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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Major Claims at Bradley Manning Hearing Today

Scott Shane at NYT with big report tonight on new bombshell prosecution claims of evidence coming out of the Bradley Manning pre-trial hearings.  For one thing:  Osama bin Laden allegedly asked for and got from an al-Qaeda operative some of the Cablegate docs released by WikiLeaks (many of which also appeared or were summarized in...the NYT).   Secondly, they allegedly have (long-rumored) chat logs that find Manning and Julian Assange talking directly, even laughing about an article in ...the NYT. Then there's this:
Colonel Lind, the judge, asked a prosecutor a hypothetical question: If Private Manning had given the documents to The New York Times rather than to WikiLeaks, would he face the same charges?
“Yes, ma’am,” said the prosecutor, Capt. Angel Overgaard.
The New York Times and other mainstream publications published hundreds of the documents Private Manning is accused of leaking. The Justice Department is carrying out an investigation of WikiLeaks to determine whether Mr. Assange or his associates can be charged with a crime.  Media advocates say such a prosecution would be a dangerous precedent for news organizations like The Times that frequently obtain and publish information the government considers classified.

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