U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe - Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter, Wired.
Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned. SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he's being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged...
He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing "almost criminal political back dealings." "Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public," Manning wrote...
Much more at Wired.
Comments
This is just the beginning of this story. Next they will relieve his chain of command for failing to know that he was doing this. Then there will be a series of knee-jerk over-reactions to prevent this from happening again. They probably won't prevent something like this from happening again but they will be a massive pain in the butt. I am glad that they got this kid and I hope he gets out of jail about the same time he starts collecting his social security but I do hope that DOD reaction to this is more measured and considered than it has been in the past.