Government arrests soldier who released video of Iraq helicopter attack that killed civilians!

[Better Believe It]

Arrest made in U.S. military Wikileaks probe
By Helen A.S. Popkin
June 7, 2010

U.S. military officials confirmed to NBC News today that a 22-year old military intelligence analyst has been taken into custody for allegedly providing the document-posting website Wikileaks with classified gun-camera video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack that killed innocent civilians in Baghdad.

Specialist Bradley Manning of Potomac, Md., whose arrest was reported yesterday on Wired.com’s "Threat Level" blog, was reported to Army officials by former hacker Adrian Lamo, according to the tech website.

Manning allegedly bragged to Lamo that he had provided Wikileaks with the Apache video, three other classified gun-camera videos including a controversial bombing in Afghanistan, classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat and as many as 260,000 classified cables.

Reporting Manning was not an easy decision, Lamo told BBC News, and though he’s received other confessions and boasts of criminal behavior, he’s never turned anyone in before. This, however, was a matter of both personal and national security. (And how did the release of the videos harm my security?).

The website posted two versions of the now-infamous Baghdad airstrike video, a 39-minute unedited version and an annotated 18-minute version, on April 5, 2010. Titling it “Collateral Murder,” Wikileaks cited the video as evidence of a Pentagon coverup. Two Reuters employees and a Baghdad man were three of the more than a dozen killed during the attack. Two children were also seriously injured.

Wikileaks has not confirmed that it received any content from Manning, but continues to respond to the Wired.com story via Twitter.

“Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect,” read one tweet from the Wikileaks account. “We never collect personal information on our sources, so we are unable as yet to confirm the Manning story,” read another.

Wikileaks also used the microblogging site to call into question Lamo and Wired.com editor Kevin Poulson, who co-authored the Wired.com story, calling them “notorious felons, informers & manipulators.”

Read the full article at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37554779/ns/technology_and_science-security

[PDJane]

1. So much for the bragged-about freedom of expression......

[xchrom]

2. The U.S. Should go home. Nt