bobdina
08-04-2010, 10:42 AM
WikiLeaks, U.S. group share leak defense cost
By David Dishneau - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Aug 3, 2010 17:21:33 EDT
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks would bear about half the $100,000 cost of a civilian attorney for an Army intelligence analyst charged with leaking classified information, a support group for the soldier said Tuesday.
Army Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is being held at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., will likely choose by next week a civilian attorney to supplement the military lawyers he has been assigned, said Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist in Oakland, Calif.
“We have an understanding that WikiLeaks will contribute a good chunk of change, somewhere around $50,000,” Paterson said.
WikiLeaks didn’t immediate reply to an Associated Press e-mail seeking verification of the amount but its editor-in-chief, Australian Julian Assange, said previously that WikiLeaks would contribute to Manning’s defense even though it hasn’t acknowledged him as the source of any U.S. secrets it has posted.
Manning, 22, a native of Crescent, Okla., is charged with illegally downloading more than 150,000 classified diplomatic cables and passing more than 50,000 such documents, along with secret video of a military operation in Iraq, to an unauthorized party.
Government officials suspect he is the source of a helicopter cockpit video WikiLeaks posted in April showing U.S. soldiers gunning down a group of unarmed men in Baghdad believed to have included a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
Manning also is a suspected source of diplomatic cables posted by WikiLeaks that complain about complicity between Pakistan’s secretive intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and the Taliban.
The White House says such leaks jeopardize national security and put the lives of Afghan informants and U.S. troops at risk.
Paterson said Manning, who worked in Iraq from November through late May, could have been trying to do right.
“If he is indeed the person who leaked these documents, he did so because he had a crisis of conscience. He was viewing things that were so outside of what he understood to be normal rules of warfare that the American people should know about what’s going on and what’s happening with our tax dollars,” Paterson said.
Courage to Resist, which runs the Bradley Manning Support Network, provides legal assistance to U.S. military members who go absent without leave, seeking conscientious objector status or a discharge, or speak out against perceived military injustice.
Manning’s military lawyers include Capt. Paul R. Bouchard and Capt. Michael Eaton, both currently assigned to duty in Iraq.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/08/ap_wikileaks_defense_manning_080310/
By David Dishneau - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Aug 3, 2010 17:21:33 EDT
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks would bear about half the $100,000 cost of a civilian attorney for an Army intelligence analyst charged with leaking classified information, a support group for the soldier said Tuesday.
Army Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, who is being held at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., will likely choose by next week a civilian attorney to supplement the military lawyers he has been assigned, said Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist in Oakland, Calif.
“We have an understanding that WikiLeaks will contribute a good chunk of change, somewhere around $50,000,” Paterson said.
WikiLeaks didn’t immediate reply to an Associated Press e-mail seeking verification of the amount but its editor-in-chief, Australian Julian Assange, said previously that WikiLeaks would contribute to Manning’s defense even though it hasn’t acknowledged him as the source of any U.S. secrets it has posted.
Manning, 22, a native of Crescent, Okla., is charged with illegally downloading more than 150,000 classified diplomatic cables and passing more than 50,000 such documents, along with secret video of a military operation in Iraq, to an unauthorized party.
Government officials suspect he is the source of a helicopter cockpit video WikiLeaks posted in April showing U.S. soldiers gunning down a group of unarmed men in Baghdad believed to have included a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
Manning also is a suspected source of diplomatic cables posted by WikiLeaks that complain about complicity between Pakistan’s secretive intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and the Taliban.
The White House says such leaks jeopardize national security and put the lives of Afghan informants and U.S. troops at risk.
Paterson said Manning, who worked in Iraq from November through late May, could have been trying to do right.
“If he is indeed the person who leaked these documents, he did so because he had a crisis of conscience. He was viewing things that were so outside of what he understood to be normal rules of warfare that the American people should know about what’s going on and what’s happening with our tax dollars,” Paterson said.
Courage to Resist, which runs the Bradley Manning Support Network, provides legal assistance to U.S. military members who go absent without leave, seeking conscientious objector status or a discharge, or speak out against perceived military injustice.
Manning’s military lawyers include Capt. Paul R. Bouchard and Capt. Michael Eaton, both currently assigned to duty in Iraq.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/08/ap_wikileaks_defense_manning_080310/