WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

Private Manning’s Confidant
(Bill Keller, Opinion Essay, The New York Times, March 10, 2013)

In early 2010, Pfc. Bradley Manning methodically uploaded a digital mother lode of classified United States military and diplomatic documents to the Internet insurgents of WikiLeaks. As everyone knows, WikiLeaks made these secret archives available to a few major news outlets, including this one. Many illuminating and troubling stories were published, and Washington has been gnashing its teeth ever since.

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is, as far as we know, still hiding out in Ecuador’s embassy in London, afraid that he might be extradited for his part in this hemorrhage of secrets, though the only allegations outstanding against him involve accusations of sex crimes in Sweden. Meanwhile, Manning, a 25-year-old low-level intelligence geek, is in pretrial hearings at Fort Meade, Md. He has pleaded guilty to crimes carrying up to 20 years of prison time, and the government is piling on more charges, including Article 104 of the military code, “aiding the enemy,” which could get him life without parole.

In his statement to the military court, Manning said that before he fell in with the antisecrecy guerrillas at WikiLeaks, he tried to deliver his trove of stolen documents to The Washington Post and The New York Times. At The Post, he was put off when a reporter told him that before she could commit to anything she’d have to get a senior editor involved. At The Times, Manning said, he left a message on voice mail but never got a call back. It’s puzzling to me that a skilled techie capable of managing one of the most monumental leaks ever couldn’t figure out how to get an e-mail or phone message to an editor or a reporter at The Times, a feat scores of readers manage every day.

But what if he had? What if he had succeeded in delivering his pilfered documents to The Times? What would be different, for Manning and the rest of us?

First of all, I can say with some confidence that The Times would have done exactly what it did with the archive when it was supplied to us via WikiLeaks: assigned journalists to search for material of genuine public interest, taken pains to omit information that might get troops in the field or innocent informants killed, and published our reports with a flourish. The documents would have made news — big news.

But somewhat less of it. While in reality The Times and the public benefited from a collegial partnership with London’s Guardian and other papers that took part in the WikiLeaks fiesta, I’m pretty sure that if we had been the sole recipient we would not have shared Manning’s gift with other news organizations. That is partly for competitive reasons, but also because sharing a treasury of raw intelligence, especially with foreign news media, might have increased the legal jeopardy for The Times and for our source. So our exclusive would have been a coup for The Times, but something would have been lost. By sharing the database widely — including with a range of local news outlets that mined the material for stories of little interest to a global news operation — WikiLeaks got much more mileage out of the secret cables than we would have done.

If Manning had connected with The Times, we would have found ourselves in a relationship with a nervous, troubled, angry young Army private who was offering not so much documentation of a particular government outrage as a chance to fish in a sea of secrets. Having never met Manning (he was in custody by the time we got the WikiLeaks documents), I can only guess what that relationship would have been like. Complicated. Probably tense. We would, of course, have honored any agreement to protect his identity, though Manning was not so good at covering his own tracks. (He spilled the story of his leaking in long instant-messenger chats with an ex-hacker, who turned him in.) Once he was arrested, we’d surely have editorialized against the brutality of his solitary confinement — as The Times has already done — and perhaps protested the disturbing overkill of the “aiding the enemy” charge. (If Manning’s leak provided comfort to the enemy, then so does every news story about cuts in defense spending, or opposition to drone strikes, or setbacks in Afghanistan.) Beyond that, we’d have made sure Manning knew upfront that he was on his own, as we did with the last leaker of this magnitude, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame.

“When the government moved to prosecute Ellsberg, we felt no obligation to assist him,” Max Frankel, who was The Times’s Washington bureau chief at the time, recalled the other day. “He was committing an act of civil disobedience and presumably knew that required accepting the punishment. We were privately pleased that the prosecution overreached and failed, but we did not consider ourselves his partner in any way.”

The most important thing that would not be much different if The Times had been his outlet would be Manning’s legal liability. The law provides First Amendment protection for a free press, but not for those who take an oath to protect government secrets. This administration has a particular, chilling intolerance for leakers — and digital footprints make them easier to catch these days — but I can’t imagine that any administration would have hesitated to prosecute Manning.

But if Manning had been our direct source, the consequences might have been slightly mitigated. Although as a matter of law I believe WikiLeaks and The New York Times are equally protected by the First Amendment, it’s possible the court’s judgment of the leaker might be colored by the fact that he delivered the goods to a group of former hackers with an outlaw sensibility and an antipathy toward American interests. Will that cost Manning at sentencing time? I wonder. And it might explain the piling on of maximum charges. During pretrial, the judge, Col. Denise Lind, asked whether the prosecution would be pressing the same charges if Manning had leaked to The Times. “Yes, Ma’am,” was the reply. Maybe so. But I suspect the fact that Manning chose the anti-establishment WikiLeaks as his collaborator made the government more eager to add on that dubious charge of “aiding the enemy.”

If Manning had delivered his material to The Times, WikiLeaks would not have been able to post the unedited cables, as it ultimately did, heedless of the risk to human rights advocates, dissidents and informants named therein. In fact, you might not have heard of WikiLeaks. The group has had other middling scoops, but Manning put it on the map.

And, finally, if he had dealt with The Times, maybe we would better understand Bradley Manning. Lionized by WikiLeaks and his fan base as a whistle-blower and martyr, cast by his prosecutors as a villainous traitor, he has become dueling caricatures. Until the court proceedings, the only window into Manning’s psyche was the voluminous transcript of his online chats with the ex-hacker, Adrian Lamo, published by Wired magazine. It portrays a young man, in his own words, “emotionally fractured” — a gay man in an institution not hospitable to gays, fragile, lonely, a little pleased with his own cleverness, a little vague about his motives. His political views come across as inchoate. When asked, he has trouble recalling any specific outrages that needed exposing. His cause was “open diplomacy” or — perhaps in jest — “worldwide anarchy.”

At Fort Meade, Manning delivered a more coherent explanation of what drove him. Appalled by the human collateral damage of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, he says, he set out to “document the true cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Intrigued by his reading of State Department cables, he felt a need to let taxpayers in on the “backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity” that are the dark underside of diplomacy. Was this sense of mission there from the start, or was it shaped afterward by the expectations of the Free Bradley Manning enthusiasts? The answer would probably make no difference to the court. But it might help determine history’s verdict.

Bin Laden raid member can be WikiLeaks witness
(The Associated Press, April 10, 2013)

A military judge is clearing the way for a member of the team that raided Osama bin Laden’s compound to testify in the trial of an Army private charged in a massive leak of U.S. secrets.

Col. Denise Lind ruled for the prosecution during a pretrial hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning Tuesday at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.

The government says the witness, presumably a Navy SEAL, collected digital evidence showing that an associate of bin Laden provided the al-Qaida leader with documents Manning has acknowledged sending to the WikiLeaks website.

Defense attorneys had argued that proof of receipt isn’t relevant to whether Manning aided the enemy.

The judge disagreed. She said the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that intelligence was both given to and received by the enemy.

The government says the witness, presumably a Navy SEAL, collected digital evidence showing that an associate of bin Laden provided the al-Qaida leader with documents Manning has acknowledged sending to the WikiLeaks website.

Defense attorneys had argued that proof of receipt isn’t relevant to whether Manning aided the enemy.

The judge disagreed. She said the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that intelligence was both given to and received by the enemy.

Osama bin Laden, Bradley Manning, & William Blum
by William Blum
March 17, 2013


Bradley Manning has the charge of “Aiding the enemy” hanging over his head. This could lead to a sentence of life in prison. As far as can be deduced, the government believes that the documents and videos that Manning gave to Wikileaks, which Wikileaks then widely distributed to international media, aided the enemy because it put US foreign policy in a very bad light.

Manning’s attorneys have asked the prosecution more than once for specific examples of how “the enemy” (whoever that may refer to in a world full of people bitterly angry at the United States because of any of many terrible acts carried out by the US government) has been “aided” by the Wikileaks disclosures. Just how has the enemy made use of the released material to harm the United States? The government has not provided any such examples, probably because what really bothers Washington officials is the embarrassment they have experienced before the world resulting from the documents and videos; which indeed are highly embarrassing even to genuine war criminals; filled with violations of international law, atrocities, multiple lies to everyone, revelations of gross hypocrisy, and much more.

So our splendid officials are considering putting Bradley Manning in prison forever simply because they’re embarrassed. Hard to find much fault with that.

But now the prosecutors have announced that a Navy Seal involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden is going to testify at the court martial that bin Laden possessed articles about the Wikileaks documents that Manning leaked. Well, there must be a hundred million other people in the world who have similar material on their computers. The question remains: What use did the enemy make of that?

The Iraqi government made use of the material, inducing them to refuse immunity to US troops for crimes committed in Iraq, such as the cold-blooded murders revealed by the Wilileaks videos; this in turn led the US to announce that it was ending its military engagement in Iraq. However, Manning was indicted in May 2010, well before the Iraqi decision to end the immunity.

In January, 2006 bin Laden, in an audio tape, declared: “If Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book ‘Rogue State’ [by William Blum], which states in its introduction.… ” He then went on to quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:

If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize – very publicly and very sincerely – to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America’s global interventions – including the awful bombings – have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but – oddly enough – a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.

Thus, Osama bin Laden was clearly making use of what I wrote, and the whole world heard it. And I was thus clearly “aiding the enemy”. But I was not prosecuted.

The United States would like to prove a direct use and benefit by “the enemy” of the material released by Wikileaks; but so far it appears that only possession might be proven. In my case the use, and presumed propaganda benefit, were demonstrated. The fact that I wrote the material, as opposed to “stealing” it, is irrelevant to the issue of aiding the enemy. I knew, or should have known, that my criticisms of US foreign policy could be used by the foes of those policies. Indeed, that’s why I write what I do. To provide ammunition to anti-war and other activists.

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/03/17/osama-bin-laden-bradley-manning-william-blum/

Bradley Manning 'systematically harvested' documents
(BBC News, June 3, 2013)

At the start of Pte Manning's court martial, a prosecutor said Osama Bin Laden had received leaked information.

But defence lawyers said Pte Manning, 25, was young and naive when he shared the files with the anti-secrecy site.

He has not denied his role in the leak, and faces up to life in prison if convicted of aiding the enemy.

Pte Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him this year, but not to the most serious charge.

The Manning-Wikileaks case is considered the largest-ever leak of secret US government documents. Prosecutors say the disclosures harmed US national interests, while Pte Manning's supporters say he is a whistle-blowing hero.

In opening statements on Monday at a military courtroom in Fort Meade, Maryland, prosecutor Capt Joe Morrow called the case an example of what happened "when arrogance meets access".

Capt Morrow argued the case was not about a whistleblower's leak of targeted information.

"This, your honour, this is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases and then dumped that information onto the internet into the hands of the enemy," he said.

According to the prosecutor, Pte Manning used his military training to gain the notoriety he craved and attempted to hide what he had done at every step of the process.

He said he would introduce evidence Osama Bin Laden had gained access to some of the Wikileaks information - and had used it.

Prosecutors plan to introduce blog entries, a computer, a hard drive and a memory card as evidence against Pte Manning. The military prosecutors will also call witnesses to describe his training and his deployment to Iraq.

In an opening statement, Pte Manning's lawyer David Coombs said he was "young, naive and good-intentioned" when he arrived in Iraq.

He has not denied his role in the leak, and faces up to life in prison if convicted of aiding the enemy.

Former Hacker Testifies at Private’s Court-Martial
(By CHARLIE SAVAGE, The New York Times, June 4, 2013)

Adrian Lamo, the former computer hacker who reported Pfc. Bradley Manning to military authorities in May 2010 after Private Manning confided that he had provided vast archives of secret government documents to WikiLeaks, testified at the soldier’s court-martial on Tuesday that he saw parallels between his own youthful hacking offenses and those of the young Army intelligence analyst.

Mr. Lamo, who testified for about half an hour, has been a polarizing figure in the WikiLeaks case. He is despised by many of Private Manning’s supporters for betraying the trust of a person they see as an important whistle-blower; Mr. Lamo has maintained that turning Private Manning in was the socially responsible thing to do because his wholesale leaking recklessly endangered others.

Mr. Lamo, who wore black clothing and a light beard, recounted how Private Manning sent him an encrypted e-mail from his personal Google e-mail account, and later contacted him via an online chat service around May 20, 2010. The two later connected on Facebook as well, but did not meet in person.

Mr. Lamo said he first contacted a government official the day after the first online conversation, while continuing to chat online with Private Manning over the next week — sometimes from his home in California, and sometimes from two nearby Starbucks where there was Internet access. The last chat, he said, was around May 26; soon after, Private Manning was arrested.

When Mr. Lamo was 22 — the same age Private Manning was when he sent the information to WikiLeaks — he hacked into the networks of several companies, including The New York Times. He pleaded guilty in 2004 to the offenses and was sentenced to six months of house arrest and two years of probation. He has since become a network threat analyst, and in 1998 he was appointed to a San Francisco government task force on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth issues.

During cross-examination, Private Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, focused on the portions of the chat logs showing that his client had reached out to Mr. Lamo at a time when he was struggling with his own sexual identity, had just spent several months downloading government secrets and sending them to WikiLeaks, and was scared and in turmoil.

Mr. Coombs raised the parallels between Private Manning and Mr. Lamo, asking whether, based on their conversations, Mr. Lamo had seen “someone very familiar” to himself, a “young 22-year-old with good intentions like you were?”

Mr. Lamo replied, “That was not lost on me.”

Asked if Private Manning had represented himself as a person who tried to investigate to find out the truth about matters, Mr. Lamo said, “Something that I could appreciate, yes.”

Mr. Lamo answered with a simple “yes” to many other questions, like whether Private Manning had described some of the documents as exposing casualties in Iraq and whether he had expressed hope that his disclosures would prompt worldwide discussions and reforms. He also acknowledged asking Private Manning why he did not sell the documents to a foreign government, and said Private Manning had replied that the information should be public.

But he also distanced himself from some of Private Manning’s assertions in the chat logs. For example, asked if Private Manning had also told him how the more than 250,000 diplomatic cables he had leaked “explained in detail how first world countries exploited third world countries,” Mr. Lamo replied, “He made that representation, yes.”

After Mr. Coombs finished, a prosecutor got Mr. Lamo to agree that Private Manning had mentioned Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and asked whether the private had admitted “to compromising classified information at the thousands of documents level.”

“Yes, he did,” Mr. Lamo replied.

Private Manning, now 25, sat quietly as the opposing lawyers questioned Mr. Lamo. He did not turn his head to watch as Mr. Lamo, who had testified at a pretrial hearing as well, walked out of the courtroom after being excused from the witness stand. Mr. Lamo later posted on Twitter a picture of a subpoena requiring him to appear and wrote: “My work here is done. Elsewhere, just beginning.”

There was a sharp drop from Monday in the presence of news organizations and protesters at the trial, which opened Monday at this military base near Baltimore, as it shifted from the drama of the opening statements toward chain-of-custody issues and other evidentiary matters.

Mr. Lamo said he had allowed federal agents to take a hard drive from a laptop and a second computer he used for the chats, where the transcripts were automatically saved by the program he was using. He said he did not alter those transcripts, but did make copies of them and redact some portions before sending them to reporters for Wired magazine and The Washington Post.

A forensic computer analyst also testified that he had recovered matching chat logs on computers belonging to Mr. Lamo and Private Manning covering May 21 to May 25, 2010.

In addition, a former instructor testified that he trained Private Manning in 2008 to protect classified secrets and not to post information on the Internet that could help adversaries. He said Private Manning had stood out because he asked many questions in class and was the butt of jokes by classmates.

A former sergeant who oversaw Private Manning’s training unit, Brian Madrid, recalled an incident in which Private Manning drew scrutiny for making a YouTube video describing his schedule and training; it used terms like “Top Secret” although it did not include any secrets.

Mr. Madrid required him to make a class presentation on protecting operational information. Afterward, Private Manning said it would not happen again.

A prosecutor asked Mr. Madrid whether it had happened again.

“I believe so — that’s why we’re here,” he replied.

Hypocrisy - It's the American Way


Friends, the U.S. has upped its anti-Iran propaganda. I have included two of its recent statements for your consideration.

1. “The United States strongly condemns the Iranian government’s organized intimidation campaign and arrests of political figures, human rights defenders, political activists, student leaders, journalists and bloggers,” the White House said in a statement.

Now, after reading this a few thoughts sprang into my mind. The first was that the U.S. Government is harassing American citizens who show dissent, aren’t they? They are raiding homes and taking computers, aren’t they? And doesn’t Obomber now have an assassination squad at his command ready to take out anyone considered to be anti-American? And didn’t American officials arrest Ray McGovern the other day, beat him up, and put him in jail? And aren’t protesters in America beaten up by the police on a regular basis? And doesn’t the American Government regularly spy on its citizens and invade their rights?

2. “The United States and the world will continue to bear witness to the Iranian government’s blatant violation of the universal rights of its citizens and its ongoing hypocrisy,” the White House statement said.

Isn’t America the world leader in hypocrisy? Doesn’t it support despots while claiming to support democracy? Doesn’t it regularly use torture and rendition? Doesn’t it imprison people without trial? Doesn’t it engage in frequent invasions and occupation that violate the rights of citizens of other lands? Doesn’t it engage in shock and awe during which it kills hundreds of thousands of civilians and destroys their infrastructure? Doesn’t it witness Israel’s endless blatant violation of the rights of the Palestinians and their genocide and say nothing? Didn’t America refuse to condemn Israel’s attack on the Aid Convoy which killed 9 Turkish peace activists and injured many more?

Friends, sometimes I think that the U.S. is aware of its hypocrisy and double-standards and just doesn’t care.

And sometimes I think that U.S. Officials are completely deranged.

The truth is probably in the middle!

http://www.dangerouscreation.com/2011/03/hypocrisy-spews-out-of-the-white-house/

Analyst who worked with Manning in Iraq testifies
(DAVID DISHNEAU and ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press, June 05. 2013)

An intelligence analyst who worked with Pfc. Bradley Manning in Iraq has testified at his court-martial over giving a massive amount of material to WikiLeaks.

Jihrleah Showman said Wednesday that Manning had access to a lot of classified information but he wasn't allowed to look at it all.

Manning faces charges including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.

He says he gave the material to the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks because he wanted Americans to see the truth about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shortly before his arrest, Manning was disciplined for punching Showman in the face in what she has described as one of several violent outbursts both before and during their deployment. She did not testify about the punch but could be recalled later.

Pure and simple, a guardian of state secrets does not possess the right to make a on the spot decision of what is justified as not be correctly identified as secret and what is. To disregard this duty is treason, punishable by death......

Secrecy and National Security Whistleblowing
by DANIEL ELLSBERG on JANUARY 8, 2013
[Originally published in Social Research]

I) Reflections on Secret-keeping and Identity

In the “national security” area of the government–the White House, the departments of state and defense, the armed services and the “intelligence community,” along with their contractors–there is less whistleblowing than in other departments of the executive branch or in private corporations. This despite the frequency of misguided practices and policies within these particular agencies that are both more well-concealed and more catastrophic than elsewhere, and thus even more needful of unauthorized exposure.

The mystique of secrecy in the universe of national security, even beyond the formal apparatus of classification and clearances, is a compelling deterrent to whistleblowing and thus to effective resistance to gravely wrongful or dangerous policies. In this realm, telling secrets appears unpatriotic, even traitorous. That reflects the general presumption–even though it is very commonly false–that the secrecy is aimed not at domestic, bureaucratic or political rivals or the American public but at foreign, powerful enemies, and that breaching it exposes the country, its people and its troops to danger.

Even those insiders who have come to understand that the presumption is frequently false and that particular facts are being wrongly and dangerously kept secret not so much from foreigners but from Congress, courts or the public are strongly inhibited from speaking out by an internalized commitment to keep official secrets from outsiders, which they have promised to do as a condition of employment or access.

To be sure, there are strong, usually more than adequate careerist incentives not to break those promises. Being found to do so exposes officials to loss of access to meetings and information, loss of clearance, demotion or loss of promotion, loss of job or career, loss of retirement benefits, harm to marriage or to children’s prospects that comes with loss of income, even danger of prosecution and prison. The last risk is much less likely than they are led to believe—at least, that was true prior to the present Obama administration — but the other job-related penalties are not, and they prove more than sufficient to keep most secret-keepers from breaking the rules in ways that would expose them to such losses, even when the welfare of many others is at stake.

However, as a former insider I can attest to psychological dimensions of this behavior that seem rarely to have been discussed. They seem worthy of some extended reflection here, given my own motive to understand this behavior in order in some respects to change it. In my experience, the psychological stakes for officials in keeping their commitment to keep secrets-even what appear to be “guilty” secrets that not only preclude democratic accountability but endanger the welfare of many people–go beyond careerist calculations of keeping a job or possible punishments for disobedience, influential and even sufficient as those considerations generally are.

...

http://www.ellsberg.net/

Evidence suggests Manning leaked sensitive names
(The Associated Press, June 11, 2013)

The mountain of classified material Army Pfc. Bradley Manning gave to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks revealed sensitive information about military operations and tactics, including code words and the name at least one enemy target, according to evidence the government presented Tuesday.

Manning, a 25-year-old Oklahoma native, has said he didn't believe the more than 700,000 battlefield reports, diplomatic cables and video clips he leaked while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad would hurt national security. Prosecutors want to convict him of aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence, for leaking information they say found its way to Osama bin Laden.

For the first time, prosecutors presented evidence that the disclosures compromised sensitive information in dozens of categories. The evidence written statements the defense and prosecutors accepted as substitutions for live testimony. It was read aloud in court.

In one such statement, a classification expert, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Martin Nehring, said his review of Afghanistan and Iraq battlefield reports revealed techniques for neutralizing improvised explosives, the name of an enemy target, the names of criminal suspects and troop movements.

Navy Reserve Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Hoskins said his review of leaked Afghanistan battlefield reports found they revealed code words, tactics and techniques for responding to roadside bombings, weapon capabilities and assistance the United States had gotten from foreign nationals in locating suspects.

The evidence also covered leaked material from the Army's investigation into a 2009 airstrike in Afghanistan's Farah province that killed at least 26 civilians in the village off Garani. Manning has acknowledged leaking investigation documents and video of the airstrike. The leaked material forms the basis for one of eight federal espionage charges.

Prosecutors began the day by presenting evidence Manning used his work computer to access a classified 2008 Army counterintelligence report about the possibility that WikiLeaks posed a national security threat. The evidence indicated Manning first accessed the report Dec. 1, 2009, about three weeks after he started work in Baghdad.

They're not supposed to share any information with outsiders; they have agreed to the confidentiality of information they learn from their jobs.