Bradley Manning trial: Military Fails to Link Leaks With Any Deaths

[chimpymustgo]

Military Fails to Link Leaks With Any Deaths
By ADAM KLASFELD


FT. MEADE, Md. (CN) - The largest intelligence leak in U.S. history, disclosed by Pfc. Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks, did not lead to the deaths of any military sources, the government's first sentencing witness testified Wednesday.

Manning has long admitted to sending WikiLeaks more than 700,000 confidential files, including U.S. embassy cables, Guantanamo detainee profiles, and footage of airstrikes that killed civilians.

The battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan are known as the war logs. WikiLeaks calls its Afghan War Diary "an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010."

In 2011, then-Army Chief of Staff Mike Mullen had said that Manning and WikiLeaks "might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family" named in the leaked documents as a source of intelligence to the United States.

But Manning has insisted that he sent WikiLeaks only low-sensitivity categories of files that he believed would shed light on U.S. war fighting and statecraft. Three years of journalistic scrutiny into the effects of the leaks could not uncover a case of an intelligence source who was killed or injured because of the disclosures.

The military's position took another hit Wednesday, as the former brigadier general who headed the Information Review Task Force investigating the leaks said that he had never heard that a source named in the Afghan war logs was killed.

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More details from the sentencing hearing:

http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/31/59869.htm

[brooklynite]

1. Isn't this a little late?

He's been acquitted of Aiding the Enemy, and he's pleaded guilty to everything else.

[chimpymustgo]

2. It's important as the judge considers the sentence. From the link:

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During the case in chief, the parties could present evidence about the harm that the leaks could potentially have caused to U.S. national security.
As the sentencing phase of Manning's trial kicks off, the focus now shifts to what the actual impact was on the ground.

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