Washington Post Before WikiLeaks

By on March 1, 2013 in News 1

The mainstream media as a dead end for information, via the Guardian:

Bradley Manning has revealed to his court-martial at Fort Meade, Maryland, that he tried to leak US state secrets to the Washington Post, New York Times and Politico before he turned in frustration to the new anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

Manning, the US solider accused of the biggest leak of state secrets in US history, read out a 35-page statement to the court that contained new detail on how he came to download and then transmit a massive trove of secrets to WikiLeaks. It contains the bombshell disclosure that he wanted to go to mainstream American media but found them impenetrable.

Manning also gave insight into the ethical reasons that he had for making such an enormous breach of military orders. Referring to the war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, he said he felt they would reveal the “true costs of war.”

… Read the rest

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Bradley Manning For President!

By on December 4, 2012 in News 9

Well he wants to run for public office, so why not the highest? Brian Bennett reports for the LA Times:

If he doesn’t spend the rest of his life in prison, Pfc. Bradley Manning wants go to college and perhaps run for public office, his lawyer, David E. Coombs, told supporters of the former Army intelligence analyst.

Manning is accused of illegally giving hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and classified reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the website WikiLeaks. He faces 22 criminal charges and could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

“He’s confident things will turn out OK for him,” Coombs said Monday, standing in a wooden pulpit in the All Souls Church Unitarian, in front of two large posters printed with Manning’s photograph and the words “Free Bradley.”

Coombs described Manning, 24, as “very encouraged” by the way the pretrial hearings in his case are going.

… Read the rest

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Bradley Manning and the trial of the United States Military

By on December 2, 2012 in News 2

via chycho

Bradley Manning is arguably one of the most important figures to emerge on the political landscape this century, both to those who admire his ‘bravery’ and to those who despise his ‘treachery’.

Manning has been accused of leaking over 250,000 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables and approximately 500,000 army reports, as well as secret videos of air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which journalists and civilians, mainly women and children, were shown being massacred by the U.S. military. These leaks have been dubbed Cablegate (referring to the diplomatic cables), and the Iraq War logs and the Afghan War Diary (referring to the army reports). The consequences of these leaked documents has been profound:

“The material that Bradley Manning is alleged to have leaked has highlighted astonishing examples of U.S. subversion of the democratic process around the world, systematic evasion of accountability for atrocities and killings, and many other abuses.

… Read the rest

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Bradley Manning’s Defense Claims U.S. Military is Withholding Evidence on His Innocence

By on May 28, 2012 in News 3

Bradley ManningEd Pilkington reports in the Guardian:

Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of being behind the biggest leak of state secrets in US history, is being denied a fair trial because the army is withholding from him crucial information that might prove his innocence or reduce his sentence, his defence team is arguing.

With Manning’s court-martial approaching in September, his legal team has released details of what they claim is a shocking lack of diligence on the part of the military prosecutors in affording him his basic constitutional rights.

The stakes are high, with Manning facing possible life imprisonment for a raft of charges that include “aiding the enemy”.

Manning’s main civilian lawyer, David Coombs, has filed a motion with the military court in Fort Meade, Maryland, that sets out a catalogue of delays and inconsistencies in the army’s handling of the case. In particular, he claims the government has failed to disclose key evidence that could help Manning defend himself against the charges.

… Read the rest

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Bradley Manning’s Leaks Irrelevant to “Aiding Enemy” Charge, States Military Commission

By on April 27, 2012 in News 13
scap

Since 1996 the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel has voted to declassify at least part of 65 percent of documents it regulated.

Via the Internet Chronicle:

Thursday morning at Fort Meade, Maryland, government attorneys continued day three of pretrial hearings that began April 24 in the case of Army Private Bradley Manning, awaiting court-martial after having been accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of secret-clearance documents. The government submitted reconsideration motions with two classified attachments, and key, a sole judge asserted that the effects of Private Manning’s leaks do not bear on his receiving an “aiding the enemy” charge.

Members of the public who had seen earlier parts of the trial described a video presentation by the prosecution and recounted the contents of the video, which one woman described as the speech of a man in “traditional Middle Eastern” garments, praising “Allah” for WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of files from the State and Defense Departments.  This video fit into the prosecution’s insistence on an—relative to the former Army intelligence specialist’s other charges—egregious “aiding the enemy” charge, which a ruling yesterday evening revealed would stick.… Read the rest

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Obama’s Crackdown On Military Whistleblowers

By on February 13, 2012 in News 26

Free Bradley billboardWhen it comes to abuses, the government is using severe punishment of high-profile whistleblowers as a method of encouraging silence, TomDispatch writes:

On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.

The Obama administration has already charged more people—six—under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined. (Prior to Obama, there were only three such cases in American history.)

By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.

… Read the rest

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