Thanks to Pvt Bradley Manning we have a Wikileaks, which has blown the cover of “secrecy” which gave arrogant regimes, including our own, the perfect cover to exploit its citizens and run away with the loot
Is he a traitorIJ Or a heroIJ A little naive, but a good-intentioned whistleblower, as his attorney would sayIJ Or, as the prosecutors would insist, someone who was hell-bent on aiding America’s enemies by dumping hundreds of thousands of classified documents on the InternetIJ
Three years after he was arrested in Iraq on charges of turning over to Wikileaks some 700,000 government and military files in the biggest leak of classified information in American history, US Army Pfc. (Private First Class) Bradley Manning now faces his court-martial. Having already pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges slapped on him, the 25-year-old Manning faces up to 20 years in prison. If he is convicted of the more charge of aiding the enemy, he could be jailed for life without parole.
As the court-martial began at the secluded Fort Meade in Maryland this week in what is being regarded as the most spectacular case of its kind, groups of protesters rallied in support of Manning even as mainstream America appeared unconcerned about his travails. Some reports said Manning was receiving far more sympathy abroad than at home. But the supporters thronging Fort Meade were a committed lot. Representing an assortment of organisations, they carried a wide range of placards. “Does America have a conscienceIJ” posed one. “Deconstruct the truth,” commanded another. “Manning jailed for exposing war crimes,” asserted a third one. One of Manning’s keen supporters is Daniel Ellsberg, who back in 1971 had triggered a major controversy by passing on to The New York Times the top-secret Pentagon Papers relating to the Vietnam War.
Inside the military court at Fort Meade one was treated to starkly contrasting portrayals of the Manning. Capt. Joe Morrow, the military prosecutor, charged that the young man craved notoriety, so he put his fellow soldiers at risk by leaking the classified information, some of which, he asserted, was later found during the raid that killed Osama bin laden. Morrow was emphatic that the prosecution would prove that Manning knew what he was doing when he put the information “in the hands of the enemy”. As he put it, “This is a case about what happens when arrogance meets access to sensitive information.”
Defence lawyer David Coombs termed his client a young whistleblower who thought his actions could change the world. “He was young. He was a little naive in believing that the information that he selected could actually make a difference,” Coombs told the military judge, Col. Denise lind. He dwelt on what led Manning, who served as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, to do what he did. In Iraq on Christmas Eve 2009, an explosive projectile narrowly missed an American convoy but struck a car with an Iraqi family inside. Manning could not forget about the civilians hurt and killed in the attack and decided that he needed to do something to make a difference in the world, the attorney said, suggesting Manning was “not the typical soldier”.
In February, when he pleaded guilty to 10 of the charges, Manning had admitted to leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks. The materials included diplomatic communications, Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, and video footage of a 2007 US helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed civilians. Manning claimed that he released the material to Wikileaks to expose the American military’s “bloodlust” and disregard for human life in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said at the time that he passed on information that “upset” or “disturbed” him, but didn’t give Wikileaks anything that might harm the United States if it were made public.
A large number of documents that he turned over to Wikileaks were diplomatic cables between the US missions across the world and the State Department headquarters in Washington. “I believe that these cables would not damage the United States. However, I believed these cables could be embarrassing,” Manning said.
Denver Nicks, who has authored a book, titled PRIVATE: Bradley Manning, Wikileaks and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History, argues that Manning’s leak didn’t reveal the country’s most sensitive secrets. “None of the information he sent to Wikileaks was classified Top Secret and some of it-like the famous Collateral Murder apache helicopter video-wasn’t classified at all,” Nicks writes in Time magazine.
If Manning’s leak was the biggest-ever, it was just because he joined the Army in the age of big data and the collaborative ethos of the Internet, Nicks says and goes on to cite a comment by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan that with the Cold War over and the Internet gaining steam, “Secrecy is for losers.”
Adrian lomo, a convicted computer hacker who had alerted the authorities about Manning’s leak of documents, was one of the witnesses examined this week. lomo, however, told the military court that Manning had never said that he wanted to help US adversaries by releasing the material.
But it is still early days in the Manning trial. Indications are that the trial could stretch for three months, with the prosecution planning to call as many as 140 witnesses in order to secure a clear conviction in the 12 pending charges, notably the ones dealing with aiding the enemy and violations of the Espionage Act. The prosecution says it will show that Manning effectively put US military secrets into the hands of the enemy, including the former Al Qaeda chief.
The prosecution line has prompted some of Manning’s supporters to criticise the dual approach in dealing with this case and the one in which US soldier Robert Bales has been allowed a plea deal that will let him escape the death penalty despite his grave crime of gunning down 16 Afghan civilians. They are clearly worked up over the prospect of Manning possibly receiving the same punishment of life imprisonment as Bales, despite not having caused any loss of life.