Wikileaks

I don't see how WikiLeaks' release of classified cables, which risk international peace and security, is not an act of treason, punishable by law ( "The latest from WikiLeaks: gossip," Nov. 30). It is, additionally, an action that is infuriating because of the reckless endangerment it presents and tiring because of the low, uncommendable, voyeuristic, sideshow appeal. Jaye Dansicker, Sparks

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is due back at Fort Meade this week, where lawyers for the alleged WikiLeaker plan to argue that he was punished at a military brig before his case had been heard — grounds, they say, to dismiss all charges against him. By the time he arrived at the Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Va., Manning was world famous. The former intelligence analyst, who lived in Maryland before enlisting in the Army, had been accused of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

I guess the government never learned what my mother told me, "If you don't have something nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all" ("The latest from WikiLeaks: gossip," Nov. 30). I hate to break this news to the president, but no one likes us anyway, so who cares about this leak? Steve Cuprzynski, Cockeysville

Julian Assange, the peripatetic and elusive founder of the whistleblower web site Wikileaks, put himself at the center of a fine bit of political theater over the weekend when he used his fugitive status at the Ecuadorean embassy in London to demand the U.S. cease persecuting those who seek to hold governments accountable. Having stage managed a diplomatic crisis between Britain and Ecuador that threatens to rupture relations between the two countries, Mr. Assange is milking the incident for all it's worth, but it remains to be seen whether that will be enough to get him out of the jam he's in. Mr. Assange had been living in London for the last two years after fleeing Sweden to avoid being questioned about two women who claim he raped them.

Over the weekend, Julian Assange, the reclusive renegade computer hacker who has made a career of unveiling government and corporate secrets on the whistle-blower website Wikileaks, confounded American policymakers for the second time in three months when he released nearly 400,000 classified field reports from the war in Iraq. In July, Wikileaks posted 90,000 classified documents describing a litany of strategic setbacks, human rights abuses and widespread corruption in the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Julian Assange, the peripatetic and elusive founder of the whistleblower web site Wikileaks, put himself at the center of a fine bit of political theater over the weekend when he used his fugitive status at the Ecuadorean embassy in London to demand the U.S. cease persecuting those who seek to hold governments accountable. Having stage managed a diplomatic crisis between Britain and Ecuador that threatens to rupture relations between the two countries, Mr. Assange is milking the incident for all it's worth, but it remains to be seen whether that will be enough to get him out of the jam he's in. Mr. Assange had been living in London for the last two years after fleeing Sweden to avoid being questioned about two women who claim he raped them.

WikiLeaks reminded me of one of the world's oldest jokes: What is a diplomat? A diplomat is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country. What bothers me is not that our officials sometimes tell lies for the greater benefit of the country. As a reporter in troubled places, I have sometimes had to tell lies. To enter Burma and China, I said I was a tourist. Had I said I was a reporter, I could not have gone and could not have written articles about the problems and the lives of the people I met there.

Americans have known for some time that the war in Afghanistan was not going well, and many have suspected that the situation there was much worse than the administration has been willing to publicly acknowledge. But the unauthorized release this week of some 90,000 classified military documents by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks — and their publication and analysis in The New York Times and two European newspapers — offers, for the first time, an excruciatingly detailed view of the difficulties the U.S. is facing against a formidable and determined adversary that is stronger today than at any time since the 2001 invasion that toppled the Taliban.

The legal pursuit of Wikileaks, a transnational website devoted to publishing secret government documents worldwide, is reaching a boiling point. After publishing tens of thousands of classified U.S. documents revealing details of the war in Afghanistan, the group is now promising to publish more of the same. The actions of the leaker, alleged to be U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning, are likely violations of U.S. espionage laws. Mr. Manning was already charged under the Espionage Act with the submission to Wikileaks earlier this year of a classified video showing the death of two journalists in Iraq.

The latest trove of documents released over the weekend by WikiLeaks does make for titillating reading. The cache of diplomatic cables contains juicy items of the sort usually found in gossip columns. Amid the chitchat there are a few pieces of information that illuminate important questions about American diplomacy. In particular, documents that suggest that diplomats may be crossing the line into low-level spycraft, and revelations about the degree of international concern about Iran's nuclear program, do legitimately inform the international debate.

I'm writing today to encourage The Sun to pay greater attention to accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Pfc.Bradley E. Manning's pre-trial hearings and eventual court martial. Pfc. Manning is accused of leaking the largest document dump in U.S. history to WikiLeaks, including the Iraq and Afghan War Logs as well as the infamous "Collateral Murder" video depicting an Apache helicopter attack on Reuters journalists. Mr. Manning faces 23 different charges including "aiding the enemy," and if convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the former intelligence analyst accused in the largest leak of classified material in U.S. history, was formally charged Thursday with aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act. Manning, who is accused of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, declined to enter a plea during the arraignment at Fort Meade. He also deferred a decision on whether he wants his case to be decided by a single military judge, a panel of officers, or a panel of officers and enlisted soldiers.

Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, the former intelligence analyst awaiting a court-martial on charges of aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act, will return to Fort Meade this month for his arraignment, the Army said Thursday. Manning, who is accused of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, appeared at the Army base in Maryland in December for a preliminary hearing. The arraignment is scheduled for Feb. 23. The decision on when and where his court-martial will be held is up to a military judge, who will be appointed by the Army Trial Judiciary.

The commander of the Military District of Washington has ordered a court-martial for Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the former intelligence analyst accused of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington made the decision Friday after reviewing testimony and arguments from a preliminary hearing at Fort Meade in December, officials said. There was no word on whether the as-yet-unscheduled court-martial would also be held at Fort Meade, one of three installations within the military district equipped to host such a proceeding.

Why is it that people who violate the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice by torturing prisoners do not get punished ("Ex-CIA officer charged over leaks to journalists," Jan. 24), but people who report such crimes to the press get the book thrown at them? The code specifies that it is a crime to violate the Geneva Convention, which bans torture. The convention, like all signed treaties, is considered to be "the highest law of the land" by the U.S. Constitution. The convention also stipulates the obligation that soldiers and others report violations that they witness.

An Army officer recommended Thursday that Pfc. Bradley Manning, the former intelligence analyst accused of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, be court-martialed on charges of violating the Espionage Act and aiding the enemy. Manning, 24, is accused of sending raw field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world and a video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad to be published online.

The leaking of 91,000 classified documents on the Afghanistan war is being compared, imprecisely, with the Pentagon Papers leak of 39 years ago that unmasked official U.S. deceptions about the Vietnam War. The latest document dump merely provides more raw material with which to make similar accusations. The Pentagon Papers were a careful compilation of reports and analysis by military officialdom that often clashed with the rose-colored Nixon administration contentions of seeing light at the end of a tunnel when there was little of it. They were intentionally leaked by Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg in the hope of putting brakes on a failing policy.

In closing arguments Thursday, Army prosecutors presented a damning portrait of Pfc. Bradley Manning as a soldier who used his top-secret security clearance to scour classified computer networks for documents and burn the data onto discs with the express purpose of leaking it. "I'm throwing everything I got on [Guantanamo] at you now," Manning typed from his bunk south of Baghdad during an early-morning online chat with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to a government presentation.

A former team leader of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning testified Tuesday that she told superiors on several occasions that Manning should not be allowed to handle classified information or be sent to Iraq, but her warnings apparently went unheeded. Manning, then an intelligence analyst, deployed with his unit to a base south of Baghdad, where Army prosecutors allege he gave hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks in one of the largest security breaches in U.S. history.