Army Private Bradley Manning has been charged with aiding the enemy, transmitting defense information in violation of the Espionage Act and more than 20 other crimes. He could face life in a military prison. I viewed three of the files he is accused of illegally transmitting. Two had incident coordinates and basically nothing more in the view of this writer. The third consisted of disturbing video from a U.S. helicopter that showed three unarmed men standing next to a van, which was parked on a deserted street. The helicopter’s gunship proceeded to fire at the men, killing all of them in a quick, systematic manner. The case against one person, Private Manning, is whether he provided hundreds of thousands of highly classified material to WikiLeaks or played the role of a whistleblower who exposed government wrongdoing.
Across the aisle where I presently work sits a retired government lawyer – an Air Force Judge Advocate General – who got bored with retirement and returned to work, not as an attorney, but in the same position as myself. My coworker is absolutely livid (understatement) at the Army: how and why could such a low-level private gain access to such a large cache of highly classified information? Why did a private even have access to highly classified information?
One Chicago Tribune article quoted an Army supervisor of the “control room” who said the area where Private Manning worked was in “disarray”, lacked appropriate supervision, and discs were strewn everywhere. Where was the oversight? Shouldn’t some supervisors be charged, at a minimum, with dereliction of duty? Or are more people involved in the largest breach ever of classified information, but a young private is a most convenient sacrifice?
