WikiLeaks Case Likened To Civil War Espionage

[struggle4progress]

January 9, 2013 12:49 PM

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — The defense says military prosecutors are drawing comparisons between an Army private’s alleged leak of classified documents to Civil War-era cases involving coded messages in newspapers ...

The issue is whether Manning’s motive is relevant to a charge he aided the enemy by sending reams of classified documents to the secret-sharing website WikiLeaks. The government contends Manning knew, or should have known, that the information would be seen by al-Qaeda.

Defense attorney David Coombs said Tuesday that prosecutors are citing Civil War-era cases concerning soldiers who placed coded messages in newspaper ads.

Coombs says Manning’s alleged offenses are more akin to providing government documents to a newspaper.

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/01/09/wikileaks-case-likened-to-civil-war-espionage/

[struggle4progress]

1. Military prosecutors in WikiLeaks case reach back to 1863 to argue Army GI aided al-Qaida

DAVID DISHNEAU
Associated Press
3:15 p.m. EST, January 9, 2013

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — ... Lawyers for Pfc. Bradley Manning refute the government's claim that Manning's case parallels that of Pvt. Henry Vanderwater, a Union soldier convicted in 1863 of aiding the enemy by giving an Alexandria, Va., newspaper a command roster that was then published ...

Prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow said during a pretrial hearing Wednesday that the government plans to introduce evidence that al-Qaida members, including Osama bin Laden, saw the war logs and State Department cables Manning allegedly sent to WikiLeaks.

Another prosecutor, Capt. Angel Overgaard, cited the Vanderwater case among others Tuesday during the hearing at Fort Meade, near Baltimore. She said military courts have recognized that "publishing information in a newspaper" can "indirectly convey information to the enemy" and constitute aiding the enemy ...

http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-us-manning-wikileaks-20130108,0,3206818.story

[Downwinder]

2. Will this set up a prosecution of Bush and Cheney?

How much did their torture policies aid al-Qaida recruitment?

[struggle4progress]

3. The problem of prosecuting Bush et al is essentially political in nature

Bush had sufficient political clout to involve SCOTUS and the corporate media in the rigging of the 2000 election, and thereafter he and his cronies continued to consolidate their political position for nearly eight years

That fact implies: quite a substantial number of politically skilled and politically connected persons, including assets in the media and on the Federal bench, as well as in Congress, will reliably and effectively oppose any prosecution of the Bush era gangsters for an extended period

To judge the time frame required for prosecution, we can examine just how long has been required elsewhere around the world to begin to bring major political criminals to justice, after an essentially peaceful regime change. Pinochet, for example, stepped down in 1990, but the process of beginning to prosecute the criminal activities of his era has only recently begun in Chile. The architects of the dirty war in Argentina during the late 1970s similarly lost power after the 1982 Falklands fiasco, but trials associated with their crimes have begun only recently. The amnesty for the 1970s dirty war in Uruguay, likewise, was only recently overturned by the legislature there. Such historical cases suggest that two to three decades are often required for sufficient changes in the political climate to occur to permit prosecutions

So the current challenge is to begin the long work towards principled changes in public opinion that will facilitate prosecution after a large enough fraction of opponents to prosecution have lost much of their existing power by age and by natural mortality