So, as expected, Bradley Manning is pleading guilty to some charges of hacking the US military servers and stealing the files published by WikiLeaks, but he's not pleading guilty to the charges about "aiding and abetting the enemy".
Ed Pilkington @EdpilkingtonBREAKING: #BradleyManning has pleaded guilty to being the #WikiLeaks source - 10 lesser charges carrying a max sentence of 20 years
The hearing today is being live-blogged by The New York Times reporter Charlie Savage and The Guardian reporter Ed Pilkington, and of course they are doing a much better job of reporting this accurately than WikiLeaks, and its hordes of day-old alt accounts who are heckling critics and the legions of Free Bradley tweeters and of course Firedoglake's anarchist supporter Kevin Gosztola who is going with the narrative that the US press "failed" Manning.
Most interestingly, Savage tweeted this:
Charlie Savage @charlie_savageManning upset WL didnt publish material about US-assisted Iraqi police arresting people for printing pamphlet decrying Iraqi govt corruption
...but didn't include that point in his story later.
The "progressives" and Manning defenders are playing up the news that Manning tried to reach the Times and Washington Post with his materials as the mainstream media "letting down" Manning. They're misreporting it and conflating it and spreading disinformation about it, so read exactly what the reporters tweeted, which in sum was this: Manning didn't call the news desk, the foreign desk, or an individual reporter, but at the Times, called the public ombudsman.
And look, you guys can't keep telling us there is no story there -- citing Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and everybody under the sun claiming that there was no real damage and no real news and no real information -- and then suddenly double back and say the US press "failed Manning". Failed in what, not getting a story which was about a nothing and didn't really do any harm to the US? Oh, right.
So...That's fake. Oh, I get it that you contradict yourself. On the one hand you tell us that "even Obama" says no damage was done; on the other hand you claim there is devastating information about war crimes. Well, which is it, guys?
You could only say that the US media "failed" if there was a story -- but there never was much of one. No smoking gun of some terrible war crime that wasn't already reported elsewhere -- we know from many sources from people actually working to do something about it that the US used torture abroad. To be sure, there are people directly harmed by WikiLeaks and I know them personally -- but they will not be standing up to paint a bigger target on their backs than they already have.
Manning has also been allowed to read a long and "serious" statement. The fans think it's big news that Bradley complained that when he called the New York Times, he got put in a voice mail, and when he called the Washington Post, they asked to see what he had, and somehow it didn't come together, and he ended up calling WikiLeaks.
Well, too bad he didn't get some of those telegenic hacker friends of his at MIT, even Aaron Swartz, who were better at media work and could turn out scads of press stories.
He called the "public editor" at the New York Times, not the newsroom.
Charlie Savage @charlie_savage@charlie_savage Rather, when Manning deciding what to do w/ war logs, called NYT public editor (not newsroom) & left msg tht wasn't returned
That's odd, because that's whom you call or write if you think there is a story that is biased, not if you have news, i.e. documents, exposes. He didn't think to call the foreign desk or news desk or a specific reporter, I guess. But the breakdown with Washpo isn't clear -- but I suppose if you call and speak vaguely about having something about the war and sound like you're ranting, maybe you don't get taken seriously.
Given the experiences the The Guardian and the Times had with Assange, there's nothing to suggest it would have gone any different with Manning if he had reached them.
And as I pointed out, if that New York Times reporter or intern or whomever had taken the call and taken Manning seriously, would they have been as patriotic as Adrian Lamo and called the FBI over their concerns about treason? I bet not... That's the funny thing...
Note to future hackers and leakers: don't go to Julian Assange or WikiLeaks or other shady operations like that, go to as reputable news organization with accountability which is less likely to blow you into the feds or accidently leak all your sources.
Now, to me, what's much more interesting over the squabble or who took whose phone call is Manning's evidently anguished statement that Assange didn't publish his file about the arrest of the Iraqis with the printing press and the newsletter about Iraqi government corruption.
Now, you'll recall that story, which sounded like it could become a PEN Club case or a Committee to Protect Journalists case was oddly never in the WikiLeaks cables.
Given that it was the incident that turned the tide for Manning, and made him decide to take the irrevocable decision to hack the files and leak them, it's awfully strange.
In fact, it's the failure to see that published that is chief among the reasons I refuse to accept Bradley Manning as a whistleblower or as a human rights activist. I see him merely as an anarchist interested in harming the United States in an obvious and cheap way that he was able to do, inflicting as much damage as possible to make the US become unlike its purported nature, i.e. to become closed, and to prosecute Manning, whom it should have celebrated as a whistleblower. Right? You know how there is "suicide by cop"? WikiLeaks was "punishment by government".
So, if Assange didn't publish that story -- there was time -- why didn't Manning publish it somewhere else? Why didn't he go to a human rights organization? To MIT hackers, even? To the Times to a specific reporter? To even start a Blogspot account? Why? That's a mystery.
But it's awfully interesting, given that Manning describes that as his definitive story, that Assange didn't publish it. So it lets us know several things: Assange is a self-centered asshole who just didn't understand its importance to his source/client; Assange isn't really a human rights activist and didn't understand this was the most important of the cases (because other cases were already knew, like the helicopter killings).
Important, that is, if it were air-tight. If it really showed what he claims. Maybe it didn't. And maybe that's why Assange didn't publish it. Because it might have rapidly led to exposing those people as in fact militants or terrorists and undermined Manning's belief. Maybe Assange -- or even the Guardian or somebody in the loop -- were more sophisticated about this incident and its ramifications than Manning.
Oh, and the WikiLeaks sock puppets on Twitter INSTANTLY began suggesting that it was Daniel Domscheit-Berg who failed to publish the printing press story. Well, I'm waiting for him to weigh in. Meanwhile, any claims to the effect that Assange couldn't publish the printing press story because it would have outed Manning as the hacker are fake. They could have seeded it in among the thousands of documents they leaked and it wouldn't have stuck out. It's much more likely that it's just not the story he thought it was.
Manning says he spoke repeatedly to someone named "Ox," and he believed that to be Assange. So he implicates Assange.
Ed Pilkington @Edpilkington#BradleyManning says he engaged in prolonged internet conversation with #WikiLeaks member called “Ox” - assumes was Julian Assange
Ed Pilkington @Edpilkington#BradleyManning took Iraq and Afghan warlogs out of Iraq on a memory stick in his camera. Uploaded to #WikiLeaks from Barnes & Noble
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