Bradley Manning Offers Partial Guilty Plea To Military Court

concealment writes "During a pre-trial hearing in military court today, [alleged Wikileaks source Bradley] Manning's attorney, David Coombs, proposed a partial guilty plea covering a subset of the slew of criminal charges that the U.S. Army has lodged against him. "Manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses," Coombs wrote on his blog this evening. "The court will consider whether this is a permissible plea.""

Comments

Re:Good: he's guilty and so is Assange

[h4rr4r]

What is Julian Assange guilty of?
What crime is it to publish documents your receive?
He is not a US citizen so he cannot have any responsibility to the US government.

I sure as hell would rather know what our government is doing. You might not, but I sure as hell would.

Re:Fascist bloodlust

[Nadaka]

THe collateral murder video and its coverup.

There was also the little part of a us contractor paying for boy sex slaves as bribe to a afghanistan warlord.

The majority of it wasn't particularly offensive, but there were a few malignant little gems in there.

Re:Good: he's guilty and so is Assange

[dkleinsc]

Did Julian Assange then publish these secrets, knowing that he has zero way of predicting the consequences? Yes: he's guilty.

There are 2 big reasons why what Assange did is not a crime:
1. Given that Julian Assange is not and has never been a US citizen or resident of the US, why is US law applicable to any action he takes? For example, if a Iranian spy working in Afghanistan uncovers classified information about the US military, the US can't demand that spy's extradition and expect to get anything out of that.

2. Pentagon Papers case. The US Supreme Court has stated quite clearly that First Amendment protections apply to those who publish classified information, provided they weren't the ones leaking the information. And as you've stated, Manning was the one who provided the information to Assange, just like Ellsberg provided the information to the New York Times.

So (a) US law doesn't have jurisdiction, and (b) even if it did, it's still not illegal.