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Targeting Whistleblowers: Truth Telling Endangered - by Stephen Lendman
On April 16, journalist John Cole wrote:
"The message is clear - you torture people and then destroy the evidence, and you get off without so much as a sternly worded letter. If you are a whistle blower outlining criminal behavior by the government, you get prosecuted."
In fact, it's worse. Under Bush, torture was official policy. It remains so under Obama who absolved CIA torturers, despite unequivocal evidence of their guilt. But leaking it risks criminal prosecution for revealing state secrets and endangering national security.
On June 7, New York Times writer Elisabeth Bumiller headlined, "Army Leak Suspect Is Turned In, by Ex-Hacker," explaining that US Army intelligence analyst Specialist Bradley Manning told Adrian Lamo that he leaked the following materials to WikiLeaks:
-- "260,000 classified United States diplomatic cables and video of a (US) airstrike in Afghanistan that killed 97 civilians last year," and
-- an "explosive (39 minute) video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the Reuters news agency." Manning called it "collateral murder," a crime he felt obliged to expose.
Lamo told the military, saying "I outed Brad Manning as an alleged leaker out of duty. I would never (and have never) outed an Ordinary Decent Criminal. There's a difference." He didn't explain or how any criminal can be decent.
On June 7, the military command in Iraq arrested Manning, saying in Pentagon boilerplate:
"The Department of Defense takes the management of classified information very seriously because it affects our national security, the lives of our soldiers, and our operations abroad."
So far, Manning is uncharged and is being held in Kuwait pending further action.
On June 6 in wired.com, Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter broke the story in their article headlined, "US Intelligence Analyst Arrested in WikiLeaks Video Probe," explaining:
The Army's Criminal Investigation Division arrested Manning after Lamo outed him. The State Department said it wasn't aware of the arrest.The FBI had no comment, then later the Defense Department confirmed his arrest for allegedly leaking classified information. According to army spokesman Gary Tallman:
"If you have a security clearance and wittingly or unwittingly provide classified information to anyone who doesn't have security clearance or a need to know, you have violated security regulations and potentially the law."
Manning said:
"Everywhere there's a US post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. It's open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It's Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It's beautiful and horrifying. (The documents describe) almost criminal political back dealings. (They belong) in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark corner in Washington, DC. (Our government is involved in) incredible things, awful things."
