Posted on 06/07/2010 9:48:14 AM PDT by jazusamo
A U.S. Army intelligence analyst serving in Iraq has been arrested by federal officials for allegedly leaking classified information to the online whistleblower site Wikileaks, according to a Wired blog.
Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Md., is reportedly the source of the controversial video of a 2007 American helicopter strike that claimed the lives of several bystanders. Wikileaks published that video in April.
Manning reportedly became a target of the investigation after boasting of leaking more than a quarter of a million classified documents to former hacker Adrian Lamo, who reported him to the Army. Lamo claimed, via his Twitter account on Sunday evening, that he did so out of concern for national security.
"I outed Manning as an alleged leaker out of duty. I would never out an Ordinary Decent Criminal. There's a difference," Lamo tweeted. "I'm heartsick for Manning and his family. I hope they can forgive me some day for doing what I felt had to be done."
According to chat transcripts provided to Wired, Manning claimed to have collected and leaked a wide range of classified information to Wikileaks. They included a video showing the 2009 Garani airstrike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has said before it possesses, a classified Army document discussing Wikileaks as a security threat that the site published in March, and 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables.
“Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote, claiming the cables expose “almost criminal political back dealings."
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tweeted early Monday that "If Brad Manning, 22, is the 'Collateral Murder' & Garani massacre whistleblower then, without doubt, he's a national hero." He also referred to Lamo and Wired reporter Kevin Poulson, who broke the story, as "notorious felons, informers and manipulators."
Assange also claimed the Washington Post had the "Collateral Murder" video of the helicopter attack for more than a year but did not release it to the public.
The Pentagon on Monday released the following statement: "United States Division-Center is currently conducting an investigation of Spc. Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Md., who is deployed with 2nd Brigade 10th Mountain Division, in Baghdad, Iraq.
He was placed in pre-trial confinement for allegedly releasing classified information and is currently confined in Kuwait.
The Department of Defense takes the management of classified information very seriously because it affects our national security, the lives of our Soldiers, and our operations abroad. The results of the investigation will be released upon completion of the investigation."
My brother trained with this guy at Ft Huachuca - same MOS, my brother’s in Iraq right now and posted this story on his Facebook page yesterday saying how disgusted he was with this scumbag.
ping
I never saw Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 but from what I gather, he’d been counting on “scooping” the Bush re-election effort with some similar footage of abuse with different participants but the Abu Ghraib media coverage (of a criminal PROSECUTION which was already long underway) beat him to the punch.
Then hang him.
What was he? 98B? 98E?
E I think but I’m not sure. Whatever it was his training there has served him well and although he’s looking forward to getting home this summer he’s been proud of what he’s doing over there.
Yeah buddy.
LLS
Let me get this straight. The CRIMINAL turned in the traitor as TOOOO traitorish?
Thanks for the ping, KC. BTW, they are almost done with those barracks.
I wish I had picked up those buildings. Could have visited more.
As it turned out we got projects at Sill, Ft Lewis and Leonard Wood. I am in charge of Leonard Wood. May get more work there as the year progresses.
Say hi to your hubby for me and let us know what local SV gossip says on this.
Anyone who purposely leaks top-secret information which jeopardizes our national security should spend the rest of their lives in prison. And if any Americans or our allies get killed because of the leak, the leaker should be shot by a firing squad or hung by the neck until dead.
This is a clear case of a COMSEC failure for sure though.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s time to end this BS of military people leaking classified info to make a political statement. Fry ‘em.
Thanks and will do!
250,000 secret or higher docs leaked?
FWIW, "secret" documents out of the US Government bureaucracy are a dime a dozen and 99% of them are no more sensitive than a dry cleaning receipt for some high-ranking state department flunky.
They classify anything and everything in government these days precisely because they can, and they require security clearances for all manner of jobs that have little or nothing to do with any real issue of national security.
To put it another way, there are people who work at the Census Bureau that are required to have a "security clearance" for their job. Same with the Commerce Department, just about anything involved in international trade or economic numbers crunching (wouldn't want the masses to know that the government fudges economic indicators to make it look like the economy is doing better than it is, would we?). They even require a clearance for people who work in the travel offices that make hotel and rental car arrangements for low-level bureaucrats, meaning receipts from the Thrifty counter and the tiki bar at the Holiday Inn could technically be "classified."
So when they say this kid leaked 250,000 documents, I'd be willing to bet that over 249,000 them were meaningless pieces of bureaucratic crap that never merited classification in the first place. And the other 1,000 or so are probably politically embarrassing letters that show the complete ineptitude of Hildebeast's State Department.
Anyone who purposely leaks top-secret information which jeopardizes our national security should spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Fair enough, but I'm withholding judgment on this one until we know if what he leaked did that. The helicopter video is potentially embarrassing, depending on who you ask, but it isn't a threat to national security. So it all depends on the contents of the rest of the items he leaked.
If they contained secret information about troop placements and deployment plans, then yes. String him up. But the government also has a bad habit of classifying everything to the level of absurdity.
There is actually a reasonable chance in this case that "top secret" equals Hillary's receipt from the minibar at the Ritz.
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