Source: 7 Navy SEALs punished for secrecy breach
By ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press – 1 hr 49 mins ago

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior defense official says seven members of the secretive Navy SEAL Team 6, including one involved in the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, have been punished for allegedly disclosing classified information.

The official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case, says the seven received what the military calls "nonjudicial" punishment on Wednesday. They are alleged to have provided the information to the maker of a video game.

The official says four other SEALs are under investigation for similar alleged disclosures.

The punishments were first reported by CBS News.


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Good. Now if they will only apply that same punishment further up the food chain. What are the chances?

Bot

Meh, they probably made more money selling the info to the game maker than they lost through fines or docking of pay. Sounds like a slap on the wrist.

Revealing secrets is a serious situation. Hopefully the Wikileaks case has not been forgotten. There were calls at the time for charges of Treason to be bought against the owner of that web-site.

There are those among us who have kept secrets for 70 years and felt they were serving their country while doing so. I wonder what they would say about this cavalier approach by the accused SEAL's.

spdrun:
Meh, they probably made more money selling the info to the game maker than they lost through fines or docking of pay. Sounds like a slap on the wrist.

You've been in the military, right?

If only they had involved themselves in the making of the "Obama the Magnificent!" video game they wouldn't have those problems!

Yes it is good to expose war crimes, even if embarrassing to us. Assange, the website owner is not a US citizen, so, not treasonous, under any circumstance.

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But the secret info let out in the making of the forth coming Seal movie by an Obama contributor is cool?

Or the info released in that unapproved book about killing Osama.

You're right, it IS a serious situation, depending on who does the leaking. It is not a problem in the eyes of the press and roughly half of the nation, however, if the President or Attorney General leak information for their own gain or political advantage.

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Yep!

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FYI, NJP in a very elite unit is likely to be a career killer. These were E-8's and E-9's. Hope they had their 20 in or they'll have to suffer through a few years of bluewater navy. That would just about kill them with boredom and regimentation.

Agreed. At least in the Navy, when you hit the E-7 to E-9 level, a lot of politics come into play when it comes to advancement and career - especially during the 90's after the Gulf War when the great drawdown occurred - for the last six years I was in, I could literally count on my fingers how many sub nuke machinist mates were picked for E-7 Navy wide each year.

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What secret info and who said it was secret?

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On the topic of WikiLeaks

Manning Offers Guilty Plea on Some Lesser Charges

A US soldier accused of leaking a trove of secret files to WikiLeaks has offered to plead guilty to some but not all of the charges he faces in a pending court-martial, his defense lawyer said.

Bradley Manning, 24, "is not pleading guilty to the specifications as charged by the Government," his attorney, David Coombs wrote on his blog on Wednesday.

"Rather, PFC (Private First Class) Manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses," he wrote.

It was up to a military court to rule whether his plea was "legally permissible," and then government prosecutors would have to decide if they would continue to pursue all the charges against Manning, he said.



"PFC Manning is not submitting a plea as part of an agreement or deal with the Government," Coombs added.

The defense relayed the offer to a military judge at pre-trial hearings being held at Fort Meade, Maryland on Wednesday and Thursday.

By making the offer, Manning indicated he was ready to plead guilty to passing government information to WikiLeaks, though it was unclear if he would admit to passing all the files cited by prosecutors.

If the plea is deemed legal by the court, it could potentially simplify the trial, which is due to start on February 4, 2013, and possibly shield Manning from being convicted on more serious federal offenses related to computer fraud and the Espionage Act.

Manning had the option of being tried by a military jury but he informed the court he preferred to be tried by a judge only, according to Coombs.

Arrested in May 2010 while serving as an army intelligence analyst near Baghdad, Manning is charged with leaking classified military intelligence files on Iraq and Afghanistan and about 260,000 cables from the State Department.

The publication of the sensitive files by the secret-spilling WikiLeaks website caused huge embarrassment to Washington and angered US allies.......

AFP

By act of Congress there is a mechanism for defining government levels of confidentiality. When one joins the military one gets informed of them at each level to which one applies. Included with the clearance is a document in which the applicant acknowledges his duty and the consequences of not adhering to the rules. FYI there is NO cover in national security for breaking the laws. Thus, if one performs an illegal act while engaged in national security activities one has legal exposure. Also there are several independent avenues for seeking legal counsel concerning activities one may believe are illegal. Some of which are intentionally out of the departmental chain of command.

The last recourse is to accept that one will be exposed to sanctions yet release information anyway. That worked for Ellsberg. It failed for just about anybody else.

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In my opinion the gov puts a classified label on far, far too many things and leaves the classification in place for far too long. We need a congressional review of the laws concerning classified info. Gov secrecy breeds suspicion of gov activities. This is self-destructive.