Not One Attributable Death

Trey Smith

The US counter-intelligence official who led the Pentagon's review into the fallout from the WikiLeaks disclosures of state secrets told the Bradley Manning sentencing hearing on Wednesday that no instances were ever found of any individual killed by enemy forces as a result of having been named in the releases.

Brigadier general Robert Carr, a senior counter-intelligence officer who headed the Information Review Task Force that investigated the impact of WikiLeaks disclosures on behalf of the Defense Department, told a court at Fort Meade, Maryland, that they had uncovered no specific examples of anyone who had lost his or her life in reprisals that followed the publication of the disclosures on the internet. "I don't have a specific example," he said.

It has been one of the main criticisms of the WikiLeaks publications that they put lives at risk, particularly in Iran and Afghanistan. The admission by the Pentagon's chief investigator into the fallout from WikiLeaks that no such casualties were identified marks a significant undermining of such arguments.
~ from Bradley Manning Leak Did Not Result in Deaths by Enemy Forces, Court Hears by Ed Pilkington ~

This report underscores the great irony in the prosecution of Bradley Manning. Despite what many Bush and Obama administration officials have maintained for so long, no deaths can be tied to the information Manning disclosed. On the other hand, Manning disclosed how others definitely were responsible for causing death and yet they aren't being prosecuted at all!

What a topsy-turvy world we live in: The wrongdoers get to go free while the courageous individuals who expose the non-prosecuted criminality are the ones who are punished severely.