Alleged Wikileaks Mole Indicted
PrintA 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst accused of having leaked classified information to Wikileaks was indicted on Monday. Private First Class Bradley E. Manning has been in military custody in Kuwait ever since his arrest on May 29. He allegedly leaked a controversial video of a U.S. Apache helicopter attacking a group of Iraqi civilians. Much to the military chagrin's, the video surfaced on Wikileaks in April. The video revealed that the attack occurred after the pilot confused a lensman for a RPG-toting insurgent. The ensuing fusillade accounted for the deaths of two Reuters employees.
Manning now faces two criminal charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “The first charge, under Article 92 of the UCMJ, is for violating a lawful Army regulation by transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system,” reads a United States Division Center news release. The other charge, under Article 134, pertains to the unauthorized transfer of such classified data to third parties.
“The command will appoint an officer to preside over an Article 32 investigation, which is similar to a civilian grand jury hearing. The investigating officer will make findings and recommendations that the chain of command considers in determining whether to refer the case to trial by court-martial.”
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Xiongrey
July 08, 2010 at 5:44am
A Soldier's duty is all about keeping secrets. Not in the conspiracy sort of way. A Soldier kills so you never have to know what its like. A Soldier losses his best friend so you never have to know what its like. A Soldier has to live with the regret of a wrong decision so you never have to know what its like. The people that believe that this private did right are the same people that think piracy is not stealing because all information should be free. These same people are the ones that meet a Soldier and ask him what it was like to kill someone. If the Soldier were to tell you, that would defeat the purpose of him serving. To live and die with information and secrets so the general population will never have to know the truth. Its not a conspiracy, Its a sacrifice Soldiers make. If you want to know the truth, Volunteer!
johnnyathm1
July 08, 2010 at 3:13am
Bottom line folks...As a member of the united states military with a security clearance, he violated his user agreement, not to mention his breach of internal security. Installing unauthorized software on a secured government computer for a personal agenda, put the integrity of the network as a whole in jeopardy. His actions, be it directly or indirectly, put lives at risk. Regardless of his intentions, the violation of trust in his service, security of his station and faith of his comrades is alone...enough to justify a court martial. Do you think we are dealing with children over here? Grow up people.
Yusonice
July 07, 2010 at 2:30pm
What has america become? Someone did something right and the military did wrong but who was fucking punished?
Arrowdodger
July 07, 2010 at 7:26pm
Military didn't do anything wrong, they were following procedure. Don't like it? Don't walk around where troops are taking fire with guns and rpgs.
Trooper_One
July 07, 2010 at 11:58am
This kid is a patriot and did the right thing, even though he might not have the intention.
Had he not exposed this feed, this incident would've been swept under the rug like nothing happened.
Sorry, but the USA have done its share of wrongs.
Arrowdodger
July 07, 2010 at 7:24pm
Huh? This happened like 3 years ago. It was already in the news. The military never "swept it under the rug". There was already an investigation, it's long since been competed. I fail to see how leaking over a quarter million classified documents is seen as patriotic.
zodi
July 07, 2010 at 9:39am
He showed the world (ok you tube viewers) that war is not clean and its not only the bad guys that end up dead.
There is no clean kills. War is War civillians die as well as the bad/good guys. When will the Military quit trying to put "a good face" on such a horrible thing and punishing there own troops for showing what really happened.
Call it what it was....Oops we screwed up...and yes civillians get injured or killed.
PawBear
July 07, 2010 at 8:41am
Hundreds of jounalists embeded with troops on both sides have been killed or wounded. There's no story there. Sadly what everyone misses is the death and wounding of the what appears to be innocent good Samaritans at the end. Such is the fog of war.
This guy is a traitor, though his story shows just how incredibly lax our military security really is.
"Either we conform the Truth to our desires or we conform our desires to the Truth."
highsidednb
July 07, 2010 at 9:12am
Bradley E Manning is a patriot. The Reuters journalists weren't embedded. The leaked video shows indiscriminate killing of civilians by trigger-happy fuckups in our Private Pyle military.
Since Vietnam the military has done everything it could to keep its image clean despite the fact that it is full of incompetents who through malice or negligence waste our money and kill civilians. Without proper oversight and transparency, the US military will continue to bumble along like it has for the last 10 years.
The people who should be arrested and tried in a military court aren't Manning, it's the guys in the Apache and their commanding officers.
mesiah
July 07, 2010 at 4:29pm
You are an idiot. You obviously have first hand experience with what war really is... We glorify wars in the past. We watch movies about these tough guys fearlessly taking down hundreds of enemies. But this isn't a movie. This is the real world. War is, and always has been fought by a bunch of kids scared shittless that they will never see their friends or family again. These are our sons and daughters, most of whom joined the military because they love our country. You take these kids and set them down in a city where the good guys and the bad guys all look the same. A place where someone could be pulling a camera or a grenade out of their bag. A place where a snap decision could mean a hand full of dead possible insurgence or an entire marketplace of civilians and military alike wiped out by a bomb. We are all human, and sometimes we make the wrong choice. This is certainly a case of that.
You can fault the military and our government all you want for not releasing this to the public. But don't get all holier than thou talking about trigger happy psychos wasting tax payer dollars by gunning down civilians. These are kids that made a snap decision and were wrong. I am sure they were very upset about it. They have to live with that decision the rest of their lives. I'm sure they were punished for their mistakes. Whether or not the military ever planned on making the incident public I don't know. Plenty of people are shot and killed by the military every week, and we rarely hear about it. Personally, I don't really think its any of my business. I would however hope that the family of those involved were allowed the whole truth.
US_Ranger
July 07, 2010 at 11:10am
Spoken like a person who's never been in the military. Please highsidednb, tell us how it really is.
zepontiff
July 07, 2010 at 9:38am
Mr. Manning is no patriot. A mistake was made here obviously but I can't fault these guys too much as I type away in my comfy air conditioned office. To have one of their "buddies" go and leak a video of their mistake is a stab in the back. Keep in mind we have the utmost respect for our grandfathers from WW2 and they practiced total war with indiscriminate bombing on civilian populations. I'm guessing the rest of the country is more on my side of this fence as well as this "story" blew over pretty fast without much fanfare.
tri8gman
July 07, 2010 at 11:19am
The problem here was "What happened to these guys?" "(shrug) Dunno!" (video leaks) "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?" "UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...."
And to add insult to injury (at least at first, I haven't read anything to the contrary) the Pentagon was unapologetic. At least these soldiers (or at least their commanding officer) had the courtesy to apologize in a letter. Yes, people understand this is war, but it helps to acknowledge when a mistake has been made. We all know you don't yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, and their are similar procedural considerations when filming war.
Also, that freeze frame gives me more of a "Yeah, I can see that" perspective. It's a tripod, but you can't screw around - I always thought they were talking about the guy with that SLR camera bag at his hip when they mentioned "RPGs and AKs."
Also, I don't think you understand the meaning of "patriotism." It's not about siding with your buddies who may or may not want to keep a mistake from being known - it's more about doing the right thing for your country (that's it's PEOPLE - not it's organizations). As mentioned before, those buddies did indeed accept their mistake, but it isn't their job to inform - they trust their superiors for that and those superiors failed.
I hope you also know that these days "patriot" is such a sickening tool of control - meant to cause blind emotions when people need to examine the situations at hand.
machew100
July 07, 2010 at 12:17pm
Yes, at least they were given the green light for what they did, they weren't just like "CMON CMON FUCK EM ALL, DO WHAT'S RIGHT, TURN US LOOSE!!!!" I'm sure they've seen their friends killed by Al Qaeda and such, so it goes without saying that they have a drive to A) take any chance they get to kill the enemy B) do their job and report anything suspicious to higher command and quite possibly C) get revenge. However, they still consulted higher-ups and it was still okay. It was seriously impossible to see the kids in the van, even when the video was zoomed in a buttload, you still could barely even make out that it was a "small person", and it's hard to tell that an SLR bag isn't a C4 satchel bag or some other explosives bag. Another point is that those journalists knew what danger they were getting into if they're walking around with multiple insurgents, armed to the teeth walking through the streets not giving two shits about who sees them. They weren't being sneaky, I'm sure they knew the military was in the general area, but they still walk around toting guns around neighborhoods in the middle of a warzone. Was that too smart on the journalists part? No not really. Do journalists deserve to die? Of course not. Were the soldiers justified? You could argue it either way.
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