U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe

[Valin]

Wired:

Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter
June 6, 2010

Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”

“Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote.

Wired.com could not confirm whether Wikileaks received the supposed 260,000 classified embassy dispatches. To date, a single classified diplomatic cable has appeared on the site: released last February, it describes a U.S. embassy meeting with the government of Iceland. E-mail and a voice mail message left for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday were not answered by the time this article was published.

The State Department said it was not aware of the arrest or the allegedly leaked cables. The FBI was not prepared to comment when asked about Manning.

Army spokesman Gary Tallman was unaware of the investigation but said, “If you have a security clearance and wittingly or unwittingly provide classified info to anyone who doesn’t have security clearance or a need to know, you have violated security regulations and potentially the law.”

(Snip)

Manning came to the attention of the FBI and Army investigators after he contacted former hacker Adrian Lamo late last month over instant messenger and e-mail. Lamo had just been the subject of a Wired.com article. Very quickly in his exchange with the ex-hacker, Manning claimed to be the Wikileaks video leaker.

“If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?” Manning asked.
Valin says: I don't know but keeping your big fat mouth shut comes to mind

From the chat logs provided by Lamo, and examined by Wired.com, it appears Manning sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker. He discussed personal issues that got him into trouble with his superiors and left him socially isolated, and said he had been demoted and was headed for an early discharge from the Army.

When Manning told Lamo that he leaked a quarter-million classified embassy cables, Lamo contacted the Army, and then met with Army CID investigators and the FBI at a Starbucks near his house in Carmichael, California, where he passed the agents a copy of the chat logs. At their second meeting with Lamo on May 27, FBI agents from the Oakland Field Office told the hacker that Manning had been arrested the day before in Iraq by Army CID investigators.

Lamo has contributed funds to Wikileaks in the past, and says he agonized over the decision to expose Manning — he says he’s frequently contacted by hackers who want to talk about their adventures, and he’s never considered reporting anyone before. The supposed diplomatic cable leak, however, made him believe Manning’s actions were genuinely dangerous to U.S. national security.

“I wouldn’t have done this if lives weren’t in danger,” says Lamo, who discussed the details with Wired.com following Manning’s arrest. “He was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air.”

Manning told Lamo that he enlisted in the Army in 2007 and held a Top Secret/SCI clearance, details confirmed by his friends and family members. He claimed to have been rummaging through classified military and government networks for more than a year and said that the networks contained “incredible things, awful things … that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC.”

(Snip)

[Pepper]

Does this apply here, Valin?

 

§ 2381. Treason

 

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

[SrWoodchuck]

Does this apply here, Valin?

 

§ 2381. Treason

 

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Pepper!

 

Some of that applies to Obama & Holder.......or were you talking about Manning?

[Pepper]

Manning, but yes, throw Obama and Holder in the stockade as well, SrWoodchuck

[Valin]

Pepper SrWoodchuck

 

2007 Apache Engagement on Video: Appears Incriminating

 

Page 10

 

Some very good replies on this thread.

[Pepper]

Thanks, Valin.

[SrWoodchuck]

Valin! Thank you.

 

I've been reading this situation on several other websites, and the Wikileaks video of the two journalists being killed was thoroughly de-bunked over a month ago. The Garani air-strike was a FUBAR, but what gives me the willies is the quarter million State dispatches, that he released.

 

At the Wired website above, and in Mannings own words:

 

"Everywhere there's a US post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed," Manning wrote. "It's open diplomacy. World wide anarchy in CSV format. It's Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It's beautiful & horrifying."

 

The FBI has kept him under wraps in A-stan, and from what I read, they're more concerned about an Army electronic intelligence gadget, process or machine that may have been compromised. Add to that, a report that shortly after the 260,000 State dispatches were stolen, it was reported a huge number of Chinese cyber sites opened up & were gleaning the net for any and all information.

 

I'm more worried that what he saw on those dispatches, was our country being sold, or deeply compromised by the people that are now in charge & their masters [ which isn't the people of the United States.]

[Valin]

NY Post: The 'wikileaker' and the White House

One hole plugged

Ralph Peters

6/8/10

 

Yesterday brought the welcome news that a 22-year-old soldier had been busted for passing classified gun-camera tapes and documents to Wikileaks. If proven guilty, Spc. Bradley Manning needs to do serious prison time.

But that's where the good news ends. Spc. Manning was only caught because he bragged about his crime to a former hacker, who turned him in to the Army. Our government still isn't serious about plugging classified leaks in wartime.

 

According to Wired.com, which broke the story, the renegade soldier sent a chest-thumping message claiming that "Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack" because of the large volume of State Department documents he claimed to have leaked.

Well, probably not. Don't expect Ambassador Fuzzypoodle to show up in the cardio ward just yet. Judging by the gun-camera video from Baghdad that Manning handed over and Wikileaks posted a few months back, that young soldier may have had access to a lot of classified information -- but not to the really good stuff.

 

The video, which made the Web rounds, shows an Apache helicopter crew dealing with terrorists. Anyone with the least objectivity or military experience recognized that the crew made the right call when pulling the trigger (after deliberating). Any "civilians" killed shouldn't have been smoking and joking with terrorist gunmen.

 

Wikileak's big revelation was weak on sound, low on fury and signified nothing -- although the left tried to pretend it was the My Lai massacre on steroids. The phony fuss faded away.

That doesn't mean that Manning's alleged crime wasn't serious. It was. If convicted, he should do hard prison time. Classified leaks in wartime constitute a potentially deadly breach of a solemn trust. We need to have a zero-tolerance, hang-'em-high policy for those who compromise intelligence, operational or planning documents.

 

The problem is that we don't have such a policy. Spc. Manning was caught in a self-woven net. I'm much more interested in busting whoever leaked that sensitive special-operations memo Gen. Dave Petraeus signed off on, only to have it appear on the front page of The New York Times a few weeks ago.

Publicizing that memo may well cost American lives -- and the lives of innocent locals. Leaking that document showed a cavalier disregard for the lives of America's best and our national security.

 

(Snip)