Whistleblower Manning to give 'personal testimony'

[struggle4progress]

David Usborne – 01 August 2013

... The sentencing phase may last weeks, with the prosecution already promising to call 20 witnesses. It is only now that the two sides will be permitted to address both the harm that Manning's actions caused and what motives lay behind them ...

That could mean some very personal testimony from the 25-year-old, who was raised in Wales and the US, on his own struggles with gender identity, including his past interest in developing a female alter ego.

Final punishment will hinge partly on how damage done stacks up against motive.

"You're balancing that to determine what would be an appropriate sentence. I think it's likely that he's going to be in jail for a very long time," said Lisa Windsor, a retired army colonel and former judge advocate.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/americas/whistleblower-manning-to-give-personal-testimony-29464269.html

[struggle4progress]

1. Manning sentencing: Wikileaks 'strained' US-Afghan ties

Manning sentencing: Wikileaks 'strained' US-Afghan ties

The Wikileaks disclosures strained US-Afghan relations, a retired US Army general said at the sentencing hearing of Pte First Class Bradley Manning.

Brig Gen Robert Carr said documents Pte Manning leaked named hundreds of friendly Afghan villagers, putting their lives at risk ...

On the first day of the sentencing hearing in a military court in Fort Meade, Maryland, the prosecution sought to demonstrate the extent of damage caused by the 2010 leaks.

That issue is at the heart of the sentencing process, and also in the wider debate over whether to treat Pte Manning as an ethical whistle-blower or a traitor ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23527053

[Cha]

5. Mahalo struggle..

I don't know how "ethical" he could be when he didn't even know what he was dumping.

I read something today that nobody was killed because of his leaking.. well, he and they who were potential danger were Lucky.

[Luminous Animal]

8. The judge threw out Carr's testimony. THREW IT OUT.

Carr could not come up with one single name of any person who was put at risk.

[struggle4progress]

9. More precisely: "... Asked whether he was aware of anyone who had been harmed by the disclosures,

General Carr said he knew of an Afghan national who had been killed by the Taliban. But a defense lawyer jumped in, objecting that the individual’s name had not been found in leaked documents, a point that General Carr acknowledged. But he added that the Taliban had tried to tie the death to the WikiLeaks disclosures. The judge, Col. Denise R. Lind, said she would disregard that part of his testimony ..."
In Sentencing, U.S. Tries to Prove Harm by Manning
By EMMARIE HUETTEMAN
Published: July 31, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/in-sentencing-us-tries-to-prove-harm-by-manning.html?_r=0

[Luminous Animal]

10. Yep. Carr lied. Testimony DISREGARDED.

[struggle4progress]

11. I expect if Carr had lied, the judge would have tossed all his testimony, rather than merely state

that a particular element of his testimony would be disregarded on defense objection. It's possible, in some circumstances, to deduce someone's identity without being given the name, and there were reports in 2010 that the Taliban was examining the Wikileaks release for names, followed shortly by reports that they had warned a number of people and had killed at least one, based on information from Wikileaks. But if claiming in court such Taliban actions were in fact based on data obtained from Manning's release, rather than being (say) mere ugly posturing by extremists, a certain standard of evidence will be required. Perhaps Carr's comments on this particular point merely reflect his expert opinion and the Court decided such opinion was inadequate in context

After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen ... The frightening combination of the Taliban spokesman’s threat, Abdullah’s death, and the spate of letters has sparked a panic among many Afghans who have worked closely with coalition forces in the past, according to a senior Taliban intelligence officer who declined to be named for security reasons. The officer said he has seen reports of Afghans rushing to U.S. and coalition bases in southern and eastern Afghanistan over the past few days, seeking protection and even asking for political asylum. (U.S. military officials would not verify this information.) The Taliban officer claimed that the group’s English-language media department continues to actively examine the WikiLeaks material and intends to draw up lists of collaborators in each province, to add to the hit lists of local insurgent commanders.
Taliban Seeks Vengeance in Wake of WikiLeaks
Aug 1, 2010 8:00 PM EDT
Leaked U.S. Intel documents listed the names and villages of Afghan collaborators—and the Taliban is starting to retaliate.



Updated | 12:36 p.m. A spokesman for the Taliban told Britain’s Channel 4 News on Thursday that the insurgent group is scouring classified American military documents posted online by the group WikiLeaks for information to help them find and “punish” Afghan informers. Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Zabihullah Mujahid, who frequently contacts news organizations, including The Times on behalf of the Taliban, said, “We are studying the report.” He added: We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with U.S. forces. We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them. Steve Coll, an expert on the region and a former senior editor of The Washington Post, said in a New Yorker podcast on Thursday, “my reading of the disclosure of these informants in the context of Taliban-menaced southern Afghanistan is that people named in those documents have a reasonable belief that they are going to get killed, or — actually the way it works with the Taliban is, if they can’t find you, they’ll take your brother instead” ...
Taliban Study WikiLeaks to Hunt Informants
July 30, 2010, 11:58 am
By ROBERT MACKEY
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/taliban-study-wikileaks-to-hunt-informants/?_r=0

... In just two hours of searching the WikiLeaks archive, reporters found the names, villages, and fathers' names of dozens of Afghans credited with providing intelligence to U.S. forces ... The Times of London gave examples of informants named in the released documents ... The paper, which withheld all details that would identify Afghans, said a Taliban fighter considering defection was named in a 2008 interview. The document reportedly included his village ... In a case from 2007, a middleman and the Taliban commander he spoke to were both named ...
Report: Afghan leaks dangerously expose informants' identities
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38441360/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/t/report-afghan-leaks-dangerously-expose-informants-identities/

... journalists took Assange to Moro's, a classy Spanish restaurant in central London. A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it" ...
The treachery of Julian Assange
The WikiLeaks founder, far from being a champion of freedom, is an active danger to the real seekers of truth
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/18/julian-assange-wikileaks-nick-cohen

... Mr Assange told The Times that many Afghan informants, including those whose details were potentially disclosed, were "telling soldiers false stories ... creating victims themselves". When asked if that justified releasing their identities, the former computer hacker replied: "It doesn't mean it's OK for their identities not to be revealed" ...
Publication of Afghan informant details worth the risk: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
by: The Times
From: Times Online
July 29, 2010 8:29AM
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/publication-of-afghan-informant-details-worth-the-risk-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange/story-e6frg6so-1225898273552

[Luminous Animal]

13. Yes. The U.S. and Carr lied about Khalifa Abdullah

His name is not in the Wikileaks docs. I know because I did a search of the databases. The U.S. catapulted Taliban propaganda.

And that, "they deserve it" quote? Another journalist, Der Spiegel's John Goetz, who was at the dinner, has signed an affidavit attesting that Assange said no such thing. (Link to the pdf of the affidavit: http://wlstorage.net/file/cms/Folder%204/1.%20Signed%20statement%20by%20John%20Goetz.pdf)

[struggle4progress]

14. You might want to read #9 and #11 more carefully. In one case, you seem to be arguing against

a claim the witness did not actually make; in the other case, you're citing one person who didn't hear what several others did -- something that, in fact, is entirely comparable with similar statements by Assange in other contexts

[msanthrope]

12. You are missing two points there...one, Carr's testimony will be disregarded

as to that particular point only. The rest of it stays in. Second, there are 900 lives that are safe despite what Manning did. Who is he to risk those lives?

[struggle4progress]

2. 3-Iraq War Logs In Manning Case 'Hit Us In The Face' -U.S. Officer

The U.S. Army was overwhelmed when WikiLeaks published more than 700,000 secret diplomatic and war documents handed over by soldier Bradley Manning, a retired officer testified in the sentencing phase of the convicted private's court-martial.
Published July 31, 2013, 11:00 PM
By: Tom Ramstack, Reuters News Service, The Jamestown Sun

... "The ones that hit us in the face were the Iraq logs," retired Brigadier General Robert Carr said in a Fort Meade, Maryland court on Wednesday, a day after a military judge found Manning guilty of 19 charges over the leaks in 2010, the biggest breach of classified data in U.S. history.

"No one had ever had to deal with this number of documents," Carr said.

A prosecutor told the sentencing hearing that the leaks caused military intelligence officials to rethink how much access to allow low level intelligence analysts like Manning ...

Carr testified that the leaks allowed Taliban militants in Afghanistan to track down a citizen of that country who had worked with U.S. intelligence ...

http://www.jamestownsun.com/event/article/id/192057/group/homepage/

[struggle4progress]

3. Manning leaks fractured U.S. relationships, general says

59 minutes ago • Associated Press

... Retired Army Brig. Gen. Robert Carr said the material Manning leaked identified hundreds of friendly Afghan villagers by name, causing some of them to stop helping U.S. forces.

“One of our primary missions is to protect the population over there,” said Carr, who led a Defense Department task force that looked at the risks of the leaks. “We had to get close to the population, had to understand that population, and we had to protect them. If the adversary had more clarity, as to which people in the village were collaborating with the U.S. forces, then there is a chance that those folks could be at greater risk” ...

Carr said the Taliban executed one Afghan national, saying it had tied the man to the list of villagers, but the general couldn’t find his name in the material Manning leaked.

“We went back and searched for his name in the disclosures. The name was not there,” Carr said ...

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/manning-leaks-fractured-u-s-relationships-general-says/article_9772d695-e92b-54c7-8265-be61f7ac9019.html

[RobertEarl]

4. Manning risked his life. Why?

For love of the country.

They should sentence him to time served and be given a job at nsa.

[moondust]

6. It is virtually impossible to know

how much damage has been done.

The parties most interested in leaked intelligence are not going to announce to the world how much useful information they mined from it and how much of it filled in missing pieces in their own intelligence picture of NATO and U.S. State Department operations.

The Taliban are not going to announce to the world that they learned from the leaks that Mohammed from a village near Kandahar had been helping NATO forces, so they crept into his village after dark and slit his throat. Or that they learned from the leaks that Checkpoint Tango is normally manned by five lightly armed soldiers, so a squad of 12 Taliban should be enough to overrun it.

etc.

[Pelican]

7. Whistleblower who?