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Assange Charges Finally Reveal Why Chelsea Manning Is Sitting in Jail


steven36

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Charges announced by the Justice Department on Thursday against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange provide fresh insight into why federal prosecutors sought to question whistleblower Chelsea Manning last month before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.

 

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Photo: Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor of WikiLeaks, and barrister Jennifer Robinson speak to the media outside Westminster magistrates court where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was appearing in London, Thursday, April 11, 2019.

 

Manning, convicted in 2013 of leaking classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks, was jailed in early March as a recalcitrant witness after refusing to answer the grand jury’s questions. After her arrest, she was held in solitary confinement in a Virginia jail for nearly a month before being moved into its general population—all in an attempt to coerce her into answering questions about conversations she allegedly had with Assange at the time of her illegal disclosures, according to court filings.

 

Though Manning confessed to leaking more than 725,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks following her deployment to Iraq in 2009—including battlefield reports and five Guantanamo Bay detainee profiles—she was charged with leaking portions of only a couple hundred documents, including dozens of diplomatic cables that have since been declassified.

 

British authorities on Thursday removed Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, his home for nearly seven years, following Ecuador’s decision to rescind his asylum. The U.S. government has requested that he be extradited to the United States to face a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer crimes.

 

Until Thursday, the reasons were fuzzy as to why Manning had been called to testify at all. Prosecutors had privately hinted to her attorneys that they believed the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst had provided conflicting statements about her communications with the anti-secrecy organization. But as of late March, supporters working closely with her legal team said that no such accusation had been raised in court.

 

Charges made public against Assange indicate that federal prosecutors sought to question her over online discussions in which Assange allegedly aided her in attempting to crack a password that would provide access to Defense Department network used to store classified documents and communications. While Manning already had access to the network, known as SIPRNet, the password would have enabled her to download additional material under a username that was not her own.

 

As Gizmodo first reported Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has exempted all files related to Manning under the Freedom of Information Act, citing risk to ongoing criminal proceedings. Manning had signed a Privacy Act waiver last year to allow national security reporter Emma Best to the more than 8,000 pages of documents the bureau had amassed on Manning.

 

Among the documents leaked by Manning were nearly 500,000 military field reports known as Significant Activities, or SIGACTS, which were housed in a database accessible through SIPRNet known as the Combined Information Data Network Exchange (CIDNE). During her trial, prosecutors said that Manning had downloaded roughly 24 percent of the SIGACT—none of which were classified above “secret.”

 

 

CIDNE, as noted by Manning trial reporter Alexa O’Brien, was accessible by thousands of government employees, military personnel and contractors. “Almost all the information the military presents to the White House and Congress about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan originates in the CIDNE database,” O’Brien wrote.

 

While CIDNE also contained records of intelligence sources and methods (HUMINT), Manning avoided disclosing any of this material to WikiLeaks.

 

Ultimately, she was charged with leaking only portions of 227 classified documents, including many diplomatic cables that were later declassified. A damage assessment prepared by a review task force at the Defense Intelligence Agency on the nation security impacts of the redacted Iraq SIGACTs—which WikiLeaks calls the “Iraq War Logs”—concluded in October 2010 that the leaked information “was either dated, represented low-level opinions, or was commonly understood and known due to previous public disclosures.”

 

Reuters likewise reported in January 2011 that internal U.S. government reviews found the leak of State Department cables caused only limited damage, or as one unnamed official put it: “embarrassing but not damaging.”

 

Of the five Guantanamo detained profiles leaked by Manning, three related to British citizens known as the Tipton Three: Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal, and Shafiq Rasul. The men were captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and held in extrajudicial detention by the U.S. government in Cuba until March 2004. After being released, they unsuccessfully sued the U.S. government, claiming they had been tortured while in custody, beaten, forcibly injected with drugs, and told they would be secretly executed.

 

In 2009, the Tipton Three’s case was dismissed by a U.S. appeals court on the basis that U.S. officials were immune from being prosecuted and that their treatment at Guantanamo was not considered illegal at the time. The Supreme Court declined to take up the case.

 

Other material illegally disclosed by Manning, but never published, included briefings on the 2009 U.S. cluster bombing of alleged Taliban defenses in the Bala Baluk district of Afghanistan’s Farah province. The strike reportedly killed more than 100 civilians. “It was like Judgement Day,” a health worker who witnessed the attack told Human Rights Watch.

 

In 2011, journalist Kim Zetter reported for Wired on the alleged exchange between Assange and Manning that now appears to form the basis of the charges against the WikiLeaks founder.

 

Manning made initial contact with WikiLeaks in February 2010, while on leave. After attempting unsuccessfully to disclose battlefield reports to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and her own hometown paper, she reached out to WikiLeaks on her laptop while inside a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Rockville, Maryland. The following month, according to her court-martial transcripts, Manning sought help from Assange in cracking the SIPRNet password.

 

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Chatlog allegedly shows Manning (“Nobody”) discussing password cracking with Assange (“Nathaniel Franks”)

 

Source

 

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9 hours ago, steven36 said:

“Almost all the information the military presents to the White House and Congress about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan originates in the CIDNE database

 

False.  This reporter couldn't find his ass with both hands, a map, and a seeing eye dog.  Data on the ongoing conflict (and other world matters) are reported in the daily Intsums authored separately by the CIA, DIA, and NSA.   They each carry an overall classification of Top Secret SI Access.  Articles contained therein may have a lower classification since a documents overall classification is based on the highest classification of material contained therein.  Theoretically there may be unclassified material in the document.  So if you believe what the reporter wrote, the White House and Congress are only getting about 1% of the information on the conflict since military operations are classified as Top Secret as are intelligence collection data regardless of whether it is SIGINT or HUMINT.  There are different levels of Special Intelligence (SI) so just having a TSSI clearance does not mean a person has access to all TSSI data, which is why it is sometimes referred to as compartmented access.  Think of it as mailboxes where you could have access to mailbox (compartment) A but not mailboxes (compartments) B-Z, or to A-D but not E-Z.  Clearances are based on a need to know, so some Congressmen may receive data that the remainder do not because they don't have a need to know.

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1 hour ago, straycat19 said:

 

False.  This reporter couldn't find his ass with both hands, a map, and a seeing eye dog.  Data on the ongoing conflict (and other world matters) are reported in the daily Intsums authored separately by the CIA, DIA, and NSA.   They each carry an overall classification of Top Secret SI Access.  Articles contained therein may have a lower classification since a documents overall classification is based on the highest classification of material contained therein.  Theoretically there may be unclassified material in the document.  So if you believe what the reporter wrote, the White House and Congress are only getting about 1% of the information on the conflict since military operations are classified as Top Secret as are intelligence collection data regardless of whether it is SIGINT or HUMINT.  There are different levels of Special Intelligence (SI) so just having a TSSI clearance does not mean a person has access to all TSSI data, which is why it is sometimes referred to as compartmented access.  Think of it as mailboxes where you could have access to mailbox (compartment) A but not mailboxes (compartments) B-Z, or to A-D but not E-Z.  Clearances are based on a need to know, so some Congressmen may receive data that the remainder do not because they don't have a need to know.

This reporter was not even the person who 1st reported that statement i'm  not sure were it originates from but here  is again in  2013 form this story  by Alexa O'Brien

 

’07KINGSTON25 JAMAICA MALARIA UPDATE’, Dispatches from Fort Meade, Reporting on the secret trial of Chelsea Manning (30C3 Presentation)

 

SIGACTS are normally housed in a U.S. Central Command database called the Combined Information Data Network Exchange (CIDNE), which was accessible on a Department of Defense classified network called SIPRNet. SIPRNet contained information classified up to the level of SECRET.

 

Almost all the information the military presents to the White House and Congress about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan originates in the CIDNE database. Thousands of military personnel, government employees and contractors have access to CIDNE's various types of reports, including human intelligence reports, or HUMINT, as well as the SIGACTS.

 

Manning disclosed 483,563 SIGACTS from the CIDNE-Iraq and the CIDNE-Afghanistan databases. WikiLeaks later published the material as the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary.

 

Manning did not, however, disclose the other kinds of reporting from the CIDNE database, like HUMINT, which contained intelligence sources and methods.

 

The SIGACTS that Manning disclosed, military prosecutors admitted at trial, only represent 24 percent of CIDNE.

 

Manning told Lind that she believed that the classification determination of the SIGACTS (most of which were marked SECRET) was based primarily on their being housed on SIPRNet.

 

Source :

https://alexaobrien.com/archives/1057

 

On YouTube full report by  Alexa O'Brien 58 min

 

 

 

She  was  speaking  to congress   when she said what you didn't like  you trying to say she lied before congress?  What Dell Cameron said was just  research  he did from 2013 from Alexa O'Brien speech to congress that worked to get Obama  to free Manning from jail. One again you speak  bad about people without doing a bit of research so you the one who always let your ass override your mouth when your eating crow !. :tooth:

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