Bradley Manning may face death penalty

[wautd]

(Didn't wanted to necro the wikileaks tread but if a mod find its better suited there he's offcourse free to move it)

Link

'Aiding the enemy' among 22 new charges brought against US soldier held in solitary confinement

Bradley Manning, the US soldier who has spent 10 months in solitary confinement on suspicion of having transmitted a huge trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks, now faces a possible death penalty.

The intelligence specialist, who is being held in the maximum security jail on Quantico marine base in Virginia, has been handed 22 additional military charges as part of his court martial process.

They come on top of initial charges of having illegally obtained 150,000 secret US government cables and handing more than 50 of them to an unauthorised person that carried a possible sentence of up to 52 years in prison.

Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, said that the most serious of the new charges was the Article 104 offence of "aiding the enemy". The charge carries a potential death sentence.

The charge involves "giving intelligence to the enemy", which is defined as "organised opposing forces in time of war but also other hostile body that our forces may be opposing such as a rebellious mob or a band of renegades". Such an enemy could be civilian or military in nature.

The charge sheet, like the original set of accusations, contains no mention by name of the enemy to which the US military is referring.

It could be WikiLeaks itself, which the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has accused of launching an "attack on America". Or it could be a reference to enemy forces in Afghanistan.

A report by NBC News said Pentagon officials emphasised that some WikiLeaks material contained names of informants and others working with US forces whose lives could have been put in danger.

According to Coombs, the 22 new charges were preferred by Manning's commanding officer after he made his own assessment of possible offences in the case. Under the court martial procedure, a provisional hearing, known as an Article 32, will be held in late May or early June when final charges to be laid against Manning will be decided. At that stage it will be known for certain whether the private faces a possible death sentence in the court martial itself.

Manning is accused of being the single source of many sensational WikiLeaks disclosures of US state secrets, some of which were published alongside the Guardian and other papers round the world. They include aerial footage of a US military attack on civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan war logs and thousands of US embassy cables.

He is being held in Quantico in conditions that have elicited protests from numerous organisations, including his own supporter networks and Amnesty International. The UN is investigating whether his treatment, which includes being held in his 6ft by 12ft cell for 23 hours a day, amounts to torture.

Manning is being kept on a "prevention of injury" watch which requires him to be held on his own and viewed every five minutes, despite prison psychiatrists' opinion that he is not a danger to himself.

David House, a researcher at MIT who is one of very few people to have visited Manning in prison, told the Firedoglake news website that the "aiding the enemy" charge was similar to Richard Nixon's heavy-handed treatment of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Nixon called Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America" and said he was "providing aid and comfort to the enemy".

"Today we see the Obama administration continuing the legacy Nixon started by declaring whistleblowers as enemies of the state. It is a sad and dangerous day for transparency advocates everywhere," House said.

Also an older article about the conditions he's being held in:

Bradley Manning, the US soldier suspected of being behind the largest leak of state secrets in history, has entered his ninth month in military detention and continues to be held in maximum security conditions that critics claim are in violation of his human rights.

Manning spends 23 hours of every day in his windowless 6.7 square metre cell, which contains nothing but a bed and blanket, sink and toilet. He is allowed no personal objects other than one book or magazine at a time and is prevented from taking any exercise other than in the one hour a day allocated to it, when he is taken to an empty room and allowed to walk around it in a figure of eight.

He also remains on what is known as "prevention of injury" or POI watch which means guards check him every five minutes and wake him at night if he is not fully visible. For two days last month, against the advice of prison psychiatrists, he was placed on full suicide watch, which involved him being stripped to his underwear and having his glasses confiscated unless reading or watching television.

On the rare occasions he has visitors, he has to be shackled by hand and foot and be accompanied by two guards at all times.

Manning was arrested in Iraq where he was working as an intelligence analyst at the Operating Base Hammer. He is alleged to have been the source of several WikiLeaks releases, including the massive trove of US diplomatic cables last November.

So far, however, he has only been charged with illegally obtaining more than 150,000 cables and transferring them to an unnamed "unauthorised person".

Since his arrest on 29 May last year, lawyers and campaign groups have protested against his treatment at the hands of his military jailers, initially in Kuwait and then, from July, at the brig at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. Amnesty International has called on the British government to intervene in his treatment on the grounds that his Welsh mother makes him a UK citizen. It called his regime "unnecessarily harsh and punitive", pointing out that he has no record of suicidal or violent behaviour in custody.

Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, has lodged a complaint that depicts his treatment as abuse and demands that his status is downgraded from maximum security to medium custody.

One of the few people to have been allowed to visit Manning in Quantico, David House, has witnessed the soldier's deterioration over the past few months. He told the Guardian recently: "Each time I go there seems to have been a remarkable decline. That's physical too. When I first saw him he was bright-eyed and strong like he was in early photographs, but now he looks weak, he has huge bags under his eyes and his muscles have turned to fat. It's hard watching someone over the months sicken like that."

In his most recent visit, House tweeted that Manning was in a "shocked state" as a result of his confinement, "but his mood and mind soared when I mentioned the democratic uprisings in Egypt".

Further detail of the visit was given by the blogger Jane Hamsher, who reported that according to House the prisoner was starting to show signs of prolonged isolation. He was slow to respond and seemed emotionally withdrawn.

Manning's lawyer is now hoping that a change of leadership at the top of the brig section of the marine base will bring a rethink of his treatment, and a shift to a more lenient regime. His military trial is not anticipated until May at the earliest.

Yeah... shoot the messenger and let the true criminals go free

[Bakustra]

The precedent that would be set by accepting the idea that public dissemination of information can count as aiding the "enemy" is frankly horrifying. Even if it were confined to courts-martial, this would still have allowed anybody within the military blowing the whistle on Abu Ghraib, or the rape and abuse of civilians in war zones, or anything the military does wrong period to be threatened with the death penalty. Of course, there are cases where it wouldn't apply. I'm sure that whistleblowers concerned about funding misappropriations might be able to go free, as long as the brass forgot the little stamp to classify it.

The sickening part is that the court might accept those charges as perfectly reasonable, so even if Manning fails to be convicted on them, the precedent is still set. It's frightening the extent to which monolithic ideas permeate our national-security apparatus, such that the idea that the military, intelligence services, private mercenaries, and foreign service should operate with minimal oversight goes virtually unchallenged within the corridors of power. I'm not necessarily going to blame Obama for this; had Clinton become president, or indeed anybody not firmly and ideologically committed to opposing it, they would have fallen into the same pattern by virtue of the entire support structure declaring that this is necessary, this has to be done, or else fall America. Do the people who believe this really think that this is compatible with democratic forms of government, or are they simply petty fascists seizing onto whatever reins of power they can grasp? Or is there some other hope beyond the binary categories of stupid and malevolent?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The precedent that would be set by accepting the idea that public dissemination of information can count as aiding the "enemy" is frankly horrifying. Even if it were confined to courts-martial, this would still have allowed anybody within the military blowing the whistle on Abu Ghraib, or the rape and abuse of civilians in war zones, or anything the military does wrong period to be threatened with the death penalty. Of course, there are cases where it wouldn't apply. I'm sure that whistleblowers concerned about funding misappropriations might be able to go free, as long as the brass forgot the little stamp to classify it.

The sickening part is that the court might accept those charges as perfectly reasonable, so even if Manning fails to be convicted on them, the precedent is still set. It's frightening the extent to which monolithic ideas permeate our national-security apparatus, such that the idea that the military, intelligence services, private mercenaries, and foreign service should operate with minimal oversight goes virtually unchallenged within the corridors of power. I'm not necessarily going to blame Obama for this; had Clinton become president, or indeed anybody not firmly and ideologically committed to opposing it, they would have fallen into the same pattern by virtue of the entire support structure declaring that this is necessary, this has to be done, or else fall America. Do the people who believe this really think that this is compatible with democratic forms of government, or are they simply petty fascists seizing onto whatever reins of power they can grasp? Or is there some other hope beyond the binary categories of stupid and malevolent?

I'm not sure how it works in the United States, but in my country, whistle blowing within the military would earn you a court martial, right or not. You want to complain about something, you work through the chain of command. You don't do stuns such as this.

In any case, nothing in Wikileaks is particularly surprising. What America has been doing is no different from any other state in history. Shocking? Hardly.

[Bakustra]

I'm not sure how it works in the United States, but in my country, whistle blowing within the military would earn you a court martial, right or not. You want to complain about something, you work through the chain of command. You don't do stuns such as this.

In any case, nothing in Wikileaks is particularly surprising. What America has been doing is no different from any other state in history. Shocking? Hardly.

So whistleblowing can carry the death penalty or life in prison in your home country? That is what is being proposed here- that providing classified information to the news media is by default aiding the enemy. The problem is not the idea of a court-martial so much as the threat of death that can now be applied to anybody considering blowing the whistle on criminal or hideous activities.

You also, in your efforts to dismiss the Wikileaks stories, not only ignore that the American public doesn't know, but also adopt the poisonous attitudes that I was talking about. The idea implicit to your comment is that the ignorance of the man or woman on the street is immaterial, as foreign policy is carried out by the elites anyhow. The problem is that we Americans in general assume we are a democratic republic, one in which the government is overseen by the populace. The idea that the ignorance of the public is a good thing, an ideal state serves to undermine such democracy as there is in the US and replaces it with petty fascists migrating among the State Department, alphabet soup agencies, think-tanks, and corporations which make up the American defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs communities. And any competing voices, such as the radical idea that deliberately misleading the public and disseminating blatant lies about how we act through education and the media is a bad thing and runs counter to the supposed ideals of the nation they serve, appear completely shut out and marginalized.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm not sure how it works in the United States, but in my country, whistle blowing within the military would earn you a court martial, right or not. You want to complain about something, you work through the chain of command. You don't do stuns such as this.

In any case, nothing in Wikileaks is particularly surprising. What America has been doing is no different from any other state in history. Shocking? Hardly.

So whistleblowing can carry the death penalty or life in prison in your home country? That is what is being proposed here- that providing classified information to the news media is by default aiding the enemy. The problem is not the idea of a court-martial so much as the threat of death that can now be applied to anybody considering blowing the whistle on criminal or hideous activities.

I live in Singapore. Life sentence is a guarantee especially for crime of this magnitude. Military law is harsher than Civilian law. Deal with it.

You also, in your efforts to dismiss the Wikileaks stories, not only ignore that the American public doesn't know, but also adopt the poisonous attitudes that I was talking about. The idea implicit to your comment is that the ignorance of the man or woman on the street is immaterial, as foreign policy is carried out by the elites anyhow. The problem is that we Americans in general assume we are a democratic republic, one in which the government is overseen by the populace. The idea that the ignorance of the public is a good thing, an ideal state serves to undermine such democracy as there is in the US and replaces it with petty fascists migrating among the State Department, alphabet soup agencies, think-tanks, and corporations which make up the American defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs communities. And any competing voices, such as the radical idea that deliberately misleading the public and disseminating blatant lies about how we act through education and the media is a bad thing and runs counter to the supposed ideals of the nation they serve, appear completely shut out and marginalized.

It's not my fault you people like to believe your own propaganda. But then, that is symptomatic of many countries in every world where everyone believes it eventually.

[Simon_Jester]

At least in Singapore, the Singaporeans know that they live in a dictatorship, with a dictator who (as I understand it) is smart enough to recognize that there need to be internal review mechanisms by which people can come to him (or his appointees) to complain if his government screws up.

In the US, where we nominally have a democracy that is gradually degenerating into a 'security-state oligarchy,' the system isn't set up to provide stable, efficient dictatorial government. Instead, we have a population that goes through the motions of voting elected officials in and out, while the bureaucrats in their office blocks insist on doing the same things regardless of who gets elected. This creates a disconnect between power (which on a real level resides with the military-industrial complex because they have the power to lead the president and Congress around by the nose) and responsibility (which theoretically resides with the politicians, and in practice is entirely abdicated because the politicians are so good at selling "we need to do this to be secure" to the public).

So we implicitly trust our government, thinking that if they did anything really outrageous people would stop them... while at the same time the government functions without meaningful oversight because of the marriage between the military-industrial-security bloc and the political-spin bloc.

[erik_t]

What does civilian government have to do with military law?

[Simon_Jester]

If civilian control of the military is in place, civilian government sets military law. And generally should set it with an eye to the interests of society at large.

Threatening military whistleblowers with the death penalty is not necessarily in the interests of society at large, especially not if this is used as a way to cover up atrocities.

[Eleas]

In any case, nothing in Wikileaks is particularly surprising. What America has been doing is no different from any other state in history. Shocking? Hardly.

Not shocking, but it is different due to these following factors:

• The US is supposedly a democratic country and signatory to conventions that prohibit atrocities and war crimes. Yet we have now solid proof that such deeds are routine in the occupied areas.
• The US is the most powerful country in the world in terms of military.
• The US conducts its wars of aggression now.

Your reaction seems awfully close to outright stating "ho-hum, that's what we might expect a bully state to do, therefore it's nothing to worry about". Or is it "therefore it's ethical"? I can't really tell what your smarminess is supposed to signify here.

I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. This guy blew the whistle on war crimes that have been and are currently being committed in an illegal war which, by the instigator's own hand, should be a new Nurenberg with the USA as accused. And the best you can do is tut-tut at his temerity?

What does civilian government have to do with military law?

Which law? The one clearly broken by the military itself?

[dragon]

Well there is the military whistle blower protection act, but it only protects you if you go to A member of Congress, an Inspector General, or a member of a Department of Defense audit, inspection, investigation, or law enforcement organization. Also chain of command and any others that has been designated.

However he didn't so sucks to be him.

[Eleas]

However he didn't so sucks to be him.

Because the military can break its own rules and agreements as it sees fit but still retains the right to enforce them?

[Vympel]

Greenwald as always sums it up well

[Thanas]

This is a BS charge that will go nowhere.

But apparently besides being Bush 3.0, Obama is also content to be Nixon 2.0. Great going there.

[Lonestar]

Because the military can break its own rules and agreements as it sees fit but still retains the right to enforce them?

There is a world of difference between going to a sympathetic congressional critter(for example, Peter Defazio) with the material and handing it over to fucking wikileaks.

And by the by, if you are an E3 4 years into the army, you are a huge shitbag to start with.

[Lonestar]

I also like how the article mentioned "he's in solitary confinement" without mentioning that "if he were put into the general population he would be fucking dead within a week for being a 'traitor'".

[Thanas]

His condition is slightly different from ordinary solitary confinement though. Also, his lawyer's/supporters things keep mysteriously disappearing and getting seized.

[Lonestar]

His condition is slightly different from ordinary solitary confinement though. Also, his lawyer's/supporters things keep mysteriously disappearing and getting seized.

Wow I totally wonder why that would be. It couldn't be because there are 22 fucking counts of him giving aid and comfort to the enemy, are there? The military is obviously way out of line in viewing all items that travel to him with extreme suspicion.

[Thanas]

Does that include seizing laptops and phones and not returning them? I'd love to see the law for that.

[Lonestar]

By the by, it sure is interesting to note how much more interested our European posters are in a internal US Military trial than two airman shot dead at fucking Frankfurt airport.

[Lonestar]

Does that include seizing laptops and phones and not returning them? I'd love to see the law for that.

Turns out you waive a lot of your constitutional rights when you join the United States Military. The UCMJ doesn't give a rats turd about civilian law.

EDIT: Also, phones aren't allowed in civilian prisons either, to the point that correctional facilities depatments have considered adding Cell jammers to the facilities. And I strongly prisoners are allowed to keep laptops in those scenarios as well(although I could be wrong).

[Thanas]

Does that include seizing laptops and phones and not returning them? I'd love to see the law for that.

Turns out you waive a lot of your constitutional rights when you join the United States Military. The UCMJ doesn't give a rats turd about civilian law.

These were laptops and phones seized from civilians, including his lawyers and journalists. I have no problem with the military seizing his stuff.

By the by, it sure is interesting to note how much more interested our European posters are in a internal US Military trial than two airman shot dead at fucking Frankfurt airport.

What's there to post? Two guys shot by lone terrorist. German police are handling it in a competent manner.

Meanwhile, this has implications beyond Frankfurt as the US military might just go off and label any media as an enemy of the United States if this charge sticks.

[Broomstick]

I would have more sympathy for him if he had at least attempted to follow the established means of making a complaint before going to an outside agency. So far as I know he did not. (Opinion subject to change upon receipt of new information)

The usual pattern of prosecutors in the US is to bring someone up on as many charges as possible, knowing that some won't stick and some are likely to be bargained down to less charges.

Which is not to say the government couldn't over reacting here. The US government going apeshit on someone pointing out a problem is hardly a new thing. I just don't go for a kneejerk US government=bad, Manning=good. It is entirely possible both parties here are unsavory.

[Lonestar]

These were laptops and phones seized from civilians, including his lawyers and journalists. I have no problem with the military seizing his stuff.

Ah, okay. I thought you were referring to stuff his lawyers/supporters gave Manning.

What's there to post? Two guys shot by lone terrorist. German police are handling it in a competent manner.

Meanwhile, this has implications beyond Frankfurt as the US military might just go off and label any media as an enemy of the United States if this charge sticks.

Let's be clear, this is not *any media*, this is fucking wikileaks. You could not convince me that if Fucking Mother Jones or the NYT ran *some* of the data turned over to them the US Military would be aggressively pursuing their assets like they are wikileaks.

If during the course of the trial it comes out that he ran around trying to give the info to congresscritters and what have you...okay fine. I have more sympathy for him. As it is he is an E3 4 years into the Army(a dog whistle for being a shitbag if there ever was one) who just decided to turn over information to a foreign national.

[Thanas]

Let's be clear, this is not *any media*, this is fucking wikileaks. You could not convince me that if Fucking Mother Jones or the NYT ran *some* of the data turned over to them the US Military would be aggressively pursuing their assets like they are wikileaks.

Given that the NYT is quite willing to go along with concealing such data from the public when asked to, of course the US Military would be.....ah hell, I am convinced this is exactly the same thing that would be happening, given how whistleblowers are treated by this Government. The Precedent is there.

If during the course of the trial it comes out that he ran around trying to give the info to congresscritters and what have you...okay fine. I have more sympathy for him. As it is he is an E3 4 years into the Army(a dog whistle for being a shitbag if there ever was one) who just decided to turn over information to a foreign national.

It has never been proven that he turned over information to a foreign national. We do not know who his contact was, for one. Second, this is not just the charge of giving information to a foreign national. This is aiding the enemy. Would you say that media organizations are enemies of the USA?


EDIT:

Let me quote Greenwald for you:

In light of the implicit allegation that Manning transmitted this material to WikiLeaks, it is quite possible that WikiLeaks is the "enemy" referenced by Article 104, i.e., that the U.S. military now openly decrees (as opposed to secretly declaring) that the whistle-blowing group is an "enemy" of the U.S. More likely, the Army will contend that by transmitting classified documents to WikiLeaks for intended publication, Manning "indirectly" furnished those documents to Al Qaeda and the Taliban by enabling those groups to learn their contents. That would mean that it is a capital offense not only to furnish intelligence specifically and intentionally to actual enemies -- the way that, say, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were convicted of passing intelligence to the Soviet Union -- but also to act as a whistle-blower by leaking classified information to a newspaper with the intent that it be published to the world. Logically, if one can "aid the enemy" even by leaking to WikiLeaks, then one can also be guilty of this crime by leaking to The New York Times.

The dangers of such a theory are obvious. Indeed, even the military itself recognizes those dangers, as the Military Judges' Handbook specifically requires that if this theory is used -- that one has "aided the enemy" through "indirect" transmission via leaks to a newspaper -- then it must be proven that the "communication was intended to reach the enemy." None of the other ways of violating this provision contain an intent element; recognizing how extreme it is to prosecute someone for "aiding the enemy" who does nothing more than leak to a media outlet, this is the only means of violating Article 104 that imposes an intent requirement.

But does anyone actually believe that Manning's intent was to ensure receipt of this material by the Taliban, as opposed to exposing for the public what he believed to be serious American wrongdoing and to trigger reforms? Indeed, in the purported chat logs between Manning and government informant Adrian Lamo, Lamo asked Manning why he didn't sell this information to a foreign government and get rich off it, and this is how Manning replied:

"because it's public data. . . . it belongs in the public domain -information should be free - it belongs in the public domain - because another state would just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge - if its out in the open . . . it should be a public good"

This prosecution theory would convert acts of whistle-blowing into a hanging offense.

[Bakustra]

I'm not sure how it works in the United States, but in my country, whistle blowing within the military would earn you a court martial, right or not. You want to complain about something, you work through the chain of command. You don't do stuns such as this.

In any case, nothing in Wikileaks is particularly surprising. What America has been doing is no different from any other state in history. Shocking? Hardly.

So whistleblowing can carry the death penalty or life in prison in your home country? That is what is being proposed here- that providing classified information to the news media is by default aiding the enemy. The problem is not the idea of a court-martial so much as the threat of death that can now be applied to anybody considering blowing the whistle on criminal or hideous activities.

I live in Singapore. Life sentence is a guarantee especially for crime of this magnitude. Military law is harsher than Civilian law. Deal with it.

So when God handed down the legal code of Singapore (as he must have for it to be held in such reverence and to be so unchallengeable) did he do so in the traditional stone, or in something more befitting the recent establishment of the Singaporean state? Bakelite, perhaps?

The idea that "military law must be harsher than civilian law", which is a premise that I can accept and agree with on a personal level, does not imply that whistleblowing through the media necessarily must carry life sentences, or that the criminal statutes of a one-party state unable to equal Mongolia in political freedoms should apply to more democratic nations, or that this is a reasonable precedent to set.

You also, in your efforts to dismiss the Wikileaks stories, not only ignore that the American public doesn't know, but also adopt the poisonous attitudes that I was talking about. The idea implicit to your comment is that the ignorance of the man or woman on the street is immaterial, as foreign policy is carried out by the elites anyhow. The problem is that we Americans in general assume we are a democratic republic, one in which the government is overseen by the populace. The idea that the ignorance of the public is a good thing, an ideal state serves to undermine such democracy as there is in the US and replaces it with petty fascists migrating among the State Department, alphabet soup agencies, think-tanks, and corporations which make up the American defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs communities. And any competing voices, such as the radical idea that deliberately misleading the public and disseminating blatant lies about how we act through education and the media is a bad thing and runs counter to the supposed ideals of the nation they serve, appear completely shut out and marginalized.

It's not my fault you people like to believe your own propaganda. But then, that is symptomatic of many countries in every world where everyone believes it eventually.

So what you're saying is that the American public is aware that the ideas of the "shining city on a hill", the "defender of the Free World", the American Dream, are false and people instead choose to believe them? Whatever it takes for you to swallow the regurgitations of the military-industrial complex, I suppose. Whatever it takes.

By the by, it sure is interesting to note how much more interested our European posters are in a internal US Military trial than two airman shot dead at fucking Frankfurt airport.

Aren't we subtle, oh ho ho.