Bradley Manning Takes "Full Responsibility" for Giving WikiLeaks Government Data

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/bradley-manning/

by cyphersanctus • 13 years ago

102 124 13 years ago

wired.com

dromidas• 13 years ago

Today a criminal... in 100 years a hero.

gnosis• 13 years ago

He's already a hero to many.

sigzero• 13 years ago

A hero to the stupid maybe. He is scum and a traitor.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

What does it mean to be a criminal in the U.S. these days anyway?

D9u• 13 years ago

I believe it was President George "Dubya" Bush who said, "You're either with us, or you're against us." This mentality, coupled with the (unpatriotic) "Patriot Act," leaves a lot of room for defining criminality, which, apparently, the US Supreme Court, by its recent rulings, infers that all US citizens are potential criminals, if not actual. Thus the domestic surveillance program continues.

austingunter• 13 years ago

Full responsibility. Let's break that down.

Full responsibility, on the surface, means that Manning is taking full responsibility under the law, and is not shying away from the legal consequences of his actions. He knows that according to the laws and the power structure, he's accountable for his actions which threaten said laws and power structure. Those self-interested parties will react in the appropriate way to defend the status quo.

Full responsibility to history means something else entirely.

Full responsibility to history means that Manning doesn't shy away from the responsibility he has in challenging a corrupt power structure, and fighting for the rule of law. He's accepting responsibility for standing up for truth, in spite of the legal consequences. He's accepting full responsibility for being part of something bigger than himself.

Salutes

dmm3• 13 years ago

> the responsibility he has in challenging a corrupt power structure

What's the corrupt power structure and how did he challenge it?

Karunamon• 13 years ago

... you can't be serious. What exact part of that sentence are you taking issue with? The corrupt-ness of the US military and/or government, or the fact that releasing this information was a challenging act?

jarin• 13 years ago

Looks like they finally broke him.

malbs6• 13 years ago

He's spent a good % of his life in prison, he's facing spending the rest in prison. Admirable that he is attempting to try and take the heat off of WikiLeaks/Assange, even after the incarceration he has already suffered (and likely to suffer into the future).

If only more people were like him. Hell, how many people do you hear about, who, when charged with a crime put their hand up and say "Yes, I did it". Not many, even for simple things like traffic violations.

slurgfest2• 13 years ago

Pleas are actually very common. If he refused, then there would be people posting on how admirable it was that he stuck to his guns.

mc322• 13 years ago

This is off topic, but in Japan it's not uncommon for people who commit serious crimes to turn themselves in at the nearest Koban. (There is also a large percentage of coerced guilty pleas --it's claimed that JP justice kind of mistreats (wears down people) to capitulate and assume responsibility) you can be held up to a month wihout charge or access to lawyers (formal arrest vs voluntary police custody). On the other hand JP police tend to only take on cases where they are very likely to win conviction --hence the very high conviction rate in Japan ~99% vs high 80s for the US. This habit leads to cases where police establish 'people fall down stairs' and die rather than pursue a murder conviction where the outcome is uncertain.

bdcravens• 13 years ago

I can't deny that he violated the trust placed in him by the military. That's a scary game, and one that I can't honestly take a position in, as I've never served.

However, I feel that service is more than to your branch, commander, or unit. What is a soldier? Someone willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater, to defend those who can't defend themselves, to bring honor to their service. A US soldier serves the people first, the government second. Manning realized the risk he was placing his life in, and like a true soldier, he didn't let that knowledge deter him. In taking responsibility, he's holding his head high, not cowering behind attorneys and HTTP proxies.

I can't say if he's right or wrong, but I can say that he showed courage befitting his title.

magikarp• 13 years ago

Well said.

jws• 13 years ago

In taking responsibility, he's holding his head high, not cowering behind attorneys and HTTP proxies.

You might be reading too much into this (or not). In the context of a plea bargain in the United States, "accepting responsibility" is a keyword. It triggers a significant reduction in your sentence.

cjensen3• 13 years ago

If a soldier thinks something is wrong, he might talk to a reporter and even provide classified examples if necessary to prove his point.

That is not what Bradley Manning did. He did a full dump of information regardless of whether or not the information was related to his cause. That's not a courageous protest: that is playing God with other's lives on the line. In his delusion of Godhood, he literally committed treason.

Sorry for the harshness of this, but it genuinely outrages me that people see heroism in this guy. His behavior is outside even the most liberal interpretations of the concept of non-violent protest or civil disobedience.

Maxious• 13 years ago

> If a soldier thinks something is wrong, he might talk to a reporter and even provide classified examples if necessary to prove his point.

> That is not what Bradley Manning did.

Did you even read the article linked?

" Manning said he first tried to take his information to the Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico, before contacting WikiLeaks."

"Manning said he tried to talk to an unnamed Washington Post reporter to interest her in the Iraq and Afghanistan documents, but “I did not believe she took me seriously.” He left voicemails with the public editor and the news-tips lines for the New York Times and heard nothing. A blizzard, he said, kept him from driving to Politico’s office to discuss the documents. According to Manning’s account, only after his attempts to give the documents to mainstream media organizations fail did he consider giving them to WikiLeaks."

douglasisshiny• 13 years ago

I've heard this claim before (he put other's lives in danger), but I haven't seen it backed. As far as I know, even the military operations documents leaked were old (relatively). I haven't come across any sort of news relating to people dying because of these leaks. Or any sort of military or government personnel being put in danger.

thetrb• 13 years ago

"that is playing God with other's lives on the line."

That's the same pseudo-argument that keeps coming up again and again. Whose lives did he play with? Please don't answer with some hypothetical "aiding the enemy" crap.

Wasn't it the U.S. military that originally played with lives aka "collateral damage"?

streptomycin3• 13 years ago

He did a full dump of information regardless of whether or not the information was related to his cause.

...to a journalist, to vet and release as appropriate. It's not like he just uploaded it to The Pirate Bay or something.

slurgfest2• 13 years ago

Getting disgruntled and indiscriminately dumping whatever you find on sensitive internal networks, in violation of the military law you agreed to be governed by when you VOLUNTEERED for the US military, is not an honorable self-sacrifice.

If we believe that, then we should believe that any employee of any startup has an honorable sacrificial duty to leak that startup's code along with a dump of its databases.

nuclear_eclipse2• 13 years ago

So if a volunteer army is committing mass atrocities in the name of protecting state secrets, nobody should blow the whistle because they volunteered for the position before they knew what they were going to be doing?

I'm just wondering where the line is drawn here.

yesbabyyes• 13 years ago

If that was an employee of Enron circa 2000, yes I think she or he should be celebrated. It's not like Manning "indiscriminately dump[ed]" documents from an organization that was clearly honorable and honest -- quite on the contrary, it seems.

superprime• 13 years ago

Sacrifice by definition must be voluntary, otherwise it's just servitude, so saying he volunteered is not a good argument against calling his service sacrifice.

Likewise breaking the law is not necessarily wrong, and what's legal and what's moral don't always overlap. Consider slavery.

As for the last part, it could be a duty to leak code if your startup is doing something highly immoral. No one's arguing for what you said; it seems like trolling.

icebraining• 13 years ago

If that startup is killing civillians, absolutely.

malbs6• 13 years ago

Not really a fair comparison. Unless the start-up was tax payer funded, and was doing objectionable things like selling customers credit card/personal information to third parties, and you knew about it, maybe then you would be lauded for exposing it. However no one would label you a hero for releasing a companies IP for the sake of it.

MAYBE if it was some company making bucket loads of money off of GPL code they were deliberately and knowingly abusing the license!

opminion• 13 years ago

Homeland, the TV series, is based on a similar premise and, whether you like the show or not, it works.

samstave• 13 years ago

How many waterboardings did that take?

mpyne18• 13 years ago

I am so, so, so disappointed that the narrative of the facts has been warped into something that isn't true. I expected it on Reddit, but not so much here.

Given that I actually serve, let me explain why: He did the INFOSEC equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb.

Whistleblowing is going, "Hey, I have evidence of War Crime FOO, I should leak this to somebody and blow the whistle". Not, "Oh, look at all this data I have access to, let's just FTP this shiat up to the latest foreign national to hit the news".

In the DoD whistle-blowing is actually a thing, believe it or not. For instance U.S. soldiers committed a horrible atrocity in Iraq involving murder, rape, and arson [1]. The world was alerted to this by an Army soldier (of all things) , Pfc. Justin Watt, who revealed it to a mental health practitioner, who got U.S. Army investigators involved. Notably, Pfc. Watt suspected his chain-of-command would not believe him or would try to cover it up, and yet he still managed to alert investigators without revealing an entire CD-R's worth of classified material.

Pfc. Manning did none of this. He didn't alert U.S. Army CID, the U.S. Army Inspector General (IG), the DoD IG, an American friend back home, a fellow soldier, or even the American media (as the Pentagon papers had been revealed). Edit: Turns out that Pfc. Manning almost managed to inform the media, but ran out of patience (or coffee, or something).

But all of this is assuming that Manning had details of a set of war crimes (1 or many). Even this ends up being more favorable to Manning than reality though. Manning didn't leak "war crimes", he leaked whatever info he could download, without verifying that it was all actually evidence deserving of whistle-blowing. Much of those "evidence of war crimes" were instead the most mundane types of reports (e.g. diplomatic cables describing how Putin and Berlusconi were buddy-buddy, or patrol reports describing how soldiers patrolled a certain area to verify the safety of an Afghan informant). However nice it might be to peek into diplomatic traffic from the outside, it was still classified, it was not evidence of war crimes, and Manning never read it all anyways before he leaked it to a foreign national over an unsecure network.

"But what about all the good stuff he was trying to do?", you might ask. Turns out he even had an ulterior motive to be mad at the Army, he had recently been demoted from Specialist for physically assaulting a fellow soldier. I'll bet Pfc. Manning doesn't even know how much of his exfiltration job was to get back at the Army, and how much was to "blow the whistle". And either way, you don't do horrible things just because it turns out well for a few people (unless you're a Wall St. banker, I suppose).

The saddest part is that prior to 9/11 Manning wouldn't have been able to dream of having access to the information he had access to.

9/11 exposed deep flaws in the U.S. government's ability to handle intelligence agencies amongst the various agencies. It was better for FBI to hoards its intel, CIA to do the same, and etc. all down the line. After 9/11 it was finally realized that this wouldn't work when trying to defend from the kind of terrorism which kills thousands of people at a shot, and so interagency cooperation became the watchword.

The thinking went, if we can trust a soldier enough to die for his country, have his own weapon, and have him analyze the workings of an Islamist group in Iraq, then surely we can trust him if we give him all the intel he needs to do his job, right? Right? I mean really, who's the bigger threat here, Al Qaeda or Pvt. Garcia?

But it only takes one disgruntled soldier to prove otherwise.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_killings

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

> Pfc. Manning did none of this. He didn't alert U.S. Army CID, the U.S. Army Inspector General (IG), the DoD IG, an American friend back home, a fellow soldier, or even the American media (as the Pentagon papers had been revealed).

Actually, he did alert the American media. Specifically, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

http://gawker.com/5987634/bradley-manning-tried-to-leak-to-t...

mpyne18• 13 years ago

Did you even read the article you linked?

He talked in vague terms to a WaPo reporter.

He canceled leaking the helicopter video to Politico because of weather.

He "left a voicemail" with the public editor of the New York Times saying that he had something very important. How many of /those/ calls do they get in a day?

But let's say you're right, and we'll call "trying a wee little bit to alert the American media" good. That was #6 on my list (I didn't even count "inform your shrink", btw). What happened to #1-#5?

And why did he leak classified material that he didn't read, that was not evidence of war crimes?

If you're just going to chisel on a single point of my wall of text then by all means go for it. In the meantime I'll see if I can edit to include how he almost managed to work up the cojones to drop the bombshell at an American newspaper but couldn't muster enough motivation, because I certainly don't want to be even slighty non-factual on HN.

MysticFear4• 13 years ago

Why add the aside about Wall St. banking? You are perhaps doing exactly what you despise: "the narrative of the facts has been warped into something that isn't true".

If you aren't a Wall Street banker or have deep knowledge in that area, why even comment on it?

mpyne18• 13 years ago

I'm sorry if I gave off the impression that all/most Wall St. bankers are dirtbags, as I can't confirm that for exactly the reason you state. However I didn't think it would be too controversial that there are some who have taken action for the greater good of their bank and not for the greater good of the whole market though (or at least that was what all the media seemed to be saying at points over the past few years).

scoofy• 13 years ago

I'm sympathetic with what your saying, but the types of things we learned about our military via these leaks were unbelievable. That our military is perfectly okay with opening fire on reporters and children should not be classified. I, for one, learned that my military's definition of 'atrocity' vastly differs from mine. Was it the right way of doing things? Probably not, but it doesn't seem like there is a way of showing these types of things to the public when most media outlet won't even show the coffins of the soldiers we've lost.

mpyne18• 13 years ago

Please keep in mind that there is an ocean-sized gulf between "Manning did in fact leak classified material that he should not have" and "everything the U.S. military and government have ever done is A-OK".

This is also a common refrain among some of Manning's supporters, but I try to treat people and arguments on their own merits. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

bcoates• 13 years ago

Were any actual revelations about the military in Manning's files? I remember the big Wikileaks surprise being that the Islamists and conspiracy theorists were right that most middle east/north African governments were outright US client states.

The US military's definition of a civilian not including people standing next to other people who carry weapons in public in Iraq shouldn't have been a revelation to anyone, it's not like they were making a secret of it.

snarfy• 13 years ago

Yes, look at all that data he had access to.

I have no sympathy for the officials who armed Manning and the rest of the military with the infosec equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Why did they have that info if it was so potentially dangerous? Privates in the military were given ALL of that data? Really?

Manning may be guilty, but the negligence goes all the way up.

mpyne18• 13 years ago

> I have no sympathy for the officials who armed Manning and the rest of the military with the infosec equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Why did they have that info if it was so potentially dangerous?

The reason was 9/11. Did they go overboard? Hell yeah they did, but that's how the military seems to operate (possibly the gov't too, who knows). It's always penduluming from one extreme to the next, they can never simply do the exact right thing.

anigbrowl3• 13 years ago

I wish I could upvote this repeatedly. I'm happy to agree that Manning had some good intentions, but he went about implementing them in a wildly irresponsible way. Many of the people who supported his actions have been pointing to the content of the State Department cables as if they abounded with proof of nefariousness while only exposing their own willful ignorance, to the point of seeming upset that American diplomats engage in intelligence-gathering and are not always completely frank in their dealings with foreigners. Almost all of the 'revelations' in the cables were already matters of public knowledge to anyone sufficiently interested in the countries in question anyway. So much so that at one point I wondered if the whole thing were an exercise in Track II diplomacy.

rhizome4• 13 years ago

but he went about implementing them in a wildly irresponsible way.

It's possible that the value of the release is greater than the harm from irresponsibility.

arcadeparade2• 13 years ago

The US Army is a colossal murder machine, responsible for unimaginable suffering throughout the entire world. Are you trying to say he's a bad guy because he should have done some editing of it beforehand? Or that he would put his entire future at risk because of some personal troubles?

BTW, Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower, has given Manning his full support: http://www.bradleymanning.org/activism/sign-daniel-ellsbergs...

>Bradley Manning has worldwide support because the information he released to the public uncovered human rights abuses and corruption, and contributed to peace and democracy. Nobel Laureates like President Obama shouldn't send Nobel Peace Prize Nominees like Bradley Manning to prison for life! After more than 950 days of pre-trial imprisonment by the US military, and multiple instances of outrageous government conduct, it is time to drop the charges and free Bradley Manning!

mpyne18• 13 years ago

My opinion is that Daniel Ellsberg supports Manning for the simple reason that it aids his own activism, even if the facts are not 1:1 the same as his case was.

And that's kind of an important point: Ellsberg helped author the Pentagon Papers and knew full well the import of what he leaked (to an American paper, btw, not Soviet, N. Vietnamese, or neutral party). Despite having a Top Secret clearance Ellsberg didn't leak other classified information that he may have had access to, as it didn't pertain to the lies that the government was feeding the public at the time.

sxcurry2• 13 years ago

This is an important and interesting discussion, and I appreciate your viewpoint from the "inside" as it were. Let me try to explain my civilian perspective.

As one of the (unwilling) funders of the Afghan war, I believe it's in my best interest to have as much truthful information available to me as possible, although of course there are a very few specific things that need to be kept secret, at least for a time. However, as the leaked documents showed, we as funders were being provided a very distorted picture of what was actual happening. As the LA Times said, commenting on the leaks, "no democracy can or should fight a war without the consent of its people, and that consent is only meaningful if it is predicated on real information."

With respect to the harmful effects of what was leaked: "In October, the Pentagon concluded that the leak "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods", and that furthermore 'there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak."

Manning's motives may not have been completely pure, but I still strongly believe that he did the right thing.

mpyne18• 13 years ago

I don't at all disagree with ensuring that the public has all of the information available to them that can possibly be provided; that's already how it's supposed to work.

I'm not on the inside of the Army but I'll say that much of what was leaked (as described by the Guardian, et al) was not that surprising, but that's because I was paying attention to existing public-source news, blogs, etc.

But if Manning managed to only leak material that was already kind of out there, that was only by sheer luck (the first nuclear bomb killed no one after all; it was detonated in the middle of nowhere).

> With respect to the harmful effects of what was leaked

This is what we call "no harm; no foul". It's not something I believe in with regard to classified information (at least when you can't be bothered to actually read through the classified information).

The reasoning is simple: Let's say for example that I tie you down and move to shoot you and realize I'm out of ammo. So I duck out of the hut to get more, and when I return you've been freed by a passing bystander.

No harmful effects came to you, right? So I should just be free to go, right? No harm, no foul, after all.

streptomycin3• 13 years ago

The fact that whistleblowing through official channels sometimes works does not prove that it always does. In the chat logs Lamo released, Manning cites one of his motivations as being how his superiors did not at all care about some of the corruption he found.

And I don't see why you see a distinction between what Manning did and what Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg doesn't see much of a difference: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-19/us/wikileaks.ellsberg.man...

mpyne18• 13 years ago

Well you don't get to complain about official channels when you don't make any attempt to use them. I mentioned how Pfc. Watt didn't trust his superiors on purpose to show that you could still blow the whistle with a non-sympathetic chain-of-command.

For Ellsberg I'll just paste my comment from below:

My opinion is that Daniel Ellsberg supports Manning for the simple reason that it aids his own activism, even if the facts are not 1:1 the same as his case was.

And that's kind of an important point: Ellsberg helped author the Pentagon Papers and knew full well the import of what he leaked (to an American paper, btw, not Soviet, N. Vietnamese, or neutral party). Despite having a Top Secret clearance Ellsberg didn't leak other classified information that he may have had access to, as it didn't pertain to the lies that the government was feeding the public at the time.

rdl2• 13 years ago

His unit and direct superiors were, by all accounts, worthless as human beings and as soldiers.

However, the DOD IG, MNF-I HQ, or congress could have wielded effective oversight.

mixmastamyk3• 13 years ago

Your post has a few small inaccuracies... The media weren't helpful for what should have been the story of the decade. The info was filtered at least once before publicizing it.

However there is also a bias in tone of your post. Reminds me of those I have heard before regarding whistle-blower Police officers. Fellow officers are highly motivated to dig up any dirt and paint a picture that the person is nuts and didn't belong, or had a vendetta, etc, etc. Rather than the scenario where an honest person decided they had enough.

Each case is different of course, so pardon the bluntness, but your post is exactly what I'd like to hear if I were a fellow soldier.

mpyne18• 13 years ago

That's actually kind of disappointing to hear... I'm a sailor.

rdl2• 13 years ago

I fully agree.

I also find the duration and character of his pre trial detention to be unconscionable. I believe it is reasonable to suspect him of crimes which, if guilty, would warrant decades or life in prison.

Yet, it may be that he should be released to punish the government for his detention and prevent them from doing the same in the future.

morganpyne• 13 years ago

It is slightly surreal for me to see somebody posting here with my name and such different perspectives to mine on the topics being discussed. I have to double-take each time I read one of your comments and see the poster name. Greetings from 'the other' mpyne :D

mpyne18• 13 years ago

I just feel sorry for the many other M. Pynes in Australia with my name. I jumped on the right GMail address and all the other ones have had to go without (though it doesn't stop their friends/associates from occasionally sending me mail meant for them).

smogzer• 13 years ago

Manning was just a kid, playing games, never thought he was doing something that these skeletors of society would pursue him in the future for.

And again, something that had no consequences gets a kid to suffer the rest of his life, just to keep military and courts and other "serious people" all of which that could also be seen as criminals of bigger crimes such as inflicting pain for a living (military instead of farmers and abundance, lawyers and judges instead of friendship and disputes in games and drinks). And these military go to war with the mote to spread freedom and democracy, what for ? to arrest kids for life ?

Skeletors of the world... grow up, relax, have a beer and life for the swords to plow shares or tanks to tractors, or drones to aerial seed planters!

Bradley Manning Takes "Full Responsibility" for Giving WikiLeaks Government Data

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