At an open hearing on February 28, Pfc. Bradley Manning said that he was responsible for providing U.S. government documents to the WikiLeaks website, including a large collection of U.S. State Department cables, a video of a brutal U.S. Army helicopter attack in Baghdad, and other records.
“The decisions that I made to send documents and information to the WLO [WikiLeaks Organization] and website were my own decisions, and I take full responsibility for my actions,” he told the military court.
The Army belatedly released a redacted copy of Pfc. Manning’s statement yesterday. [Correction: The redacted statement was released by Manning’s defense counsel, David E. Coombs.] (An unofficial version had been privately transcribed by Alexa O’Brien soon after the hearing.)
The Freedom of the Press Foundation obtained an audio recording of the statement, which it released online.
Manning eloquently expressed his motivations for the unauthorized disclosures, including the need to expose corruption and deception in the conduct of diplomacy and military operations. He described the efforts he made to weigh the possible damage that might result from disclosure, and the judgment he made that release of the records was the appropriate step.
But he did not acknowledge that any other individuals had been placed at risk by his actions, nor did he take responsibility for any consequences they might suffer. Taliban leaders said in 2010 that they were scrutinizing the Afghanistan war records published by WikiLeaks and that they would “punish” persons listed in the records who were found to have cooperated with the U.S. military.
Denice Ross, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist and Data Policy Institute lead at the Federation of American Scientists, will be honored for her stewardship of public data by the National Academy of Public Administration, where she has been named a Fellow.
Confirmation that the construction of the security perimeter and associated security infrastructure at RAF Lakenheath are still ongoing once again raises questions about whether U.S. nuclear weapons have already been deployed to the base.
Alaskans are sensibly pulling back from the vogue for bans and returning to a western tradition that has worked for more than half a century – one that welcomes innovation but also oversees it closely.
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