Army charges soldier for leaking video of US massacre in Baghdad
The United States Army on Monday filed charges against Private 1st Class Bradley Manning, accusing the 22-year-old of giving a video of a US military massacre in Baghdad to the WikiLeaks web site, which posted an edited version in April under the title “Collateral Murder.” The video was taken by US Apache helicopters in July of 2007 and showed them firing on mostly unarmed Iraqis in East Baghdad. It was accompanied by voiceover of radio traffic in which American soldiers gloated about gunning down defenseless Iraqis. Among the 12 people acknowledged killed by the US government were a Reuters reporter and his driver. The wounded included two small children. The video showed that after the initial deadly Apache attack, the helicopters returned to gun down unarmed civilians who sought to rescue those wounded in the first assault. The Guardian: US private Bradley Manning charged with leaking Iraq killings video. Antiwar: Bradley Manning, American Patriot: The campaign to smear him is picking up steam.
[Wikileaks: Collateral Murder (VIDEO). This video shows men gathering on a Baghdad street on July 12, 2007, shortly before they were fired upon. View related photos wikileaks.org] A senior U.S. military official said Monday that a gritty war video that shows U.S. forces firing repeatedly on people along a Baghdad street was authentic. However, the Pentagon would not confirm the video's authenticity. The incident on July 12, 2007, happened the same day and in the same area that a Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver were killed. Two children also were wounded. The senior military official said that the video posted Monday at Wikileaks.org was of a 2007 incident in the New Baghdad District of eastern Baghdad. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the video and a Pentagon investigation have never been released.
Wired’s Threat Level blog reported late Sunday that “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,” was arrested by the Pentagon. The leaked video, which was filmed in Baghdad in 2007 during an operation that killed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, was published online by WikiLeaks in April. AFP: Soldier arrested in Iraq for alleged intel leaks: army.