Poor guy
Parole in 11 years? He'll be found hung in his cell within 11 weeks
Bradley Manning* sentenced to 35 years in prison
A military judge has sentenced US Army Private Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking classified material to Wikileaks. He was also dishonourably discharged from the Army, busted from private first class to private and will forfeit all pay and allowances. Manning has built up credit of three and a half years of pre …
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 20:11 GMT eulampios
Re: Poor guy
And what a poor country?
What a contrast with the fate of the USS Vincennes' captain who ordered to down the civilian Iranian aircraft full of people in 1988? While he was going against the Martial Code of Conduct ( not the first time), being disloyal to his higher commanders that day, in particular, having his crew make a few blunders to disregard important protocol of communication, got awarded instead.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 15:28 GMT Babbit55
Re: No....
Let me take my stance on this, I am on the fence. Sure he stole material and released it for whatever his reasons may be this is espionage and theft HOWEVER, it was also the act of a whistleblower showing the wrong doings of the government. A tricky situation indeed, He should serve however the credit for what he has already endured should be much higher.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 22:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No....
"He says that there is "a cancer of over-classification" - he means that in the US documents are often labelled secret when it would be merely embarrassing, not dangerous if they became public.
It is one way for the authorities to get around freedom of information laws. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23790301
Nuff said.
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Thursday 22nd August 2013 15:08 GMT James Micallef
Re: No....
33 years formal sentence and not eligible for parole before 11? Considering that he was facing life in prison, that seems like a VERY shortand lenient spell...
...until you realise that what this guy is really guilty of is embarassing his superiors and revealing war crimes committed by the US. It's disingenious to argue that he should have "gone through the correct channels" because the "correct channels" were the ones authorising the war crimes in the first place.
Good luck dude, you're gonna need it!
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 14:53 GMT Mad Mike
Re: No....
You can't say that leaking classified documents is always wrong. There have to be times when leaking classified documents is right.....for instance when containing evidence of grievous crimes. After all, many of these documents were only classified in the first place to hide the wholesale breaking of laws, the Geneva convention etc. going on, so making it impossible to reveal classified documents for any reason just gives them a simple and easy way of hiding crimes.
I agree that classified documents should not be leaked for fun or when the crimes revealed are pretty trivial, but this definitely wasn't the case here.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 15:08 GMT Derpity
Re: No.... @Mad Mike
Well, thats kind of the rub here. The argument was that he just took a bunch documents and didn't really know what was all in them. Hence, not a whistleblower and not offered the protections of being considered such. This is semi-believable given the huge volume of documents that were leaked. However, how do you know what to leak without at least looking at some of it?
Regardless, I think it could have gone far worse for him. The other side of that coin is if he would have been executed it would have probably caused more dissent among the American public and ultimately led to a more meaningful change in how things are done. This would have probably been the better result for America as a country, but obviously much worse for this kid.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 16:36 GMT Tom 38
Re: No....
You can't say that leaking classified documents is always wrong. There have to be times when leaking classified documents is right.....for instance when containing evidence of grievous crimes. After all, many of these documents were only classified in the first place to hide the wholesale breaking of laws, the Geneva convention etc. going on, so making it impossible to reveal classified documents for any reason just gives them a simple and easy way of hiding crimes.
I expect the judge may have agreed with you, if that is what he leaked. He didn't do this, he leaked as much of everything that he could, and trusted Assange to filter out what is sensitive, like names of translators working for the military, from what is 'newsworthy', like video of civilians being massacred.
Manning's job for his country was to protect that sensitive information from being disclosed, which he really failed at.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 17:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No....
"He didn't do this, he leaked as much of everything that he could, and trusted Assange to filter out what is sensitive, like names of translators working for the military, from what is 'newsworthy', like video of civilians being massacred."
And Assange did a fine job of it. Leaking everything was a colossal cock-up by a Guardian reporter.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 17:59 GMT Mad Mike
Re: No....
@Tom 38.
"I expect the judge may have agreed with you, if that is what he leaked. He didn't do this, he leaked as much of everything that he could, and trusted Assange to filter out what is sensitive, like names of translators working for the military, from what is 'newsworthy', like video of civilians being massacred.
Manning's job for his country was to protect that sensitive information from being disclosed, which he really failed at."
Don't get me wrong in this, I think Manning deserved something. Yes, he released more than he should have. I'm not sure if this was due to naivety or not really thinking. Maybe he expected others to do some of the checking and redacting as appropriate and they didn't do it.
Also, it may have been he had to grab everything and get it out quickly as he was likely to be detected and caught quite quickly. Maybe he didn't believe he had the time and chance to do the filtering, so got a lot out with the idea of him or others doing the filtering afterwards. After all, someone taking that amount of documents was likely to be found quickly, so taking time to filter may not have been an option.
As someone else has said, I think the problem is that they've tried him for everything rather than the more pragmatic, 'what was not in the public interest'. If they'd done that, I think people would have agreed much more. By trying him for everything, they've effectively said that evidence of war crimes must not be released if its classified regardless.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 23:19 GMT FredBloggsY
Re: No....
"Manning's job for his country was to protect that sensitive information from being disclosed, which he really failed at."
Manning's job for humanity was to protect the most important principles that apply to, and benefit, all of humanity, which he, to some extent, might have contributed towards.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 18:06 GMT Mad Mike
Re: No....
@Steve Knox.
"No, but you can say that it is always illegal. He's not going to jail for a moral wrong; he's going to jail for breaking the law.
The law is not a moral construct."
There is a well known principle in law that you may break one law in order to prevent a greater crime. There have been numerous cases in the US on this very issue and it has been upheld.
So, the question is are war crimes a greater crime than disclosing classified documents. If the answer is yes, he is allowed to break the law in order to release them and a court will back this (as has happened before). If the answer is no, the US is effectively saying that war crimes aren't much of a crime!!
Also, if he should go to jail because what he did is illegal (regardless of morals), then you're saying people who release documents from companies (under whistleblower) are equally then liable for civil action by the company and should loose. The whistleblower notion is irrelevant as it's a breach of their contract, therefore opening them up to civil action.
I know there's a tendency to prosecute laws on the strict wording of it in a blind manner these days, but all laws are effectively based on some moral basis and as such, the law is effectively based on morals.
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Saturday 24th August 2013 16:23 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Mad Mike Re: No....
".....There is a well known principle in law that you may break one law in order to prevent a greater crime....." All fine and dandy, except Manning didn't steal the information to "prevent a greater crime", he did it in a childish fit of pique due to his inability to fit into the military. He then grabbed all the information he could, regardless, in an attempt to build a "rep" in the hacker community - he seriously thought Lamo would be impressed by his actions. In short, Manning had no moral grounds for his actions, and to try and dress them up with noble intent is simply self-delusion. A$$nut may have egged him on, but Manning was a more than willing dupe.
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Thursday 22nd August 2013 08:40 GMT Intractable Potsherd
Re: No.... @Steve Knox
"The law is not a moral construct."
As a teacher of Law and Ethics, I disagree with you absolutely. Some very respected thinkers do, too.
Your opinion shows you to be a legal positivist, which I shouldn't be surprised by on a site like this - research shows that techie types are more prone to thinking "If X then Y", and expect the law to do the same. It is therefore good that techie types rarely go into law.
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Thursday 22nd August 2013 14:47 GMT Psyx
Re: No....
"You can't say that leaking classified documents is always wrong."
One can't say that it is morally wrong. But it is certainly legally wrong and in breach of the USCMJ, which Manning agreed to uphold.
I sympathise with him on many levels, but as morally right as he might be in releasing the documents, he didn't really do so because he was a moral crusader (just a messed up and depressed soldier) and he broke the USCMJ. So he can't and shouldn't simply walk away from it scott-free, no matter what the result. Not that Manning was really in a mental state where he could legitimately and reasonably decide what was 'right' to release or not, because he clearly wasn't.
We have to take legal responsibility for our actions, even when acting with the finest and most noble of intents. Otherwise we are one step from vigilante justice.
That said, the people who should be doing the most time was the people who saw his mental state and still let him work with sensitive material.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 15:07 GMT Rampant Spaniel
Re: No....
My personal take on those documents were that he overreached. I think he intended to be a whistleblower and leak evidence about troops killing and torturing citizens. Thats laudible, thats exactly what he should have done and he should not have been punished for that. Leaking classified communications from diplomats about unrelated issues was not ok (although fairly harmless, just caused blushes). The bigger problem is that the US has not punished him for the latter alone but seemingly everything. He should not have been punished in the slightest for releasing footage showing troops killing unarmed people. For releasing a memo that we think the current ruler of tinpotia is a loon with no cause is probably slap on the wrist territory if not community service.
I do wonder how much he was 'egged on' by Assange to take anything and everything he could get his hands on. Manning actually seemed to be genuine in his desire to show the world a wrong but I find it hard to allign that with releasing so many unrelated documents. Snowdon just seems to have leaked documents pertaining to what he wanted to expose as a wrong which seems more in line with whistleblowing. He certainly doesn't deserve 30 years in the slammer.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 15:58 GMT Velv
Re: No....
@Rampant Spaniel "I do wonder how much he was 'egged on' by Assange to take anything and everything he could get his hands on"
Agreed, to the extent that wikileaks is complicit in the depth of trouble Manning has ended up in.
Wikileaks HAD THE OPTION to conduct due diligence on content prior to publishing it. Wikileaks did not need to release the 700,000 documents, they simply chose the easy option of publishing everything instead of doing the legwork to find the important TRUE whistleblowing amongst the chaff of embarrassment.
I've been critical of Manning for this, and it remains my stance - if he was a true whistleblower then the volume of documents would be a tiny fraction of those released. To core dump everything was asking for trouble (and for that I really blame wikileaks laziness, since I fully support the concept of wikileaks).
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 16:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No....
It's my recollection that Wikileaks asked the US government to help them go through the documents and redact any which might be genuinely harmful, and they refused. They then worked with the NYT (or the Washington Post?) and the Guardian to do the same, and it was the Guardian who eventually fired it all out. Plus the US has subsequently admitted that nobody has been harmed by any of it.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 17:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No....
"Wikileaks HAD THE OPTION to conduct due diligence on content prior to publishing it. Wikileaks did not need to release the 700,000 documents, they simply chose the easy option of publishing everything instead of doing the legwork to find the important TRUE whistleblowing amongst the chaff of embarrassment."
It is a common misconception that Manning leaked 700k documents indiscriminately, one invented by his detractors and one they are obviously none too eager to clear up.
Wikileaks and their media partners (NYT, Guardian, Spiegel) released small numbers of carefully chosen, heavily redacted cables.
Unfortunately all of the documents were eventually inadvertently leaked by a boneheaded Guardian reporter who published the password Wikileaks had given him in a book, assuming it was no longer valid.
If you want to be upset about indiscriminate leaking, then get upset at this reporter and maybe Wikileak's IT security. But not Bradley Manning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning#Disclosure_of_classified_material
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 15:12 GMT mad_dr
@AC 14:48
"Surely you're not suggesting that leaking classified documents should not be punished."
Perhaps you should ask the questions "Why did Bradley Manning feel the need to leak documents? Why couldn't he report the crimes he had evidence of to a superior and expect justice to be done?"
What would YOU have done in Bradley's situation? Kept quiet? Leaked the documents anonymously? Tell your boss?
I sincerely hope you don't think that telling the boss would have led to justice being done so that leaves which options?
Manning may well look back at what he did as a serious error of judgement but can any of us seriously question his motives? There shouldn't even have BEEN anything for him to leak.
Given that he might have expected to be caught and punished for doing what he appears to believe was the right thing, that makes Bradley Manning a far braver soul than I.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 16:07 GMT Richard Jones 1
Re: @AC 14:48
mad-dr
At last a reasonably balanced entry. My concerns are complex. Elsewhere there have been comments suggesting that the chap had a range of issues prior to this major incident. This appears to be supported by the fact that he went trawling through spaces that were not his to trawl. Developing a messiah complex might also suggest a balance of mind issue.
Should he have had the position he had - No.
Should someone face dereliction charges for misplacing him - Yes.
Was he properly managed? No - so those who failed him as he failed them should also face odium.
However simple it appeared to a shallow first look, the case does raise challenging issues, few if any have been considered by the case.
As for the sentence, he deserved something, I am just not sure what, was it treatment to help to sort himself out? Was it punishment for screwing up?
In some ways he is a metaphor for what appears to be very wrong in some of the forces. Under evaluated, under managed, under supervised and as a result prone to make errors, sometimes misjudgements, some times much more egregious commissions of crimes. The later spoil things for everyone and they need to be excised. Where did Manning fall in this spectrum? I am still no more clear. Does he/will he need treatment? Yes I suspect he does/will do. His mental state appears at best confused now; without help it is unlikely to improve. Should he be imprisoned, probably yes, if only because he signed up for one thing and strayed far from his remit, for how long is another question. Should he receive some sentence rebate based on a disturbed mental state, I think he should.
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Wednesday 21st August 2013 17:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @AC 14:48
"At last a reasonably balanced entry. My concerns are complex. Elsewhere there have been comments suggesting that the chap had a range of issues prior to this major incident."
You've fallen into the establishment's intended trap. Their first rule of damage control for this sort of thing is to personally smear the person doing the damage. This was Nixon's plan with Watergate and its the government's plan for Manning, and you walked right into it.
Evaluate Manning for what he did (blew the whistle on war crimes and other violations of international law) and not whether or not he was gay, or lonely, etc. at the time. You don't discount the contributions of Nobel prize winners for physics based on whether they had "issues," so why Manning?
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