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by Project Willow » Sun Jun 09, 2013 4:47 pm
by 8bitagent » Sun Jun 09, 2013 7:34 pm
by JackRiddler » Tue Jun 11, 2013 1:20 am
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-co ... rtbreaking
BRADLEY MANNING
The Court Transcript of Everything Bradley Manning Told Adrian Lamo Is Heartbreaking
By Brian Merchant
Image: Courtroom Sketch, US Military
Earlier this week, Adrian Lamo took the stand to testify in Bradley Manning's court martial. Lamo, of course, is the attention-seeking ex-hacker who turned Manning over to the feds. In the most widely-repeated account of the preceding events, Manning had willingly reached out to Lamo, perhaps after reading a Wired article documenting the hacker's struggles with depression.
If Lamo's testimony and the chat logs of their conversations are to be believed, then Manning confided not just details about the cables he'd passed to Wikileaks but of his troubled personal life as well. Lamo convinced Manning that he would keep their conversations confidential, and even told him that he was a "journalist" and could protect his identity as a source in the event.
But Lamo was intending to act as an informant the entire time, and promptly turned all of their correspondence over to the feds. They had never met in person, and, on Tuesday, they came face to face for the first time.
Thanks to a crowd-funded activist stenographer, we've got the transcript. And it is heartbreaking. Manning's defense lawyer David Coombs takes the opportunity to recount the content of their online chats, hammering home how naive, fragile, and nobly-intentioned Manning was at the time. If you've already read the heavily edited chats between the two that Wired published, you might have a small notion of what you're in for. But not fully.
This is as pure a portrait of Manning's character at the time of the leaks as you're likely to see—and Lamo has no choice to agree that it's accurate. The climax comes at the end, when Lamo himself, the informant, acknowledges that Manning had displayed no intent to aid the enemy, and instead fully believed that he was acting in the public interest.
What follows is a transcript of Coombs' cross-examination of Lamo, lightly edited for clarity, as recorded by the diligent, fleet-fingered folks at the Free Press Foundation (no audio or video recorders are allowed in the trial). It is well worth reading in full.
David Coombs [Q]: ... after contacting law enforcement you continued to chat with PFC Manning?
Adrian Lamo [A]: That is correct.
Q. And based on your conversations you determined that PFC Manning was young?
A. Yes.
Q. You believed he was ideologically motivated?
A. That was my speculation, yes.
Q. You also saw him as well intentioned?
A. From his point of view, yes.
Q. From your point of view you saw him as well intentioned?
A. Subjectively, yes.
Q. You also saw him as idealistic?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Now you testified on direct that PFC Manning identified himself in the chat conversations.
A. Correct.
Q. And you testified on direct that he said Bradley Manning?
A. Yes.
Q. Now he told you during your conversation that he wanted to disclose this information for public good?
A. That was an interpretation, yes.
Q. Based on your conversation you saw something very familiar about that?
A. Yes.
Q. You saw a young 22 year old with good intentions, much like you were?
A. That was correct.
Q. You did not know PFC Manning, correct?
A. Not personally, no.
Q. The two of your never met in person?
A. No.
Q. And, in fact, you were a supporter of LBGT, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. He said to you, he thought he would reach out to somebody like you who would possibly understand?
A. Yes.
Q. During this initial chat conversation he told you about his life and his upbringing?
A. In some amount of detail, yes.
Q. He told you that he was being challenged due to a gender identity issue?
A. Yes.
Q. He also told you that he had been questioning his gender for years, but started to come to terms with that with his gender during the deployment?
A. Yes.
Q. He told you he believed he had made a huge mess?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. And he confessed that he was emotionally fractured?
A. Yes.
Q. He said he was talking to you as somebody that needed moral and emotional support?
A. Yes.
Q . At this point he said he was trying not to end up killing himself?
A. That is also correct.
Q. He told you that he was feeling desperate and isolated?
A. Yes.
Q. He described himself as a broken soul?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. He said his life was falling apart and he didn't have anyone to talk to?
A. Yes, he did.
Image: Flickr
Q. And he said he was honestly scared?
A. He also said that.
Q. He told you that he had no one he could trust?
A. Correct.
Q. And he told you he needed a lot of help?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. He ended up apologizing to you on several occasions for pouring out his heart to you since you were total strangers?
A. Correct.
Q. Now at one point he asked you if you had access to classified networks and so on, incredible things, awful things, things that belonged to the public domain, not on some servers dark room in Washington, D.C. What would you do? Do you recall him asking you that question?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. He told you he thought that the information that he had would have impact on entire world?
A. That is also correct.
Q. He said the information would disclose casualty figures in Iraq?
A. Yes.
Q. He believed the State Department, First World Countries exploited the Third World Countries?
A. He made that representation, yes.
Q. And he told you that the cables detailed what was criminal political fact dealings?
A. Yes.
Q. He believed that everywhere there was a U.S. post there was a diplomatic scandal?
A. That he did.
Q. He told you that he believed it was important that the information got out?
A. Correct.
Q. He thought that if the information got out, it might actually change something?
A. Yes.
Q. He told you he did not believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore?
A. Yes.
Q. He only believed in a plethora of state acting in self-interest?
A. Correct.
Q. He told you he thought he was maybe too idealistic?
A. Correct.
Q. He told you that he was always a type of person that tried to investigate to find out the truth?
A. Something I could appreciate, yes.
Image: PBS
Q. And based upon what he saw, he told you he could not let information just stay inside?
A. Yes.
Q. He said he could not separate himself from others?
A. Correct.
Q. He felt connected to everybody?
A. Yes.
Q. Even told you it felt like we were all distant family?
A. Engagement.
Q. And he said he cared?
A. Yes.
Q. He told you that he thought he would keep track -- keep track of people that his job impacted?
A. Correct.
Q. And he wanted to make sure that everybody was okay?
A. Yes.
Q. He told you that the way he separated himself from other analysts was, he cared about people?
A. He said that, yes.
Q. PFC Manning told you he followed humanist values?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. He said he had dogs tags saying "humanist" on it?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know what it means to be a humanist?
A. From my understanding the importance of human life and human beings and has a structure of morality.
Q. He told you that he was bothered that nobody seemed to care?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. He said he thought apathy was far worse than active participation?
A. Yes.
Q. He also told you that he was maybe too traumatized to really care about the consequences to him?
A. Yes.
Q. He told you that he wasn't brave. He was weak?
A. Yes.
Q. He said he was not so much scared of getting caught and facing consequences as he was of being misunderstood?
A. Yes.
Q. At one point you asked him what his end game was, correct?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And he told you, hopefully worldwide discussions, debates and reforms?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. And he said he wanted people to see the truth?
A. Correct.
Q. He said without information you can't make informed decision as a whole?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. And he told you to, he was hoping that people would actually change if they saw the information?
A. Correct.
Q. He also told you that he recognized that he may be just young, naive and stupid?
A. Yes.
Q. And at one point you asked him why he didn't just sell the information to Russia or China?
A. Correct.
Q. And he told you that the information belonged in the public domain?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. He believed that information was in the public domain and should be for the public good?
A. Yes.
Q. At one point he told you that his belief or his feelings were that he wanted to eventually go into politics?
A. Yes.
Q. And at the time he was thinking that humanity could accomplish a lot, if smart people with ideas cooperated with each other?
A. Correct.
Q. At anytime did he say he had no loyalty to America?
A. Not in those words, no.
Q. At anytime did he say the American flag didn't mean anything to him?
A. No.
Q. At anytime did he say he wanted to help the enemy?
A. Not in those words, no.
By Brian Merchant
Read more: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-co ... z2Vsipg2nK
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by seemslikeadream » Tue Jun 11, 2013 11:10 am
Bradley Manning trial to be recreated in comic-book form
Graphic artist Clark Stoeckley in courtroom to record ongoing trial of WikiLeaks soldier
Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 June 2013 08.05 EDT
In graphic detail … Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse at Fort Meade on the fourth day of his trial. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP
A comic of the Bradley Manning trial, produced live from the courtroom, is being created by artist and WikiLeaks activist Clark Stoeckley and will be published in the autumn.
Stoeckley, who drives a truck covered with the WikiLeaks logo to the court in Fort Meade each day, said: "It [the truck] definitely turns heads. My feeling is that if they allow the Fox News truck on base they have to allow me here too, right?" He is meticulously recording every detail of Manning's trial from inside the courtroom, drawing and writing down events as they happen.
Back to front: Bradley Manning supporters in court … Illustration: Clark Stoeckley
Since the trial of the US soldier for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified digital files began on 3 June, Stoeckley has already drawn images of Manning at the defence table, and of Adrian Lamo, the former computer hacker who turned Manning in. He has also sketched observers in the courtroom wearing T-shirts bearing the word "truth", which they have been told by court officials to wear inside out.
The comic, The United States vs PFC Bradley Manning: A Graphic Account from Inside the Courtroom, will include drawings of events that illustrate the matters under discussion in the courtroom – for example, the war in Afghanistan – as well as text from the trial transcript.
"No other sketch artists are coming to the trial here in Fort Meade regularly. I'm here all the time," said Stoeckley. "I want to record every single witness and create a visual record of what's going on so that people can put faces to transcripts. I'm trying to capture the atmosphere in the courtroom and the characters who are part of the story … I'm doing this in a style that's never been used in courtroom sketch art."
Everyone towers over him … Illustration: Clark Stoeckley
Manning, said Stoeckley, "is the smallest person in the trial, everyone towers over him". Producing a sample page showing Manning at a pre-trial motion hearing on 28 February, Stoeckly said: "I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan are targets that needed to be neutralised, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare … As I hoped, others were just as troubled, if not more troubled, than me by what they saw."
Images of President Barack Obama and the Guantánamo Bay detention centre illustrate comments by Manning about the US prison in Cuba, in which the soldier said: "We found ourselves holding an increasing number of individuals indefinitely who we knew to be innocent, low-level foot soldiers that did not have useful intelligences."
Manning also said: "I also recall that in early 2009, Barack Obama stated that he would close Guantánamo, and that the facility compromised our standing over all, and diminished our moral authority."
The comic will be published in October by independent publisher OR Books, in New York, which will assemble Stoeckley's graphic spreads at the end of the trial and "very quickly" produce the book as a print-on-demand paperback and ebook. Readers who pre-order the content will be sent Stoeckley's summaries of the trial electronically each week.
"In the course of the trial, Private Manning insists that his release of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs to WikiLeaks was an act of conscience, justified by the urgent need to reveal to the world the atrocities committed by the US military in the ostensible cause of freedom. At the prosecution table, military lawyers for the American government seek to set an example and discourage future whistleblowers by locking away Manning for decades, possibly the rest of his life," said OR Books.
"Stoeckley's vivid sketches from inside the court and beyond, together with carefully selected transcripts of the proceedings, trace the arguments as they move back and forth between the defence and the prosecution. His rendering of the trial provides both a vital record and a uniquely compelling read."
OR Books founder Colin Robinson said: "We're very pleased to be publishing this vital record of the Bradley Manning trial, drawn with great panache by Clark Stoeckley. Because of its unusual comic-book form, and the speed with which we can bring it to publication, we're anticipating a very wide audience. We hope it builds widespread support for Manning, one of the most important whistleblowers of our time."
OR Books, which describes itself as a publisher that "embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business", is also the home of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's book, Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet.
by KeenInsight » Tue Jun 11, 2013 7:18 pm
by 8bitagent » Tue Jun 11, 2013 7:38 pm
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:03 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jul 30, 2013 11:57 am
by elfismiles » Tue Jul 30, 2013 1:24 pm
Bradley Manning acquitted of aiding the enemy charge
By JOSH GERSTEIN | 7/30/13 1:09 PM EDT
FORT MEADE, Md. — A military judge Tuesday acquitted Pfc. Bradley Manning of aiding the enemy — the most serious charge the Army intelligence analyst faced for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military reports and diplomatic cables.
Manning was convicted on nearly all of the lesser charges considered by the judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, in connection with the largest breach of classified material in U.S. history.
The suspense at the court martial session was limited because Manning previously pled guilty to 10 of the 22 counts he faced. Those charges carry a potential sentence of 20 years. The aiding-the-enemy charge can lead result in a sentence of up to life in prison or event to the death penalty, but the military did not seek capital punishment in Manning’s case.
If convicted on all charges apart from aiding the enemy, Manning faced a potential sentence of up to 154 years.
Manning did not dispute the fact that he sent WikiLeaks most of the material that led to the charges against him. However, his defense argued that some of the counts were legally flawed.
The Army intelligence analyst was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq at a forward operating base where he studied threats in a section of Baghdad. He’s been in custody since.
As soon as Wednesday, the court martial is expected to move into a sentencing phase. Prosecutors are expected to call witnesses demonstrating the harm caused by Manning’s disclosures, while the defense will seek to undercut that evidence and argue for leniency.
Lind ruled in January that Manning is entitled to a sentencing credit of nearly four months as a result of what she determined was unnecessarily harsh treatment the intelligence analysts received during his almost nine-month stay at a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.
Manning’s case is one of an unprecedented flurry of leak-related criminal prosecutions brought under the Obama administration. A total of seven such cases have been brought in the past four and a half years, more than double the number of such cases in all prior administrations combined.
The administration expressed no regret about its handling of the recent wave of cases until earlier this year, when extensive attention to the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records and a search warrant for a Fox reporter’s emails in a leak investigation led to a review of longstanding guidelines for such probes.
After an internal review, Attorney General Eric Holder changed DOJ policies to make it more difficult to access journalists’ work materials in instances where they are not the target of an investigation.
However, the case against Manning was prosecuted in the military justice system, which is separate from the civilian courts.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/b ... z2aYBnQYWr
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/b ... 94923.html
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jul 30, 2013 1:26 pm
by Bandit Manatee » Tue Jul 30, 2013 2:09 pm
I wonder what organization they are from?by seemslikeadream » Tue Jul 30, 2013 2:19 pm
by 8bitagent » Wed Aug 07, 2013 1:19 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 08, 2013 10:34 am
The Courage of Bradley Manning Will Inspire Others To Seize Their Moment of Truth
by John Pilger, August 08, 2013
The critical moment in the political trial of the century was on 28 February when Bradley Manning stood and explained why he had risked his life to leak tens of thousands of official files. It was a statement of morality, conscience and truth: the very qualities that distinguish human beings. This was not deemed mainstream news in America; and were it not for Alexa O’Brien, an independent freelance journalist, Manning’s voice would have been silenced. Working through the night, she transcribed and released his every word. It is a rare, revealing document.
Describing the attack by an Apache helicopter crew who filmed civilians as they murdered and wounded them in Baghdad in 2007, Manning said: "The most alarming aspect of the video to me was the seemingly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have. They seemed not to value human life by referring to them as ‘dead bastards’ and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers. At one point in the video there is an individual on the ground attempting to crawl to safety [who] is seriously wounded … For me, this seems similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass." He hoped "the public would be as alarmed as me" about a crime which, as his subsequent leaks revealed, was not an aberration.
Bradley Manning is a principled whistleblower and truth-teller who has been vilified and tortured – and Amnesty International needs to explain to the world why it has not adopted him as a prisoner of conscience; or is Amnesty, unlike Manning, intimidated by criminal power?
"It is a funeral here at Fort Meade," Alexa O’Brien told me. "The US government wants to bury Manning alive. He is a genuinely earnest young man with not an ounce of mendacity. The mainstream media finally came on the day of the verdict. They showed up for a gladiator match – to watch the gauntlet go down, thumbs pointed down."
The criminal nature of the American military is beyond dispute. The decades of lawless bombing, the use of poisonous weapons on civilian populations, the renditions and the torture at Abu Graib, Guantanamo and elsewhere, are all documented. As a young war reporter in Indochina, it dawned on me that America exported its homicidal neuroses and called it war, even a noble cause. Like the Apache attack, the infamous 1968 massacre at My Lai was not untypical. In the same province, Quang Ngai, I gathered evidence of widespread slaughter: thousands of men, women and children, murdered arbitrarily and anonymously in "free fire zones".
In Iraq, I filmed a shepherd whose brother and his entire family had been cut down by an American plane, in the open. This was sport. In Afghanistan, I filmed to a woman whose dirt-walled home, and family, had been obliterated by a 500lb bomb. There was no "enemy". My film cans burst with such evidence.
In 2010, Private Manning did his duty to the rest of humanity and supplied proof from within the murder machine. This is his triumph; and his show trial merely expresses corrupt power’s abiding fear of people learning the truth. It also illuminates the parasitic industry around truth-tellers. Manning’s character has been dissected and abused by those who never knew him yet claim to support him.
The hyped film, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, mutates a heroic young soldier into an "alienated …lonely …very needy" psychiatric case with an "identity crisis" because "he was in the wrong body and wanted to become a woman". So spoke Alex Gibney, the director, whose prurient psycho-babble found willing ears across a media too compliant or lazy or stupid to challenge the hype and comprehend that the shadows falling across whistleblowers may reach even them. From its dishonest title, Gibney’s film performed a dutiful hatchet job on Manning, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The message was familiar — serious dissenters are freaks. Alexa O’Brien’s meticulous record of Manning’s moral and political courage demolishes this smear.
In the Gibney film, US politicians and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff are lined up to repeat, unchallenged, that, in publishing Manning’s leaks, WikiLeaks and Assange placed the lives informants at risk and had "blood on his hands". On 1 August, the Guardian reported: "No record of deaths caused by WikiLeaks revelations, court told." The Pentagon general who led a 10-month investigation into the worldwide impact of the leaks reported that not a single death could be attributed to the disclosures.
Yet, in the film, the journalist Nick Davies describes a heartless Assange who had no "harm minimisation plan". I asked the film-maker Mark Davis about this. A respected broadcaster for SBS Australia, Davis was an eyewitness, accompanying Assange during much of the preparation of the leaked files for publication in the Guardian and the New York Times. His footage appears in the Gibney film. He told me, "Assange was the only one who worked day and night extracting 10,000 names of people who could be targeted by the revelations in the logs."
While Manning faces life in prison, Gibney is said to be planning a Hollywood movie. A "biopic" of Assange is on the way, along with a Hollywood version of David Leigh’s and Luke Harding’s book of scuttlebutt on the "fall" of WikiLeaks. Profiting from the boldness, cleverness and suffering of those who refuse to be co-opted and tamed, they all will end up in history’s waste bin. For the inspiration of future truth-tellers belongs to Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and the remarkable young people of WikiLeaks, whose achievements are unparalleled. Snowden’s rescue is largely a WikiLeaks triumph: a thriller too good for Hollywood because its heroes are real.
by 8bitagent » Sat Aug 10, 2013 12:41 am
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