Judge Gives Bradley Manning Permission to Plead Guilty for Wikileaks Dumps

[struggle4progress]

Source: Wired

By Kim Zetter
11.29.12
1:36 PM

... The terms would allow Manning to plead guilty to 7 of the 22 charges he’s currently facing for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of classified government documents to the secret-spilling site in 2009 and 2010.

The 7 offenses together carry a total maximum prison term of 16 years in prison, presiding officer Col. Denise Lind said during a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

Manning hasn’t formally submitted a plea yet; he was simply seeking approval from the court that the terms under which he contemplated entering a plea were acceptable ...

The plea would not dispose of the remaining charges, but it would let Manning’s attorney focus his defense on fewer points of contention at trial next year ...

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/manning-plea-terms-accepted/

Read more: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/manning-plea-terms-accepted/

[blackspade]

1. I'm curious how this will play out.

I think it will have a definite chilling effect (beyond what is already happening) on whistle blowers.

[struggle4progress]

2. I'm sure the military will make every possible move to ensure that it has at least

some chilling effect on PFCs who might otherwise contemplate releasing three-quarters of a million restricted documents

[randome]

3. ...to foreign nationals.

[Comrade Grumpy]

4. ...to all of us.

[blackspade]

7. Along with everyone else.

[greiner3]

20. So let me see;

You are against one person, "releasing three-quarters of a million restricted documents," yet Bush's people can out an active and undercover CIA agent, an admitable felony, with impunity?

Is it the number, or the severity of the actions which you refer to?

I believe it is the latter.

In addition, Julian has said Wikileaks went over the emails, which they had in their possession for more than a month, and withheld the documents that mentioned known CIA type names.

Also, according to you, the Pentagon Papers would never have seen the light of the public's eye. Think about it!

Me thinks your outrage is misplaced.

[struggle4progress]

21. Consider working on your reading comprehension skills

[cstanleytech]

11. Whistleblowers will be fine provided they blow the whistle the right way.

Even Manning from what I have read would have legally been in the clear if he had just provided the data to a member of congress or the senate or even to the inspector generals office.

[midnight]

5. Obama just signed a new Whistle Blower law that I would assume would prevent this guilty plea from

being necessary.

[struggle4progress]

6. I'd suggest reading "Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012" before

making assumptions about its effects. It's now also known as Public Law 112-199. Here's the Thomas page:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/thomas

You would want the enrolled version

[Riftaxe]

8. Because the US judicial system

embraces Ex post facto laws in your world?

[msanthrope]

14. Um, no. Mr. Manning did not choose to follow whistle blower laws, so he cannot

avail himself of its protections.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

16. Its fairly facinating how many people seem to ignore that tiny fact wouldn't you say? n/t

[Kelvin Mace]

9. Will the judge extend the same courtesy

to the people who tortured him?

[struggle4progress]

10. What's the evidence Manning has been tortured?

[Kelvin Mace]

12. Here you go

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/manning-treatment-inhuman/

[struggle4progress]

13. Juan Mendez never met with Manning. To my knowledge, he never personally

examined any of the places where Manning was held, nor did any staff assigned to him: he merely engaged in some correspondence regarding the Manning case. Moreover, if you actually read his report, rather than overblown press coverage of it, it is phrased entirely in generalities:

...The Special Rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence. The Special Rapporteur again renews his request for a private and unmonitored meeting with Mr. Manning to assess his conditions of detention.

<pdf link:> http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2012/03/12/A_HRC_19_61_Add.4_EFSonly-2.pdf

Of course, those of us who are interested in an international climate conducive to human rights must be quite sympathetic to the Special Rapporteur's "request for a private and unmonitored meeting." And we will all agree with the Special Rapporteur that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence. But the Special Rapporteur did not explicitly assert that "seriously punitive conditions of detention" had been imposed on Manning -- and this is because (in fact) the Special Rapporteur would have had no grounds for asserting "seriously punitive conditions of detention" had been imposed on Manning

[Kelvin Mace]

15. Gosh, I wonder why they wouldn't let him meet

with Manning privately. Perhaps they had something to hide that they were afraid Manning would spill? Perhaps they didn't want anyone seeing Manning physical/psychological condition? Why not give people free access to inspect the facilities and the conditions?

My choice of who to believe is the UN and Manning's lawyers, or people who routinely shove Mickey Finn suppositories up "detainees' asses and haul them around to "black sites" for "interrogation".

[Bodhi BloodWave]

17. why exactly should Manning have been granted an exception to the normal rules regarding visitors? nt

[struggle4progress]

18. (1) I have no objection to your decision to "believe" Juan Mendez: I do object to the constant

Last edited Fri Nov 30, 2012, 08:30 PM - Edit history (1)

Assangist misrepresentation of what Mendez wrote. I gave you the complete link upthread: Mendez made the generic statement imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence. Everyone with any decency can agree to that. But note that Mendez did NOT write something more concrete, such as "Manning has not been found guilty of any crime, but he did suffer seriously punitive conditions of detention, which is a clear violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence." Mendez did not write that because he himself decided to limit his investigation to mere correspondence

(2) From a purely human rights standpoint, of course, I think we agree that one has little choice except to support the request for a private meeting of the detainee with the human rights professionals in cases, where maltreatment in custody is alleged

(3) And sadly, the situation is really nothing new: following some doctrine of American exceptionalism, the US has often refused to apply to itself the standards it claims must be applied to the rest of the world. This was certainly the case with the black site interrogations of the Bush era, which seem to me unquestionably criminal. But the relation of those cases to the Manning case seems nebulous to me

(4) In the case of Manning, which involved a huge international data dump, with a plausible espionage component, it is really not that hard to understand why the persons overseeing the matter may not have been excited at the prospect of allowing unsupervised international access to Manning

(5) Manning will have his day in court. After carefully reading Coombs' filings on the alleged maltreatment of Manning, I have seen nothing justifying the overblown claims that Manning was tortured. I do believe that Quantico was unsuitable for long-term pretrial confinement, and in fact Quantico seems now to have been closed for that purpose

[msanthrope]

19. Why should Manning get what my clients in jail and prison don't? And what stopped Mendez from

talking to David Coombs, Mr. Manning's lawyer?