{"id":75250,"date":"2011-03-14T10:40:19","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T06:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=75250"},"modified":"2011-03-14T10:40:19","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T06:40:19","slug":"us-spokesperson-crowley-quits-over-wikileaks-gaffe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/03\/14\/us-spokesperson-crowley-quits-over-wikileaks-gaffe.html","title":{"rendered":"US Spokesperson Crowley Quits over WikiLeaks Gaffe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US state department spokesperson PJ Crowley has resigned after calling the treatment of the man accused of leaking secret cables to Wikileaks &#8220;stupid,&#8221; reports <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-12728315\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>the BBC<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He said he was taking responsibility for the impact of his remarks about Bradley Manning.<\/p>\n<p>Private Manning is being held in solitary confinement at a maximum security US military jail.<\/p>\n<p>He has been on suicide watch at the Quantico marine base in Virginia and is shackled at all times.<\/p>\n<p>He faces 34 charges relating to the leaking of 720,000 diplomatic and military documents.<\/p>\n<p>US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she accepted Crowley&#8217;s resignation &#8220;with regret.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She said he had served his nation &#8220;with distinction&#8221;, &#8220;motivated by a deep devotion to public policy and public diplomacy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Crowley was speaking to an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about new media and foreign policy when he made the controversial remarks.<\/p>\n<p>He was asked by a participant about the &#8220;the elephant in the room&#8221; \u2014 Wikileaks \u2014 and, in the questioner&#8217;s words, &#8220;torturing a prisoner in a military brig.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I spent 26 years in the air force,&#8221; Crowley reportedly replied.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What is happening to Manning is ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid, and I don&#8217;t know why the DoD [Department of Defense] is doing it. Nevertheless, Manning is in the right place.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said his comments were on the record, though he later added that they were his own opinion.<\/p>\n<p>In his resignation letter he said: &#8220;Given the impact of my remarks, for which I take full responsibility, I have submitted my resignation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>US President Barack Obama later insisted he had received assurances that the terms of Manning&#8217;s confinement were &#8220;appropriate.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, rights organization Amnesty International expressed concern about the conditions in which Manning was being held.<\/p>\n<p>It said he had been held &#8220;for 23 hours a day in a sparsely furnished solitary cell and deprived of a pillow, sheets, and personal possessions since July 2010.&#8221; He was also reportedly forced to disrobe on a daily basis.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US state department spokesperson PJ Crowley has resigned after calling the treatment of the man accused of leaking secret cables to&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[23350,13149,17169,23349,13119],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}