Bradley Manning Sentenced To 35 Years In Prison For WikiLeaks Disclosures // Lt Calley, convicted for My Lai massacre of 1968, served only 3 and a half years
Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday for handing WikiLeaks a massive cache of sensitive government documents detailing the inner workings of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning, 25, was not allowed to make a statement when his sentence was handed down by military judge Col. Denise Lind. Guards quickly hustled him out of the courtroom, while at least half a dozen spectators shouted their support. "We'll keep fighting for you, Bradley," one exclaimed.
Amnesty International immediately called on President Barack Obama to commute Manning's sentence. “Bradley Manning acted on the belief that he could spark a meaningful public debate on the costs of war, and specifically on the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan," Widney Brown, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty International, said in a statement. "The US government should turn its attention to investigating and delivering justice for the serious human rights abuses committed by its officials in the name of countering terror.”
Manning was convicted on July 30 on 19 counts including six Espionage Act violations for his role in the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history. The charges carried a maximum sentence of 90 years, and the prosecution had requested Manning serve 60. His sentencing brings to a close a three-year saga in which he endured nine months in solitary confinement and saw himself transformed into a symbol of one individual's potential in the internet age to roil the world's sole superpower.
Manning's small but vocal contingent of supporters, many in the anti-war movement, have argued that his massive document dump accelerated the pullout of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped spark the Arab revolutions in 2010 and 2011. His detractors, noting that Manning could not possibly have had time to read through the 700,000 documents he leaked, claim that he recklessly put his fellow soldiers and U.S. informants at risk. His leaks included a video of an Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed civilians including two Reuters journalists, 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables, and 500,000 battlefield action reports from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Before the trial Manning admitted to 10 lesser charges that could have given him a 20-year sentence on their own. He also pleaded guilty to a minor charge relating to one diplomatic cable, and the government accepted the plea. But military prosecutors pushed ahead with trying to prove his guilt on 21 other charges, including aiding the enemy. Aiding the enemy is a charge analogous to treason. It carries a maximum life sentence. Because prosecutors insisted that Manning had aided al Qaeda simply by knowing his documents, once leaked on the internet, would wind up in the terrorist group's possession, some press freedom advocates claimed that in a sense journalism was also on trial.
Lind acquitted Manning of aiding the enemy but gave little explanation as to why. And she did so only after allowing the charge to proceed for so long that advocates still worry it could be used against whistleblowers -- or even organizations like WikiLeaks. "The fact that Manning was ultimately found not guilty will likely influence the cost-benefit calculus of future prosecutors about whether it is worth their while to try again to stretch for such a draconian verdict," said Yochai Benkler, a Harvard professor who has studied WikiLeaks and testified in Manning's defense. "But the acquittal did not close off that legal avenue."
As Manning's 38-day trial came to an end, his lawyer, David Coombs, asserted in his closing sentencing argument on Monday that Manning was far more complex than partisans on either side acknowledged. "The government has labeled him as a traitor, as an insider. Others have labeled him as a hero," Coombs said. "Either one of those are over generalizations. They ignore who he is as a person." Coombs' sentencing pitch to Lind for lenience was filled with references to Manning's difficult upbringing and his struggles within the Army as someone considering transitioning genders. To the prosecution, meanwhile, Manning was an "arrogant" young soldier who had usurped the military's right to decide which documents remained classified and deserved to spend most of the rest of his life in prison.
Manning's term will most likely be served out in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The 1,182 days he has already spent in confinement since he was arrested in May 2010 will be applied toward his term, and the military's extensive credits for good behavior, along with parole opportunities, could mean that he serves fewer years than his stated sentence.
Under military law, Manning's sentence will be subject to immediate review by Maj. Gen Jeffrey Buchanan, the commander of the Military District of Washington. Buchanan can only reduce Manning's sentence or toss convictions against him. After that, the verdict can be reviewed by the Army Court of Criminal Appeal and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. Coombs told a group of supporters gathered outside Manning's courtroom on Friday that the conditions at Fort Leavenworth "did not look anything like Quantico," where Manning spent months in solitary confinement and was forced at times to strip down naked at night. UN special rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez found after a 14-month investigation that Manning's treatment at Quantico was cruel, inhuman, and degrading. Lind said the conditions had been "excessive" in relation to the government's legitimate interest in holding Manning. She granted the soldier an additional 112 days credit, which will also be applied to shorten his sentence.
"He's made friends there," Coombs said of Leavenworth. He added that Manning will finally be able to respond to supporters' letters. Manning will also be within driving distance of his sister Susan, who testified during the trial about their life growing up with two alcoholic parents. But Manning also faces a spartan, monotonous life in prison. He will also not be allowed to grant interviews to the media, according to a Fort Leavenworth spokesperson.
Speaking on Monday before the sentence was handed down, Prasow told HuffPost that the massive investigation involving hundreds of State and Defense Department employees into Manning's leaks stood in stark contrast to the government's unwillingness to prosecute those involved in torture and abuse at places like Abu Ghraib. "It's hard to look at the aggressive prosecution of someone so young, who is clearly troubled, and probably did have a fair bit of concern about the public interest ... and compare that to people who authorized a regime of torture and abuse and will remain free," Prasow said.
Calley was charged on September 5, 1969, with six specifications of premeditated murder for the deaths of 104 Vietnamese civilians near the village of My Lai, at a hamlet called Son My, more commonly called My Lai in the U.S. press. As many as 500 villagers, mostly women, children, infants and the elderly, had been systematically killed by American soldiers during a bloody rampage on March 16, 1968. Upon conviction, Calley could have faced the death penalty. On November 12, 1969, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story[7]and revealed that Calley was charged with murdering 109 Vietnamese.[8] Calley's trial started on November 17, 1970. It was the military prosecution's contention that Calley, in defiance of the rules of engagement, ordered his men to deliberately murder unarmed Vietnamese civilians despite the fact that his men were not under enemy fire at all. Testimony revealed that Calley had ordered the men of 1st Platoon, Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry of the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal) to kill everyone in the village. In presenting the case, the two military prosecutors, Aubrey Daniel and John Partin, were hamstrung by the reluctance of many soldiers to testify against Calley. Some refused to answer questions point-blank on the witness stand by citing the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. However one holdout, a soldier in Calley's unit named Paul Meadlo, after being jailed for contempt of court by the presiding judge, Reid W. Kennedy, reluctantly agreed to testify. In his testimony, Meadlo described that during the day's events, he was standing guard over a few dozen My Lai villagers when Lt. Calley approached him and ordered him to shoot all the civilians. When Meadlo balked at the orders, Calley backed off 20 feet (6 m) or more and opened fire on the people himself, and Meadlo joined in. Another witness named Dennis Conti, who was also reluctant to testify, described the carnage, claiming that Calley had started it and the rest of the 105 soldiers of Charlie Company followed suit. Another witness, named Leonard Gonzalez, told of seeing one of the soldiers of Calley's unit herd some men and women villagers together and order them to strip off their clothing. When the villagers refused, the enraged soldier fired a single round from his M-79 grenade launcher into the crowd, killing everyone...
- Sergeant Michael Bernhardt – refused to participate in the killing of civilians. Captain Medina threatened Sergeant Bernhardt to deter him from writing to Bernhardt's congressman to expose the massacre; as a result, Bernhardt was allegedly given more dangerous duties such as point duty on patrol.[58] Later he would help expose and detail the massacre in numerous interviews with the press, and he served as a prosecution witness in the trial of Medina, where he was subjected to intense cross examination by defense counsel F. Lee Bailey. Recipient of the New York Society for Ethical Culture's 1970 Ethical Humanist Award.[59]
- Herbert Carter – platoon "tunnel rat". He claimed he shot himself in the foot in order to be MEDEVACed out of the village.
- Dennis Conti – testified he initially refused to shoot, but later fired some M79 grenade launcher rounds at a group of fleeing people with unknown effect.
- James Dursi – killed a mother and child, then refused to kill anyone else even when ordered to do so.
- Ronald Grzesik – a team leader. He claimed he followed orders to round up civilians, but refused to kill them.
- Robert Maples – stated to have refused to participate.
- Paul Meadlo – said he was afraid of being shot if he did not participate. Lost his foot to a land mine the next day. Later, he publicly admitted his part in the massacre.
- Sergeant David Mitchell – accused by witnesses of shooting people at the ditch site; pleaded not guilty. Mitchell was acquitted. His attorney was Ossie Brown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who thereafter became the district attorney of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana.[60]
- Varnado Simpson – committed suicide in 1997, citing guilt over several murders committed in Mỹ Lai.
- Charles Sledge – radio operator, later prosecution witness.
- Harry Stanley – claimed to have refused to participate.
- Esequiel Torres – previously had tortured and hanged an old man because Torres found his bandaged leg suspicious. He and Roschevitz (described below) were involved in the shooting of a group of ten women and five children in a hut. Later he was ordered by Calley to shoot a number of people with a M60 machine gun; he fired a burst before refusing to fire again, after which Calley took his weapon and opened fire himself.
- Frederick Widmer – Widmer, who has been the subject of pointed blame, is quoted as saying, "The most disturbing thing I saw was one boy—and this was something that, you know, this is what haunts me from the whole, the whole ordeal down there. And there was a boy with his arm shot off, shot up half, half hanging on and he just had this bewildered look in his face and like, 'What did I do, what's wrong?' He was just, you know, it's, it's hard to describe, couldn't comprehend. I, I shot the boy, killed him and it's—I'd like to think of it more or less as a mercy killing because somebody else would have killed him in the end, but it wasn't right."[61]
With bayonet fixed, the young platoon leader instructed his men to round up everyone, regardless of their age or sex, and herd them into a partially filled, 5ft-deep irrigation ditch. "Take care of these people!" he barked. Those five words lit the fuse for a massacre. If there was any ambiguity in their meaning, the platoon leader removed it by bludgeoning an old man into the ditch with his rifle-butt, then machine-gunning him and at least 21 others as they cowered beside him. Over the next five hours babies were bayonetted, teenage girls were raped or forced to their knees to perform sex acts before being mutilated and killed - and their watching parents and grandparents were summarily shot as they begged for mercy. When the bloodbath was over, the hamlet was torched. The number of villagers who were butchered is still a matter for debate. If we believe some of the soldiers, the so-called 'body count' totalled just over a hundred. According to records in the grim museum which the victorious Vietnamese communists have built at My Lai, however, 504 people were murdered. The youngest was just one year old and the oldest 82, and their names are etched on a broad marble wall. One thing, however, is certain. March 16, 1968, is the most infamous date in U.S. military history - a day that far overshadows the brutality at Abu Ghraib prison and the killing of 24 civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha in western Iraq. With lasting shame, it is remembered as the My Lai Massacre.
