Wikileaks

A coalition of well-known journalists, activists and civil libertarians have sued President Obama, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. , Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and other members of the U.S. government  to push them to remove or rewrite this year's defense appropriations bill, saying it chills speech by threatening constitutionally protected activities such as news reporting, protest and political organizing in defense of controversial causes...

A coalition of well-known journalists, activists and civil libertarians have sued President Obama, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. , Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and other members of the U.S. government  to push them to remove or rewrite this year's defense appropriations bill, saying it chills speech by threatening constitutionally protected activities such as news reporting, protest and political organizing in defense of controversial causes...

April 2010 — WikiLeaks releases a video showing a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq that killed two Reuters news agency employees and 10 other civilians. February 2008 — It posts documents detailing Bank Julius Baer of Zurich's activities in the Cayman Islands, raising questions about alleged money laundering and tax evasion. The bank went to court to shut down WikiLeaks' website, but was ultimately unsuccessful. September 2008 — In the midst of the U.S. presidential election, a group of hackers post content from Sarah Palin's personal Yahoo e-mail account on WikiLeaks, including screenshots of e-mail messages and address book contacts.

On the first day of court martial proceedings against an intelligence analyst accused of the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history, lawyers for U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning said the government was unnecessarily drawing out the prosecution in violation of Manning's right to a speedy trial. Manning has been held in pre-trial confinement for 635 days. The arraignment in a military court at Ft. Meade , Md., lasted 50 minutes and focused on legal housekeeping matters, such as setting a date for trial and requests by the defense for more documents from the prosecution.

Is the era of WikiLeaks over? It's been less than a year since the underground organization made its first big splash with the release of thousands of U.S. military files from Afghanistan. And it's been only two months since WikiLeaks began releasing documents from its trove of 251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables. But with fewer than 3,000 cables released, the newspapers that were given access to the database have found that it has already reached the point of diminishing returns.

For years, members of Congress have tied themselves in knots trying to figure out how to pass a "shield law" that allows journalists to protect the identities of sources without giving anything to journalists whom those same members do not like or appreciate. Lawmakers recognize the value of protecting sources when they disclose the Pentagon Papers or details about Watergate, but they're less keen on those who reveal corporate secrets or classified documents about wars they support. Now, with a shield law poised for approval, the WikiLeaks disclosures of classified material from Afghanistan have reinforced the timidity that has delayed this legislation for too long.

Predictably, this week's release of thousands of classified documents by WikiLeaks — which also provided them to the New York Times, Germany's Der Spiegel and the Guardian in London — has fired up those who believe secrecy fosters national security and who shudder at the idea of journalists rummaging through classified material. Typical was the comment from tiresome Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). WikiLeaks, he maintained, is armed with "an ideological agenda implacably hostile to our military and the most basic requirements of our national security."

A Swiss bank on Wednesday withdrew a federal lawsuit that had sparked an Internet furor by shutting down a muckraking website that publishes leaked documents alleging business and government misdeeds. The dismissal was requested by Julius Baer & Co. of Zurich, which had sued Wikileaks.org after the site posted internal company documents raising questions about alleged money laundering and tax evasion schemes at the bank's Cayman Islands branch. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White, citing privacy laws and the threat of identity theft for the bank's customers, initially ordered the main entrance to the site shut down.

The Army has charged Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier suspected of leaking thousands of documents published by WikiLeaks, with aiding and giving intelligence to the enemy, a significant escalation of the government's prosecution of the junior intelligence analyst. As part of 22 additional counts filed against Manning, Army prosecutors said he "wrongfully and wantonly" caused intelligence to be published on the Internet, with the knowledge that it would be "accessible to the enemy.

Most of those remaining at the Guantanamo Bay military prison are considered "high-risk" detainees who if released would pose grave threats to the U.S. and its allies, as did a third of those set free earlier, according to thousands of pages of classified documents being made public by WikiLeaks. Release of the more than 700 separate documents dealing with the prison, opened under the George W. Bush administration to house detainees in the war on terrorism, drew a sharp rebuke Sunday evening from the White House, which said the documents were obtained illegally.

The Army intelligence analyst accused of being responsible for one of the largest public dumps of classified information in U.S. history chatted online with the founder of WikiLeaks while he was uploading files to the WikiLeaks website, military prosecutors said Thursday. During closing arguments in the pretrial hearing of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, prosecutors flashed excerpts of chat logs to the courtroom that they alleged showed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange coaching Manning on how to decode computer passwords to access secret Army computers under someone else's name.

  Two witnesses for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst accused of passing a trove of national security secrets to WikiLeaks, testified Wednesday that analysts listened to music CDs, watched videos and played games on their classified computers in Iraq. Army Capt. Barclay Keay, who spent several weeks in charge of the intelligence unit where Manning worked, said he was surprised to see compact discs and other media items inside the supposedly secure facility at Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, where the analysts handled highly classified materials.

A prosecution witness told a military judge Tuesday that an emotionally distraught Army Pfc. Bradley Manning confessed to him in encrypted Internet chats to pilfering a vast trove of U.S. military and diplomatic secrets and passing them to the WikiLeaks website. The witness, Adrian Lamo, said he was so alarmed by his online conversations with Bradass87, Manning's Internet handle, over five days in May 2010 that he felt compelled to alert law enforcement, prompting Manning's arrest several days later.

Personal computer drives, compact discs and media cards containing classified information were found during searches of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's bunk in Iraq and the home of his aunt in Maryland, Army investigators testified on the second day of the soldier's pretrial hearing. Investigators also found chat logs on Manning's personal laptop in Iraq that showed the Army analyst had bragged to a former hacker that he had leaked to the WikiLeaks website hundreds of thousands of State Department cables, ground reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay detainees' files, and videos of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Appearing in a military courtroom Friday for the first time, accused WikiLeaks source Army Pfc. Bradley Manning said he understood the charges against him in a criminal case that involves one of the largest leaks of classified material in U.S. history. The pretrial proceeding got bogged down in legal maneuvering when Manning's civilian lawyer, David Coombs, argued that the presiding military officer could not be impartial because he is also a federal prosecutor. Coombs said Army Reserve Lt. Col. Paul Almanza should step aside because he is the deputy chief prosecutor of the child exploitation and obscenity section of the criminal division of the Department of Justice.

Appearing in a military courtroom for the first time Friday, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning said "yes" when asked if he understood the charges against him in a case that involves one of the largest national security breaches in U.S. history. Manning's civilian lawyer quickly brought the pretrial proceeding to a temporary halt, however, when he filed a motion seeking removal of the presiding military officer because he works as a federal prosecutor in civilian life. Manning's attorneys said Army Reserve Lt. Col. Paul Almanza is a full-time prosecutor in the child exploitation and obscenity section of the criminal division of the Department of Justice.

Lawyers for imprisoned U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning plan to call up to 50 witnesses at a pretrial military hearing next month that is expected to air much of the government's evidence for charges that Manning illegally provided hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the WikiLeaks website. The preliminary hearing, scheduled to begin Dec. 16 at Fort Meade, Md., will mark Manning's first appearance in a courtroom since he was arrested in Iraq in May 2010. The hearing could last up to five days.

Israel and its image Re "Report: Threats against Jews on the rise," and "Israel razes Bedouin homes," July 28 The Times recently published an article regarding the rise of threats against Jews. In the same day's newspaper, you could find one of the contributing factors to the rise of those threats. Alongside an article describing the removal of Bedouin homes in long-disputed territory ran two pictures that once again make the Israelis look like bad guys and the Bedouins like victims — unless the reader takes the time to read the entire article, almost to the end, where it indicates that the Israeli government offered to have these Bedouins live in Israeli cities with water, electricity, sewers and schools.

When U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning walks into a military court Friday in Maryland, his many supporters and detractors will get their first glimpse of the soft-spoken Oklahoma native since his arrest in Iraq 19 months ago. Manning is the only person charged with unauthorized release of more than half a million classified U.S. military reports and diplomatic cables from around the globe, as well as a 2007 video of a deadly U.S. helicopter attack in...

Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, is free to ask Britain's highest court to decide whether he should be extradited to Sweden on allegations of sexual assault, judges ruled Monday. The 40-year-old Australian has been battling extradition to Stockholm, the Swedish capital, since a judge ruled in February that he should be sent there to face accusations of raping and molesting two women. Assange and his lawyers have 14 days to file a request for review by the Supreme Court.