Report: U.S. Can’t Link Bradley Manning to Julian Assange

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

After months of investigation, U.S. authorities have apparently been unable to find any independent evidence that a jailed Army private accused of leaking classified documents gave them to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks, according to a news report.

The information comes from anonymous Pentagon sources who told NBC that although there’s evidence that Pfc. Bradley Manning illegally downloaded thousands of sensitive documents to his computer and passed them to an unauthorized party, there’s no evidence indicating the recipient was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or his organization.

Manning was arrested last May after allegedly confessing to former hacker Adrian Lamo in online chats that he had leaked two Army videos to WikiLeaks, as well as 260,000 U.S. State Department cables and hundreds of thousands of documents on the Iraq war. U.S. investigators have the chat logs, which Lamo provided to them. In the logs, Manning discusses communicating directly with Assange and says at one point that he uploaded classified data to a “crazy white haired aussie who can’t seem to stay in one country very long.”

Last April, WikiLeaks published one of the videos Manning referred to, under the title “Collateral Murder.” The video shows a 2007 Army helicopter attack on a group of civilians. It killed two Reuters employees and an unarmed Baghdad man who stumbled on the scene afterward and tried to rescue one of the wounded by pulling him into his van.

WikiLeaks has acknowledged possessing a second video Manning mentioned in his chat, but has not published it to date. This one involves a May 2009 airstrike near Garani village in Afghanistan that the local government says killed nearly 100 civilians, most of them children.

WikiLeaks, along with several media partners, published half-a-million documents from the Iraq War last fall. Manning described leaking the documents to the organization, and WikiLeaks recently began releasing some of the more than 250,000 U.S. State Department cables it says it possesses.

If it’s true that investigators have found no evidence linking Manning and Assange, it may be because Manning allegedly erased it from his system. He discussed doing so in his chats with Lamo. Manning noted in the chats that any incriminating evidence of his activities had been “zerofilled”, or erased, from his computers:

(02:09:24 AM) Lamo: *random* are you concerned aboutCI/CID looking into your Wiki stuff? I was always paranoid.
(02:09:40 AM) Manning: CID has no open investigation
(02:10:28 AM) Manning: State Department will be uber-pissed… but I dont think they’re capable of tracing everything…

————

(02:14:36 AM) Lamo: So you have these stored now?
(02:14:54 AM) Manning: i had two computers… one connected to SIPRNET the other to JWICS…
(02:15:07 AM) Manning: no, they’re government laptops
(02:15:18 AM) Manning: they’ve been zerofilled
(02:15:22 AM) Manning: because of the pullout
(02:15:57 AM) Manning: evidence was destroyed… by the system itself
(02:16:10 AM) Lamo: So how would you deploy the cables? If at all.
(02:16:26 AM) Manning: oh no… cables are reports
(02:16:34 AM) Lamo: ah
(02:16:38 AM) Manning: State Department Cable = a Memorandum
(02:16:48 AM) Lamo: embassy cables?
(02:16:54 AM) Manning: yes
(02:17:00 AM) Manning: 260,000 in all
(02:17:10 AM) Manning: i mentioned this previously
(02:17:14 AM) Lamo: yes
(02:17:31 AM) Lamo: stored locally, or retreiveable?
(02:17:35 AM) Manning: brb latrine =P
(02:17:43 AM) Manning: i dont have a copy anymore
(02:17:59 AM) Lamo: *nod*

Assange has accused U.S. authorities of trying to pressure Manning into cooperating with them to bring charges against Assange, but Manning has reportedly refused to do so.

He must have covered his tracks well. I wonder what if any effect this has on the case against Wikileaks.

[SmokingGun]

Before:



After:



He's 23 years old but looks 40+.

It's good to know that political prisoners are treated well by the USA.

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

Political prisoner?

[SmokingGun]

Political prisoner?

Yes. How else would you classify 'spying' or 'treason' if not political? He didn't kill anyone, he didn't blow anything up, he didn't plot to commit any violence. At the very worst he 'stole' information that rightfully belongs to the taxpayer anyway, things the public have a right to know about, as they are funding all of it.

He's in jail for being a whistleblower. Ergo, a political prisoner.

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

Political prisoner?

Yes. How else would you classify 'spying' or 'treason' if not political? He didn't kill anyone, he didn't blow anything up, he didn't plot to commit any violence. At the very worst he 'stole' information that rightfully belongs to the taxpayer anyway, things the public have a right to know about, as they are funding all of it.

He's in jail for being a whistleblower. Ergo, a political prisoner.

You're equating him with Aung San Suu Kyi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?

[SmokingGun]

Political prisoner?

Yes. How else would you classify 'spying' or 'treason' if not political? He didn't kill anyone, he didn't blow anything up, he didn't plot to commit any violence. At the very worst he 'stole' information that rightfully belongs to the taxpayer anyway, things the public have a right to know about, as they are funding all of it.

He's in jail for being a whistleblower. Ergo, a political prisoner.

You're equating him with Aung San Suu Kyi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?

They are very different in many respects, but yes, all three are political prisoners.

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

and you wonder why people just mock you and refuse to take you seriously.

[Skate4RnR]

SmokingGun, free Mumia man, free Mumia.

[MasterOfMeatPuppets]

SmokingGun, free Mumia man, free Mumia.

We're better off without Itwalks.

[Skate4RnR]

SmokingGun, free Mumia man, free Mumia.

We're better off without Itwalks.

What?

Learn English.

I had real parents.

[SmokingGun]

Yes. How else would you classify 'spying' or 'treason' if not political? He didn't kill anyone, he didn't blow anything up, he didn't plot to commit any violence. At the very worst he 'stole' information that rightfully belongs to the taxpayer anyway, things the public have a right to know about, as they are funding all of it.

He's in jail for being a whistleblower. Ergo, a political prisoner.

You're equating him with Aung San Suu Kyi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?

They are very different in many respects, but yes, all three are political prisoners.

and you wonder why people just mock you and refuse to take you seriously.

I just watched the 60 minutes interview with Assange from Sunday where he also calls Manning a political prisoner.



And to be clear.. I hadn't heard of Manning being referred to as one before, by anyone. It's just the way I see the situation.

[SmokingGun]

So if he's not a political prisoner, what is he?

What he did he did because he felt the public should know about what their government is doing, the people they are killing, the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars spent on a useless war, the wool they are pulling over the public's eyes, all under the guise of 'national security'.

Let's see:

Manning did seek to profit, nor to blackmail, he had nothing to gain personally at all, this is evident in the chat logs between himself and Lamo. He was worried he'd be arrested because he transferred all the data to a 'crazy white haired guy'.

He didn't try to sell the information, he gave it away. His only motive was to expose the corruption and rot in the army and government. A good example is the 'Collateral Murder' video he leaked, which changed the way millions saw the war. It exposed the side of the war the government and army so desperately want to suppress from the public, who incidentally are the ones funding it.


Were his actions illegal?

Yes, under the 'national security' laws of the USA.

Were the actions of the Tiananmen square protesters illegal?

Yes, under the 'national security' laws of China.

Were Liu Xiaobo's writings illegal?

Yes, under the "suspicion of inciting subversion of state power" law of China.

Were Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's actions illegal?

Yes, under Soviet law of "founding a hostile organization".

Were Aung San Suu Kyi's actions illegal?

Yes, under the "Law to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts" of Burma.



So, again I ask, how is Manning *not* a political prisoner?

[supernaught9]

Nice to see people not reposponding to the blatant truth. Yet let have a thread 4 pages long over some dumb shit. That is the overall attitude with people 40 million will view American idol but you cannot get not even 500k views on some really important topics on YouTube that everyone should be concerened with, just the fact of our tax money being misspent but yet that it not enough!