Random EssayBradley Edward Manning (born December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the websiteWikiLeaks. He was charged with a number of offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source and aiding the enemy, a capital offense, though prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.[1] He was arraigned in February 2012 at Fort Meade, Maryland, where he declined to enter a plea. The trial is expected to begin in June 2013.[2]
Assigned to an army unit based near Baghdad, Manning had access to databases used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, cooperated with the Department of Defense, stating Manning had confided during online chats that he had downloaded material from these databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 250,000 United States diplomatic cables; and 500,000 army reports sometimes called Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public.[3] Much of it was published by WikiLeaks or its media partners between April and November 2010.[4]
Manning was held from July 2010 in the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, under Prevention of Injury status, which entailed de facto solitary confinement and other restrictions that caused international concern. In April 2011, 295 academics – many of them prominent American legal scholars – signed a letter arguing that the detention conditions violated the United States Constitution. Later that month, the Pentagon transferred him to Fort Leavenworth, allowing him to interact with other detainees.[5]
Reaction to his arrest was mixed. Denver Nicks, one of Manning's biographers, writes that the leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, was widely seen as a catalyst for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, and that Manning was viewed as both a 21st-century Tiananmen Square Tank Man and an embittered traitor. Several commentators focused on why an apparently very unhappy Army private had access to classified material, and why no security measures were in place to prevent unauthorized downloads.[6]
On February 28, 2013, Manning pled guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him, which could carry a sentence of up to 20 years. One notable charge for which he did not enter a plea is the charge of "aiding the enemy", which could carry a life sentence. The judge must choose if she will accept the pleas;[7] prosecutors will pursue a court martial on the remaining charges
Bradley Edward Manning (born December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the websiteWikiLeaks. He was charged with a number of offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source and aiding the enemy, a capital offense, though prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.[1] He was arraigned in February 2012 at Fort Meade, Maryland, where he declined to enter a plea. The trial is expected to begin in June 2013.[2]
Assigned to an army unit based near Baghdad, Manning had access to databases used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, cooperated with the Department of Defense, stating Manning had confided during online chats that he had downloaded material from these databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 250,000 United States diplomatic cables; and 500,000 army reports sometimes called Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to