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| Whistle-blower or traitor? Bradley Manning to learn fate - CNN Posted: 30 Jul 2013 08:55 AM PDT STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- After spending three years in custody, the man accused of the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history will learn Tuesday whether he has been found guilty of aiding the enemy. A verdict from the judge in the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning will be announced at 1 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to a spokeswoman for the military district of Washington. If found guilty on the aiding the enemy charge, Manning could be sentenced to life in prison. He has pleaded guilty to nearly a dozen lesser charges that carry a sentence of up to 20 years behind bars. Whether Manning is a whistle-blower or a traitor who betrayed his country has been hotly debated. Read more: What do Manning's actions mean? Depends who is talking   Some did it for the money, some did it for idealism, others didn't do it at all. The U.S. has seen a number of high profile leak scandals including the Pentagon Papers during the administration of President Richard Nixon. Click through to see more high-profile intelligence leaking cases. Sharing secrets: U.S. intelligence leaks HIDE CAPTION  Former intelligence worker Edward Snowden, 29, revealed himself as the source of documents outlining a massive effort by the NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. He says he just wanted the public to know what the government was doing. "Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded," he said. While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks. Notable leakers and whistle-blowers HIDE CAPTION Authorities have accused Manning of delivering three quarters of a million pages of classified documents and videos to the secret-sharing site WikiLeaks, which has never confirmed the soldier was the source of its information. The material covered numerous aspects of U.S. military strategy in Iraq, gave what some called a ground view of events in the Afghanistan war and revealed the inner workings of U.S. State Department diplomacy in leaked cables. When he entered his guilty pleas on the lesser charges earlier this year, Manning spent more than an hour in court reading a statement about why he leaked the information. He said the information he passed on "upset" or "disturbed" him, but there was nothing he thought would harm the United States if it became public. Manning said he thought the documents were old and the situations they referred to had changed or ended. "I believed if the public was aware of the data, it would start a public debate of the wars," he said during his court-martial. He said he was "depressed about the situation there," meaning Iraq, where he was stationed as an intelligence analyst. He first tried to give the information to The Washington Post, but a reporter there didn't seem like she took him seriously, he said. He left a voice mail for the New York Times and sent an e-mail to the newspaper but, he claims, he didn't hear back. So he decided to give the information to WikiLeaks. After WikiLeaks published a trove of documents related to the Afghanistan war in 2010, the site became an international sensation, as did its chief, Julian Assange. "We call those types of people that are willing to risk ... being a martyr for all the rest of us, we call those people heroes," Assange told CNN's Jake Tapper. "Bradley Manning is a hero." Assange described the case against Manning, specifically the aiding the enemy charge, as a serious attack against investigative journalism. "It will be the end, essentially, of national security journalism in the United States," he said on the eve of the verdict. Assange spoke from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. He sought refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of sex crimes. Assange has said he thinks the claims against him are Washington's way of getting him arrested so that he can be extradited to the United States to face charges. CNN's Larry Shaughnessy and Dana Ford contributed to this report. |
| Obama wants to link corporate tax reform, jobs spending - Washington Post Posted: 30 Jul 2013 08:09 AM PDT President Obama on Tuesday will propose linking an overhaul of business taxes and new spending on jobs in what aides say is his latest effort to break the an impasse in Congress — but House Republicans immediately shot down the idea. Obama will unveil his proposal in Chattanooga, Tenn., as part of his summer campaign to highlight his economic message and frame the fall debate over the federal budget. The president is searching for ways to ease Republican opposition to his economic priorities, such as boosting hiring through spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure. The proposal attempts to capitalize on Republicans' long-held desire to reduce corporate tax rates, which they say put U.S. companies in an uncompetitive position globally. Obama says he wants to overhaul the tax code and use some of the new federal revenue generated — likely by taxing foreign profits of U.S. corporations — to pay for domestic initiatives. Obama has proposed spending $50 billion on infrastructure in the next year. "The president will call on Washington to work on a grand bargain focused on middle-class jobs by pairing reform of the business tax code with a significant investment in middle-class jobs," said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser. In principle, an overhaul of the corporate tax code could offer room for compromise. The White House and Republicans agree that corporate tax breaks should be reduced and that the resulting tax revenues should be used to lower corporate tax rates. The administration and key congressional Republicans, such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (Mich.), also agree that U.S. companies that have amassed profits overseas should pay a tax or fee to repatriate those funds. But that is where agreement has largely ended — and, on its face, Obama's proposal would not change that dynamic. In the past, the two sides have disagreed on what the new corporate tax rate should be, as well as on how to tax foreign profits in the future. And Republicans have rejected the idea of using new revenue for spending of the sort Obama wants. House Republicans, who said they learned of the offer through news reports Tuesday morning, rejected the proposal and dismissed the notion that it represented a new concession. "The president has always supported corporate tax reform. Republicans want to help families and small businesses, too," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio). "This proposal allows President Obama to support President Obama's position on taxes and President Obama's position on spending, while leaving small businesses and American families behind." |
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