Bradley Manning statement after his sentencing

From Democracy Now

Bradley Manning: "Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society"

 

The following is a transcript of the statement made by Pfc. Bradley Manning as read by David Coombs at a press conference on Wednesday after Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.

I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown our any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, "There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."

I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others. If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.

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Bradley Manning's apology doesn't change a thing.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired


"Manning's conduct was of a heedless nature that made it actually and imminently dangerous to others. His conduct was both wanton and reckless,"

So says the judge that's going to send Bradley Manning to prison, most likely  for the rest of his life.  But Manning's treatment at the hands of the US military, years of physical and mental abuse and massive media attention portraying him as a traitor and a lunatic, has one purpose and one purpose only, and it's not simply to hurt Manning.  Manning's abuse is all about warning the rest of us, particularly the young workers in the 1%'s military, that we should all keep our mouths shut.

Many experts have admitted that nothing Manning has done placed our young working class men and women in the military, the 1%'s cannon fodder, in any danger whatsoever.  But the thugs that run and profit from the military industrial complex demand loyalty.  The Nazi's also demanded loyalty.  I was thinking about that blog I posted yesterday about the historic act of defiance by Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman at the 1968 Olympics.

The response from the same forces that are about to condemn Manning to a life in prison was to demonize these individuals, destroy them, in the US and they encouraged the racist filth to attack them and harass them.  Peter Norman died a broken man.

The judge says that Manning's conduct was "dangerous to others". Was it now? And which others might that be?  How about Cheney, Rumsfeld, the imbecile Bush and their puppy dog Blair from Britain and all the fortunate sons and daughters who have the honor of orchestrating the most brutal and violent massacres of human beings over the last century.  As Sean pointed out in his post earlier today, the US bourgeois will drop nuclear bombs on their own cities if their privileges are threatened. These are the "others" that the judge is really talking about.

What was reckless about letting the world know that the US government was wantonly murdering civilians and others who oppose their wars on behalf of the corporations?  Bradley Manning hasn't put our young people in harms way, the 1% and their political representatives have, both Republican and Democrat.  If you haven't watched the video that Manning is being imprisoned for sharing with the American people, you should. It is sickening in that people who have not harmed us or threatened us in any way are slaughtered like lambs.  But even more, those Americans doing the slaughtering have obviously lost there humanity. They have lost some of what makes us compassionate and loving creatures or what gives us the potential to be such. They have been dehumanized by the 1%'s regime.

Thousands of our young people will come back from these predatory excursions on behalf of the corporations severely mentally damaged, not to mention the physical damage they endure. More protective armor has meant than American soldiers die less frequently but the injured multiply. We have earlier blogs about how double amputations are on the increase due to protective armor.  In earlier days, they would just die.  Then there is the mental damage. I remember seeing The Ground Truth, a really good documentary about returning veterans.  One of them said how he got in trouble about domestic violence and how ridiculous it was that he was supposed to come back from Iraq and then go down the mall with his wife and kids like nothing has happened to him. Suicide and domestic violence is rampant among veterans.  No, war is not like it is portrayed in Hollywood movies. I grew up in a military family and my father spent almost four years as a prisoner of the Japanese. This had a very destructive effect on our family life.

After years of physical and mental abuse, the authorities dragged an apology from Bradley Manning. So what.  They broke him or it might help him win his freedom before his 80th birthday but he has nothing whatsoever to apologize for. The judge is simply doing her job as a paid flunkie for the 1%.  Their legal system is rotten, their laws are rotten and their whole damn system is rotten.

I am a retired union worker. If the union leaders had any character at all, any balls to put it bluntly, they would be in the forefront of the campaign to free Manning and to absolve Snowden for his courage in warning us about the increased intrusion of the capitalist state in our private lives. As Sean pointed out earlier, the state has beefed up its security apparatus.  They are ready to defend themselves from the US working class that will at some point recognize that we have no alternative but to fight back.  We should fight the distractions and study our history more closely, the Internet gives us the opportunity to do that from our own homes. Our history in the US is a rich and militant one fought against the most brutal and clever ruling class that has existed to this point. It is not the history of Ozzie and Harriet but of Emmet Till, lynchings, deportation, Pinkerton gun thugs and horrific living and working conditions that people died trying to change. It is the history of the genocidal war against the native population and the expansion of an empire.

Bradley Manning's apology doesn't change a thing. He's a hero and the judge has no clothes.

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Bradley Manning and Mai Lai massacre. .

Bradley Manning was scheduled to speak yesterday at the sentencing phase of his trial for having leaked 750,000 pages of classified documents and videos to WikiLeaks. He is widely expected effectively to get a life sentence. But he has already served more time than was served in total by William Calley in the days of the Vietnam war.

Manning was convicted on July 30th of 21 offences. He has been in custody since his arrest in May 2010 – 39 months, 11 in solitary confinement.

The information divulged to WikiLeaks concerned the killing of Iraqi civilians in US airstrikes, massacres by mercenaries employed by the Blackwater company, the politics of rendition and torture programmes, and much more.

Manning says he was prompted to disclose the material by the “collateral murder” video showing US troops shooting a dozen Iraqi civilians from an Apache helicopter in Baghdad in July 2007. He declared in his original defence statement: “The most alarming aspect to me was the seemingly delightful (sic) bloodlust they appeared to have . . . congratulating each another on their ability to kill in large numbers.” He had hoped that “the public would be as alarmed as me”.

‘Discredit upon the armed forces’

Manning’s charge-sheet alleged his conduct in releasing the information had been “of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.” It wasn’t killing civilians in the name of the people that was accounted reprehensible, then, but allowing the people to know innocent civilians were being killed in their name.

Calley was sentenced to life on March 31st, 1971, for his leadership role in the killing of 504 Vietnamese civilians, almost all of them women and children, in the village of My Lai on March 16th, 1968. He didn’t deny what had happened or his own involvement but insisted he had only been following orders.

The My Lai story was broken by Seymour Hersh in the St Louis Post-Dispatch in November 1969. Hersh’s account and others subsequently compiled told of villagers killed and left in heaps in the huts where they had huddled in terror, arranged into groups and machine-gunned at a range of 10 to 15 feet, made to stand in line at the brim of the ditches their bodies were to tumble into. Women were gang-raped and then shot dead. A child was raped with a bayonet.

Within 24 hours of Calley being sentenced, president Richard Nixon ordered his transfer from military prison to “house arrest” in the officers’ quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was released after 41 months, in September 1974.

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Bradley Manning Trial Notes

 Lack of evidence makes overcharging clear

From the Bradley Manning Support Network


Bradley Manning on the cover of Time magazine

The second week of the court martial validated claims that the government has overcharged Bradley Manning. The prosecution seems to lack evidence to support a number of the charges they had levelled, particularly in relation to the transfer of a video of the Farah incident, and to the use of unauthorized software, and unauthorized access to classified databases.

The military could not produce any of the "acceptable use" paperwork that should have been signed by soldiers, and which would explain computer policies. In fact, the military could not produce any such paperwork for Manning or for any soldier stationed along with him. Further witnesses testified that many of the alleged unauthorized programs were commonly used, and music, movies, and even games were often kept on secure machines.

Witnesses also testified that it is normal for intelligence officers to access databases to conduct research beyond the scope of an assignment and that it was normal to download classified documents to their local machines so that they could import such data into spreadsheets. Contrary to government charges, Bradley did have authorization to be accessing the classified files, and to save those files on his work computers.

The prosecution also failed to link Bradley Manning to the Farah video discussed in the chat logs leaked by Adrial Lamo. The Farah airstrike incident involved the massacre of approximately a hundred civilians including many children. There was no evidence that Manning downloaded this video from CENTCOM servers (one of the charges), whereas there is evidence that Jason Katz, who the prosecution failed to link to Manning, did have access to the video. And there was no evidence linking Bradley Manning to Jason Katz.

Lastly, prosecutors introduced online chats between Bradley Manning and a person identified as "pressfoundation", allegedly Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. An open source government database is referenced however on cross examination it was made clear that "pressassociation" never asked Bradley Manning for any documents, nor did they ask about Manning's access to documents.

Read full reports from day 4, day 5 and day 6.

The court also ruled that stenographers funded by the Freedom of the Press Foundation will be guaranteed a media seat throughout the trial. Read transcripts.

                                                  There are more Bradley Manning's


This week, Edward Snowden took responsibility for blowing the whistle on PRISM, a secretive

In an interview with Glenn Greenwald he discusses his intent behind releasing the classified documents, and his reasons mimic those of Bradley. In fact, in the interview he says that Bradley Manning is a "classic whistleblower" and he was "inspired by the public good."

With the public becoming more and more convinced of the importance of whistleblowers, Time magazine has featured Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, two whistleblowers, along with Jonathan Swartz an information activist who sadly committed suicide under duress of government prosecutors. Swartz has since become a symbol against government overprosecution.

government spying operation that monitored American's phones and online communications.

In an interview with Glenn Greenwald he discusses his intent behind releasing the classified documents, and his reasons mimic those of Bradley. In fact, in the interview he says that Bradley Manning is a "classic whistleblower" and he was "inspired by the public good."

With the public becoming more and more convinced of the importance of whistleblowers, Time magazine has featured Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, two whistleblowers, along with Jonathan Swartz an information activist who sadly committed suicide under duress of government prosecutors. Swartz has since become a symbol against government overprosecution.

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Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden Working class Americans to be proud of

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

"It's true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment" *

The release of secret National Security Administration documents revealing the US government agency’s extensive spying and surveillance apparatus has thrown the US capitalist class in to deeper crisis.  Billions of e mails and other private communications between Americans are being stored and processed by the NSA.

Edward Snowden, the young man who revealed himself as the source of the leaks in an interview with the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, is presently in hiding and no doubt fearing for his life.  Snowden’s actions come during the trial of Bradley Manning, the young US soldier facing a life sentence for sharing with the US public, information about US government war crimes and dirty diplomatic deals and as Julian Assange, a founder of the Wikileaks news service that published the material, is still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The NSA’s gathering of the personal information of tens of millions of Americans and others, has been made possible in part by the agency having access to the “systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US Internet giants” according to a top secret document obtained and verified by the Guardian. The access to all this information was made possible through what the media has described as a “previously undisclosed program” called Prism.

The official line is that Prism functions with the assistance of these companies but all the companies involved have so far denied it.  Officials at Apple have said they never heard of Prism. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," some execs have stated.  That is highly unlikely.

We should not underestimate the severity of this crisis coming on the heels of the Wikileaks/Manning revelations which shed light on their phony diplomacy, a diplomacy rooted in lies and thievery. The extent to which this affects million of ordinary US citizens adds much more fuel to the fire.

Amid the turmoil, the profiteers and their representatives in Congress and the White House have condemned Snowden much as they have Manning and Assange.  Barack Obama has defended the massive surveillance network begun under his predecessor, the Imbecile Bush saying, "that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing" because "they help us prevent terrorist attacks."

Dianne Feinstein, a one-time darling of the liberals denied Snowden was a whistleblower, and publicly accused him of committing “an act of treason.”

The Wall Street Journal responded in much the same way pointing out sarcastically that, “At least Mr. Snowden has the courage of his misguided convictions” because he publicly identified himself as the source of the leak rather than remaining anonymous although his motives “..appear to be political paranoia and righteous good intentions.”

After all, the Journal adds, “If he did discover abuses, he could have gone to the multiple layers of oversight including congressional committees.”. These “multiple layers” are actually multiple obstacle courses, hoops for people to jump through until they become so fatigued and demoralized they cannot go on and the secrecy and phony façade of government is maintained. The objection to allowing any undermining of military commanders control over rape allegations in their units is motivated by the same concerns.

The Journal then went on to discredit Snowden personally, “His likely career path took him from community college washout to NSA security guard to Central Intelligence Agency IT consultant…”  Normally, a guy who never graduated high school ending up as a well-paid specialist for a major government agency would be good news for Wall Street Journal readers.  But you have to be on the team, you have to be prepared to suppress democracy and keep from millions of Americans information they have a right to know. 

US capitalism is experiencing a political as well as an economic crisis.  We have here a situation where its own internal regime is breaking down. US capitalism, the sole global superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union is spreading itself very thin as it is forced to defend its global influence and the struggle for resources and has to put the US working class on rations to finance it. The self-proclaimed American Century lasted barely a decade. 

After the collapse of Stalinism, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “We Won.”  The society the US capitalist class referred to as “Communism” had fallen under the weight of its own parasitic bureaucracy; the bi-polar world was no more and the US stood alone as the most powerful economic and military force on earth. Full Spectrum Dominance was the new mantra.

Officially known as full-spectrum superiority this term was defined by the U.S. military as:
“The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.”,  “Full Spectrum Dominance” became the new order.  US capitalism must be free to travel the world uninhibited.  Even cyberspace must come under US capitalism’s control.  In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapid technological advances and the events of 911, cyberspace has become the battleground of the future.

With the official goal of making the world “Safe for Democracy” after the events of September 11^th 2003, the US increased its military presence throughout the world and beefed up it security and surveillance forces at home and abroad to the point that some five million Americans hold US government security clearances. But the wars in cyberspace are real, despite possessing billions of dollars worth of military hardware, the right hacker with the right program can create havoc with a nation’s defense/offense system. The huge increase in private contractors having access to secret information is a product of the increasing cyber warfare and, as the WSJ points out, large US companies are lobbying the government to grant more security clearances for their employees, in part to, “..fend off hackers from Iran, China and elsewhere.”

The changed global relations since the collapse of the Soviets and the bi-polar world has increased tensions between nation states particularly with the rise of China and the Russian Federation.  The rising social movements from Egypt to Greece, Latin America, China and South Africa, very much aided by social media, have increased the need for surveillance and control of the Internet as well as increased police and security presence on the ground.  The US War on Terror is an announcement to the world that US capitalism has the right to wage war anywhere it wants.  Waged under the banner of saving the world for democracy it is a war for global domination and the plundering of global markets and resources; it is a war without end until the planet can no longer sustain it.

Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, are heroic figures.  The war to criminalize investigative journalism, another by-product of the War on Terror also has its heroic figures like Glenn Greenwald and others who refuse to “embed” their journalistic integrity in the cesspool of bourgeois politics.

Apologists for the 1%, as they do with Bradley Manning, claim Snowden is aiding terrorists and placing US troops in harms way.  But it is not terrorists (a term that encompasses any person or persons that oppose US imperialism’s agenda) that Snowden’s leaks were being kept from.  So-called terrorists know full well they are being tracked; the US has been imposing such measure like retina scans on civilian populations outside its borders for years.  It is the US population that was unaware of this extensive invasion of our privacy until Snowden revealed it to us. 

Snowden made it quite clear that had he wanted to harm the US as a nation he could  have. “If I had just wanted to harm the US, then you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon, but that’s not my intention.” He said in his interview with Greenwald.  He has made his intentions very clear:

“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy, privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under,"

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.”  he said, and that he would be satisfied, “if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

“I’m no different than anybody else…”he went on,  “I don’t have special skills, I’m just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what’s happening and goes, ‘This is something that’s not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs are right or wrong.’”

As this crisis deepens it is forcing some in the US Congress to try and cover their asses and question the level of surveillance activities in the US and a review of the Patriot act has been suggested.  Internationally, Obama and all US government officials will be facing questions form their counterparts throughout the world. They are all involved in this cyber warfare but the US has the big stick.

It is likely we will see more of this in the future and one can only wonder at this point what effect this will have on the Manning Trial.  There is no doubt Snowden has increased his chances of survival by coming out in to the open although the US state apparatus are masters of assassination.  It is the US working class that they are afraid of here; they have become a little overconfident and overconfidence in politics can lead to severe mistakes, even catastrophic ones.

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have stood up against the most powerful militaristic force on the planet, two working class young men against the US state.  They are truly heroic figures in every sense of the word. By comparison, if we go to the official website of the AFL-CIO we will see nothing, not a word about this episode that is being talked about across the globe (if there is anything it is hidden). The stifling bureaucracy that sits at the head of the largest national labor organization in the US is best described as similar to the old soviet bureaucracy without state power. For those of us proud of US working class history and those heroic figures who built our movement, the present heads of organized labor are nothing less than criminal in their cowardly retreat in the face of the bosses’ offensive. For organized workers, we are in a war on two fronts, one with the bosses and the other more difficult one with their allies who lead our movement.

Despite this, Republican Rep. Peter King’s statement that  “The United States must make it clear that no country should be granting this individual asylum. This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”,  belongs in a time passed. US capitalism has limited credibility abroad as its allies are unreliable lackeys, bought, cajoled and bribed in to their camp and its representatives at home among the most hated and distrusted figures in society.

The world has changed much in the past 20 years. These developments are very positive and reflect the growing frustration and opposition to a bankrupt economic system that threatens to end life on this planet as we know it. Workers throughout the world should support Snowden, Bradley Manning and others like them, actively where we can. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

It is a good time to be alive. 

*Professor Philip Taylor of the University of Leeds an expert consultant to the US and UK governments on psychological operations, propagandaand diplomacy. source

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Free Bradley Manning: An American Hero

Bradley Manning has served three years in prison for informing the US public about war crimes the US government is committing in our name. We owe him a debt of gratitude for having the courage it took to do this. The White House and the few thousand unelected people that make the decisions that affect all our lives, including those outside our borders, are moving to impose further restrictions on our civil rights including making investigative journalism a crime. Their treatment of Manning is directed at the rest of us: "keep your mouths shut" is the message. Don't wait until your back is against the wall before you fight back.

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Bradley Manning: US government moving to make journalism a crime

We are sharing this as we read about the US government's claim in the Bradley Manning trial that Manning was basically receiving instructions from Assange.  This is in order to legalise their pursuit of Assange for espionage.  As this piece points out, pursuing information which is a journalists job, can and will be considered criminal activity.  They are moving to criminalize investigative journalism.

Reprinted from The Daily Beast

Pentagon Papers Lawyer James Goodale: It’s Time for Eric Holder to Resign

by James C. Goodale May 30, 2013 11:13 AM EDT

The attorney general’s conduct in trying to pass off the James Rosen subpoena as falling under the Espionage Act proves that he is abusing his office. Pentagon papers lawyer James Goodale has seen this before—in Richard Nixon.

Attorney General Eric Holder should resign for his role in the James Rosen case. He signed off on a search warrant to Rosen, a Fox News reporter. This warrant treated Rosen as a common criminal. It sets a terrible precedent. Holder should resign to erase this precedent.

Attorney General Eric Holder during the Office of Inspector General’s annual awards ceremony May 29. Holder should resign, Pentagon papers lawyer James Goodale says. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department adviser, had leaked to Rosen information about North Korea’s nuclear plans. The Justice Department sought the source of this leak by obtaining a search warrant for Rosen’s emails and other records. Fox News believes the search warrant even sought records from Rosen’s parents, who live in Staten Island, New York.

The basis for obtaining the warrant was that Rosen had conspired with Kim to violate the Espionage Act. That act does not apply to Rosen. It does however, in the government’s view, apply to Kim. It should be clear to anyone that Holder has run an end run around the Espionage Act by his actions. While Rosen is not subject to the Espionage Act, Kim is. But Rosen might as well be subject to the act if he can be held responsible for Kim’s actions.

The reason the Espionage Act does not apply to Rosen is that it does not apply to those who publish (or broadcast) information leaked to them. In the Pentagon papers case, the government asserted initially the Espionage Act did apply to The New York Times, the paper that published parts of the Vietnam archives leaked to it by Daniel Ellsberg.

If a reporter steps over the line drawn by the Justice Department, he or she may become a criminal. In short, the government has criminalized the news-gathering process.

When, however, the Times proved to the district court Judge Murray Gurfein that the word “publish” had intentionally been left out of the act, Gurfein concluded that the act was inapplicable. Thereafter, the government dropped its use of the Espionage Act, and it never appeared in its case again—even at the Supreme Court.

In its affidavit for a search warrant, the government asserted that Rosen had cajoled Kim into violating the act by trying to get Kim’s story out of him. Any reporter will quickly recognize that Rosen’s efforts are customary news-gathering practices used by all reporters. News does not come over the transom; reporters have to work hard to get it.

The government has now put itself in the position of setting standards for what reporters can and cannot do when they talk to those who have access to classified information. If a reporter steps over the line drawn by the Justice Department, he or she may become a criminal.  In short, the government has criminalized the news-gathering process.

Holder’s actions should come as no surprise to those who have been following him closely.  Rosen is not the only journalist Holder thinks is a criminal.  He is also pursuing Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Pfc. Bradley Manning leaked classified information to Assange.

While little noticed, a grand jury was empanelled to indict Assange in 2010,  initially seeking charges under the Espionage Act. Holder however, later announced “there were problems” with using the Espionage Act for this purpose. Presumably Holder’s problem was that the Espionage Act did not apply to the publication by Assange of Manning’s leaked information on Assange’s website.

Thereafter, Justice Department officials let it be known that the grand jury was proceeding on a theory that Assange conspired with  Manning to leak to Assange. Assange had also made the leaked information available to Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El País, and The Guardian. Later The Guardian shared this information with The New York Times, and all of them published parts of the leaked information, as did Assange on his website.

In December 2010, when the Committee to Protect Journalists learned that Holder had switched to a conspiracy theory, it wrote a letter to President Obama not to prosecute Assange, because such prosecution would criminalize news gathering. The committee pointed out to Obama that Assange was a journalist protected under the First Amendment and should not be treated as a co-conspirator. But little did the Committee to Protect Journalists know that Holder had used the conspiracy theory seven months before in May 2010, when he approved the use of the search warrant for Rosen’s records.

As far as anyone can tell, this grand jury is still alive. Assange’s lawyers believe it has already secretly indicted him. They think that as soon as Assange leaves the Ecuadoran Embassy where he is holed up, he will be faced with the indictment in the U.S. for conspiring with Manning.

Asking courts to treat journalists as criminals under the Espionage Act has only been asserted once before Holder started using it. President Richard M. Nixon used it against New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, who obtained the Vietnam archives from Daniel Ellsberg.  Following the Pentagon papers case, Nixon convened a grand jury to indict Sheehan for conspiring to cause the leak of the Pentagon papers. Nixon failed in this effort, and the grand jury disbanded after 17 months.

The difference between Nixon and Holder is that Nixon failed in his effort to treat Sheehan as a co-conspirator.  Nixon therefore could not create the precedent that reporters could be treated as criminals.  Holder has.  He should resign.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

James C. Goodale is a First Amendment lawyer and was chief counsel for the New York Times during the Pentagon Papers. He is the author of “Fighting for the Press: the Inside Story of the Pentago Papers and Other Battles.”

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

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US capitalism's war crimes at the root of anti-Americanism: Thank you Wikileaks and Bradley Manning

" Note, the above video was aired by Channel 4 and is based on investigations into Iraq War deaths using material analysed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in partnership with Wikileaks and which, in turn, is gleaned from information provided by whistleblower Bradley Manning (currently facing a possible life sentence for revealing war crimes). This must-watch video not only examines the actual numbers of those killed, but the proportion of civilians, how deaths occurred, as well as the use of unorthodox methods by US military, including torture."  Read more here: http://darkernet.in/the-iraq-killing-fields-the-untold-genocide-us-war-crimes-tribunal-investigation-8/

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Arab and Muslim anger toward the US government throughout the world has a source. It is not a hatred of American people because we are who we are or because most of us are Christians. It is not the ridiculous idea put forward by the US mass media that we are hated because we are "free" as the imbecile Bush used to say and the much slicker bourgeois Obama repeats. It is US foreign policy, the war crimes committed in our name that are at the root of this anger.  We become partners in crime if we don't openly condemn it and act in some way to halt it.

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Wikileaks cables reveal extent of US government's lying to its own people and the world

Readers will no doubt remember the famous and impassioned speech by Colin Powell at the United Nations Security Council where he justified the invasion and subsequent massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s because the US’s old pal Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  

We now know this to have been a lie in order to allow the US to remove Hussein who was becoming more unreliable in the pursuit of US capitalism’s interests in the region.  Iraqi oil was a nationalized industry for example.

Here is one of the cables released by Wikileaks last week.  If there is any doubt that the roots of terrorism or antagonism to the US government and it’s policies is based on the brutal and violent imposition of US imperial policies this should clear it up. Iraq was telling the truth, Powell and the US lied.  Millions of people around the world know this.  Americans too often tend to ignore it. Hundreds of thousands of people including thousands of young Americans have died as US politicians lied.

Powell, Bush, Blair, Rumsefeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Hilary Clinton , Obama are a all bunch of murderers and war criminals.  Is there any doubt what is at the root of extreme paranoia at the sight of US presence on the part of N. Korea and Iran?   It is US capitalism that is the most destructive and destabilizing force in the world today; it is the duty of American workers and the middle class to put a stop to it; surely, if we know the truth, we cannot remain silent. The policies of the US government are designed to advance the interest of the multinational corporations and those who profit from this situation.  As we read this, and with an upcoming Grand Prix expected to take place in Bahrain, people are being tortured and imprisoned for protesting against an absolute monarch and for democratic reforms and a republic.  This is all in the presence of 30,000 US troops. The original is here

Thank you Bradley Manning

The bold emphasis below we added.

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UN/IRAQ: IRAQ SENDS LETTER PRE-EMPTIVELY TAKING ISSUE WITH THE SECRETARY'S FEBRUARY 5 PRESENTATION
Date: 2003 February 6, 00:21 (Thursday)	Canonical ID: 03USUNNEWYORK298_a
Original Classification: UNCLASSIFIED	Current Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Handling Restrictions: -- Not Assigned --	Character Count: 4562
Executive Order: -- Not Assigned --	Locator: TEXT ONLINE
TAGS: IZ - Iraq | PARM - Political Affairs--Arms Controls and Disarmament | PREL - Political Affairs--External Political Relations | UNSC - UN Security Council	Concepts: -- Not Assigned --
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From: United Nations (New York)	Markings: -- Not Assigned --
To: Central Intelligence Agency | Defense Intelligence Agency | Department of Defense | Department of State | Iraq Iraq Collective | Joint Chiefs of Staff | National Security Council | United Nations Security Council | White House

Issue with the secretary's February 5 presentation

1. (u) Iraqi FM Naji Sabri submitted the following letter to the Security Council (s/2003/132), concerning the us presentation to the council on February 5. The full text of the letter follows in para 2.

2. (u) begin text. The government of the United States has announced that it has called for a meeting of the Security Council on 5 February 2003 at which United States secretary of state Colin Powell will present what has been dubbed "evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction."

This play-acting has become transparent after the submission by the united states of more than one report filled with allegations and accusations devoid of any evidence to substantiate them, such as the report annexed to the speech of united states president Bush before the general assembly on 12 September 2002, entitled "a decade of deception and defiance," and the report of the central intelligence agency (CIA) of October 2002, entitled "Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs." In both those reports, the bush administration accused Iraq of developing weapons of mass destruction at more than 50 sites. British prime minister tony Blair has played a supporting role in this regard, publishing a similar report in October 2002 in which he claimed that there existed specific sites in Iraq at which weapons of mass destruction were being developed.

 After Iraq accepted the return of the inspectors on 16 September 2002 and agreed to deal with security council resolution 1441 (2002), the united nations monitoring, verification and inspection commission (unmovic) and the international atomic energy agency (iaea) were requested to accord priority, in resuming inspections, to sites alleged by the united states and Britain to be developing weapons of mass destruction programmes.

Inspection work began on 27 November 2002. After two months of intensive inspections involving the use of state-of-the-art equipment for detecting any proscribed nuclear, chemical or biological activity and the analysis of water, soil and air samples all over Iraq during 518 tours of inspection comprising all the sites that were the object of president bush's and prime minister Blair’s accusations, as well as numerous other sites, including residential quarters in Iraqi cities, the report of Messrs.’ Blix and ElBaradei, submitted to the security council on 27 January 2003, substantiated Iraq’s declarations and consequently confirmed that the reports of president bush and prime minister Blair were devoid of truth and had been drafted in order to distort the picture of Iraq and create pretexts for aggression against Iraq and against the region as a whole.

Perhaps this fact explains the urgent requests addressed to states by Messrs.’ Blix and ElBaradei to provide unmovic and iaea with verifiable evidence of any proscribed activities, substances or materials in Iraq and the insistence of states members of the security council that those states which are alleging that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction submit their evidence to unmovic and iaea pursuant to paragraph 10 of resolution 1441 (2002), which reads, "requests all member states to give full support to unmovic and the iaea in the discharge of their mandates, including by providing any information related to prohibited programmes or other aspects of their mandates ..."

On the basis of the above text, contained in the security council resolution, we request the government of the united states, through you, to submit immediately its alleged evidence to the technical committee entrusted by the united nations with verifying such allegations, namely unmovic (if they relate to proscribed activities in the chemical, biological or missile fields) or iaea (if they relate to proscribed activities in the nuclear field), so as to enable the two organizations to begin their investigations immediately and inform the security council and the international community of the extent to which those allegations are correct.

In this connection, we caution against using the general assembly or the security council as forums for spreading false accusations and fabricated evidence in open disregard for the mechanisms prescribed by the security council

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Wikileaks reveals Kissinger the War Criminal. Free Bradley Manning

Wikileaks has released some 1.7 million archived records and cables from the 1970's, many of them written by the war criminal Henry Kissinger.  Kissinger is complicit in the murder of Rene Schneider, the Chilean constitutionalist general and Salvadore Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile who was overthrown by a US supported coup in 1973. He is also responsible for the murder of millions of Vietnamese people.

Cables also reveal that in order to justify sending the Brazilian dictatorship money and military aid in the mid-seventies, the US government gave Brazil a "torture exemption".

The information also reveals that the Vatican's response to claims of mass killings and torture by general Pinochet who the US favored over the democratically elected Allende was that the claims were "communist propaganda".

The journalist interviewed above who has looked at some of the documents points out:

We’re talking about 1969, for example, the bombing of Cambodia; this is secret policies, which were going on from the White House in the 1970s; the South American Operation Condor; death squads running around in South America, killing thousands and disappearing thousands of people; 1973, [Salvador] Allende’s Chile, where Henry Kissinger ordered the assassination of the president of Chile because he wasn’t going in the [desired] political direction and installed General Pinochet; 1974, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. There are little bits of details on all of these, in which Kissinger was involved. I mean Kissinger basically gave a green light to Turkey to invade Cyprus. So once there was an official foreign policy going on, which was quite, you know, nice from the US, going alone with human rights – there was unofficial police going on, with Henry Kissinger in the White House, with all those kinds of human right abuses and war crimes going on.

During a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to Turkey in 1975 Kissinger gave a little glimpse in to his world view when he said,  "Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, 'The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.' [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that."

Kissinger is a mass murder of some stature.   An excellent little book sharing some examples of his murderous activity is The Trial of Henry Kissinger by the late Christopher Hitchens

So many Americans have no idea of the role our government has played internationally, the assassinations, coups, supporting some of the most notorious mass killers in history on behalf of the US corporations.  Part of it is that so many feel there is absolutely nothing that we can do, so they bury their head in the sand and keep plodding along.  Our media is very controlled and they saturate the airwaves with sports and mind numbing entertainment.  But this cannot continue indefinitely as American are finding out through declining living standards, a bankrupt infrastructure and eternal insecurity. 

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Audio recording of Bradley Manning’s statement leaked

The Freedom of the Press Foundation published a full audio recording of Bradley Manning’s statement to the court taking responsibility for WikiLeaks’ releases.

Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images / AFP
By the Bradley Manning Support Network. March 12, 2013.

The transparency group Freedom of the Press Foundation has published an illicit audio recording of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s full statement on releasing classified documents to WikiLeaks as an act of conscience.
Despite this being among the most important trials in America today, journalists are not allowed to record any audio or video of the proceedings.

In the statement, Bradley describes joining the Army as an intelligence analyst, discovering and investigating grave abuses like the ‘Collateral Murder’ video and Garani air strike, and concluding that the American public deserved to know about how their government operates abroad.
He details his decisions to release the Iraq and Afghan war databases, the Collateral Murder video, Department of State diplomatic cables. He said he hoped these releases would “spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.” Glenn Greenwald breaks down the statement in several audio segments here.
Upon hearing the audio recording, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg said, “I believe Bradley Manning is the personification of the word whistleblower.”

Prior to this release, the public and press at large have never been able to hear Bradley Manning’s voice. They’ve also been unable to see basic rulings, transcripts of the proceedings, and legal motions, as the military withholds all of these documents, severely hampering the press’ ability to follow and cover this case. The Center for Constitutional Rights, along with several media organizations, has sued the military to make documents in Manning’s proceedings public.
The Department of Defense just last month finally began releasing judicial notices and rulings, but most are several months old and don’t provide the press with contemporaneous access to the case. Reporters have become increasingly frustrated with their access to these proceedings.
As the Freedom of the Press’s announcement reads,

Freedom of the Press Foundation is dedicated to supporting journalism that combats overreaching government secrecy. We have been disturbed that Manning’s pre-trial hearings have been hampered by the kind of extreme government secrecy that his releases to WikiLeaks were intended to protest. While reporters are allowed in the courtroom, no audio or visual recordings are permitted by the judge, no transcripts of the proceedings or any motions by the prosecution have been released, and lengthy court orders read on the stand by the judge have not been published for public review.

The press and public should be allowed full access to Bradley’s proceedings. This recording is a welcome development toward that end, as it finally broadcasts Bradley’s voice and whistle-blowing motivations to the world.

Filmmaker Laura Poitras made a five-minute documentary using Bradley’s own words describing the Collateral Murder video here:

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Bradley Manning's fight for justice at Ft. Meade

Bradley Manning's fight for justice at Ft. Meade
From Courage to Resist

Recent rulings in Bradley’s pre-trial hearings–Trial delayed until June

By the Bradley Manning Support Network.  January 23, 2013.

Bradley Manning, a 24-year-old Army intelligence analyst, is accused of releasing the Collateral Murder video, which shows the killing of unarmed civilians and two Reuters journalists by a US Apache helicopter crew in Iraq. He is also accused of sharing the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and series of embarrassing US diplomatic cables. These documents were published by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, and they have illuminated such issues as the true number and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq, along with a number of human rights abuses by U.S.-funded contractors and foreign militaries, and the role that spying and bribes play in international diplomacy. He has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his heroic and noble actions. For over 960 days he has been imprisoned without trial, 11 months of which were spent in solitary confinement at Quantico prison, where his treatment has since been judged to have amounted to unlawful pretrial punishment.

Winter recap: torture hearings, trial delays, motive debates, and more
Pre-trial hearings at Ft. Meade brought new developments for Pfc. Bradley Manning’s defense, including four months of sentencing credit, another three-month trial delay, debates over the failure to try Manning within reasonable time, and an effort to make whistle-blowing treasonous.
Bradley Manning has been to Ft. Meade for three hearings in the last two months, including the marathon Article 13 motion surrounding Bradley’s torturous nine months in Quantico, a 112-day reduction in a potential sentence, speedy trial litigation, arguments over how motive will play into the ‘aiding the enemy’ charge, and another court-martial delay. The trial is now scheduled to start June 3, 2013, with pretrial hearings set for February 26 – March 1 and May 21-24.

Judge ruled abusive treatment at Quantico was unlawful, awards sentencing credit
Following over two weeks of testimony from Quantico guards and higher officers about keeping Bradley in a 6×8 cell for 23 hours a day and denying him exercise time and easy access to basic hygiene items Judge Denise Lind ruled that Bradley was treated harshly and awarded him 112 days off of a potential sentence. This is a meager rebuke and a scant reduction when compared to the life sentence Bradley could face, but it is an important symbolic vindication for those who fought so hard to raise awareness of the disturbing treatment and to move Bradley from Quantico.
Read more: Bradley takes the stand, puts military captors on trial and
Judge rules Manning was illegally treated, awards 112 days credit

Three years is not a speedy trial
On Bradley Manning’s 964^th day in prison without trial, both parties argued over the defense’s motion to dismiss charges for lack of a speedy trial. Under Rule for Court Martial 707, the military was supposed to arraign Bradley in 120 days, but it took over 600. Under Uniform Code for Military Justice Article 10, prosecutors are obligated to maintain diligence in trying the accused. Defense lawyer David Coombs explained to the court that rather than being proactive, the military was reactive, waiting for months and months for other agencies to complete classification reviews, when it should have been hurrying those processes along to get to court-martial as quickly as possible. If Judge Lind finds Article 10 was violated, she must dismiss charges. If she dismisses charges “with prejudice,” meaning she finds that the military was prejudicial in denying Bradley a speedy trial, then Bradley will walk free. However, if she dismisses “without prejudice,” finding the delays were negligent but not malicious, the military could simply re-charge Bradley with all of the same offenses. She’ll rule at the next hearing, February 26 through March 1.

Turning whistle-blowing into treason
Meanwhile, in an attempt to curtail the defense’s ability to show Bradley Manning is a whistle-blower, the government moved to preclude discussion of his motive in determining his guilt or innocence. Judge Lind granted this motion in part: the defense will not be allowed to show Bradley’s motive, such as chatlog quotes showing that he wanted information to be free, in debating whether he knew Al Qaeda would have access to the cables he released (but it will be allowed to discuss motive during a potential sentencing portion). The military will have to prove that Bradley knew he was “dealing with the enemy” in passing information to WikiLeaks. The defense will be allowed to show that Bradley selected certain cables or types of cables to prove he knew which information would not cause harm to U.S. national security if made public. The government also moved to preclude discussion of over-classification, trying to prevent the defense from arguing that documents released needn’t have been classified in the first place. Judge Lind decided to defer that ruling, and will make it at a later hearing. In this hearing, the military also said that it would still charge Bradley Manning with “aiding the enemy” if he’d released information to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, an argument that would effectively turn whistle-blowing into treason and one which troubled many journalists following the proceedings.

Read more: Judge limits Manning’s whistle-blower defense, pretrial confinement nears 1,000 days and Transparency isn’t treason: New York Times journalists criticize “aiding the enemy” charge
The defense is currently determining which classification information it will need to present during the court-martial. Once it notifies the government of that information, prosecutors have 60 days to determine how to handle those documents in court. They can redact, substitute, or summarize them, or they can ask the court to hold closed sections, open only to the judge, defense, prosecution, and security experts with sufficient clearances. Therefore, the trial is tentatively scheduled to begin June 3, 2013.

Read more: Court-martial delayed again, expected to start June 3
Remaining proceedings:

• 26 February – 1 March, 2013: Accused plea and anticipated speedy trial ruling
• 10 April – 12 April, 2013: Issues regarding evidence for trial
  
• 21 May – 24 May, 2013: How to deal with classified information during trial (either substituting or redacting documents or closing portions of the trial to the press and public)
• 3 June, 2013: Tentative trial start date; trial expected to last about six weeks

"Like" the FFWP page of Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/FactsForWorkingPeople

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Free Bradley Manning: Transparency isn’t treason

Transparency isn’t treason: New York Times journalists criticize “aiding the enemy” charge

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. January 18, 2013.

PFC Bradley Manning. Photograph: AFP/Brendan Smialowski/Getty

Last week in Fort Meade, MD, government prosecutors said that if PFC Bradley Manning had released documents to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, they would still charge him with indirectly ‘aiding the enemy,’ which carries a life sentence.

This would be unprecedented: never before has a soldier been sent to jail for ‘aiding the enemy’ as a result of giving information to a news outlet. Government prosecutors argue that Manning needn’t have intended to aid the enemy; merely that he knew Al Qaeda could use the information is enough. This would turn all government whistle-blowing into treason: a grave threat to both potential sources and American journalism.

Following this contention in court, the Los Angeles Times called on the government to drop the ‘aiding the enemy’ charge, writing in an editorial, “That charge strikes us as excessive in the absence of evidence that Manning consciously colluded with hostile nations or terrorists.” Since then, even higher-profile media members have condemned the military’s pernicious claim and the precedent it would set. In an email in which she explained she couldn’t speak on behalf of her newspaper but could comment as a lifelong journalist and a former newspaper editor, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan said,

“The implications for press freedom in the Bradley Manning prosecution trouble me, as does the federal government’s unprecedented targeting, in recent years, of whistleblowers and those who leak to the press.  The issues certainly aren’t black and white, but if the public expects the press to do its crucial job in our democracy, people ought to be more worried than they apparently are.  And I agree with the Los Angeles Times editorial that the “aiding the enemy” charge, which could result in a life sentence, is excessive.”

New York Times columnist and former executive editor Bill Keller said, “I think the treatment of Manning feels heavy-handed and out of proportion to actual harm done.”
In Michael Calderone’s story for the Huffington Post, “Manning Case Raises Troubling Questions For Journalists,” about the implications of this argument, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest said, “they don’t want other people to get the idea that they should be doing this,” and that it’ll have a “chilling effect on sources.”
Glenn Greenwald wrote for the Guardian, “[the government’s argument] can be – and almost certainly will be – just as easily applied to the vast majority of leaks on which investigative journalism has always relied.”
Mainstream news outlets, Greenwald said,

“might want to take a serious interest in this fact and marshal opposition to what is being done to Bradley Manning: if not out of concern for the injustices to which he is being subjected, then out of self-interest, to ensure that their reporters and their past and future whistle-blowing sources cannot be similarly persecuted.”

So why does the government continue to prosecute this way? Keller said, “It’s been clear from the outset that the government decided to make a lesson of Bradley Manning,” and that “the extreme conditions of his early confinement and the aiding-the-enemy charges suggest a deep animus toward Bradley.”

As the government works to discourage future leakers and to tighten security, it also classifies exponentially more documents every day. This harms the very people Bradley Manning wanted to inform in the first place: the American people.

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Bradley Manning: US Gov't wants to block whistle blower defense

The US government wants to block any mention that Manning might have been motivated as a whistle blower. How obvious is this to the fact that the state wants to persecute this man for letting the rest of us know what is going on.  If it was someone blowing the whistle on a public sector unionized Janitor taking too long on her lunch break it would be defending whistle blower's rights as public sector workers, not capitalism and it's predatory wars are destroying the American way of life.  Unless you're the pope of course who says gay marriage and abortion are a threat to world peace.
RM

Bradley in court next week: Gov't seeks to block reference to whistle-blower motives.

Judge Lind may rule on motion to dismiss charges based on unlawful pretrial punishment, and prosecutors to argue motion to block any reference to Bradley Manning’s whistle-blower motives. Two months remain before the court martial, take action!


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Bradley Manning returns to court next week, January 8-11, 2013, for another pretrial hearing. Government prosecutors will argue their motion to block both any reference to the lack of harm caused by the released documents, and any reference of Bradley Manning’s whistle-blower motives, from the merits portion of his trial. If granted by military judge Col. Denise Lind, it will make it difficult for the defense to show that Bradley Manning released documents to uncover crimes and abuse and to better inform the American public. As Bradley’s lawyer David Coombs said, it could “cut Bradley’s defense at its knees”.

It is also possible that Judge Lind will rule on the defense motion to dismiss charges all the charges based on the abusive and unlawful pretrial treatment Bradley Manning endured at the Quantico Marine brig prison. PFC Manning was kept in solitary confinement for over nine months, against the consistent recommendations of brig psychiatrists. If Judge Lind finds that this treatment was intentionally punitive, she could throw out the charges against PFC Manning, or she could award him multiplied credit for sentencing, possibly as much as ten days credit for every day spent in solitary confinement.

Bradley Manning’s court-martial trial is currently scheduled to begin March 6, 2013. This gives us two months to ramp up our efforts. Help us pressure the government and military to do the right thing: free Bradley Manning. We are asking supporters to take action during the proceeding court dates, and particularly leading up to the court martial. You can find solidarity events in your area here, as well as register your own.

Court dates:

8-11 January 2013: Judicial notice motions and Defense witness litigation
16-17 January 2013: Defense Motion to Dismiss for Lack of a Speedy Trial
5-8 February 2013: Providence inquiry and “Grunden” issues (re. what portions of the trial will be closed to the public due to the government’s security concerns);
27 February – 1 March 2013: Grunden issues continued (re. what portions of the trial will be closed to the public due to the government’s security concerns)
6 March – 17 April 2013: Trial (18 March 2013: Current alternate trial start date)

How to Attend Bradley's Hearings

Following next week’s hearing, PFC Manning is scheduled to return to Fort Meade on January 16 and 17, to conclude the defense’s motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial. When that motion is argued, PFC Manning will have been awaiting trial in prison for nearly 1,000 days.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Bradley's legal fees! Donate today.

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Bradley Manning's attorney gives public speech about Wikileaks Case

Bradley Manning Support Network

http://www.bradleymanning.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 4, 2012

Contact: Nathan Fuller, (516) 578-2628
press@Bradleymanning.org

Bradley Manning's attorney gives public speech about Wikileaks case

Last night, David Coombs, defense attorney in the WikiLeaks case, US. v. Bradley Manning, gave his first public presentation to an audience of over 100 at All Souls Church in Washington DC. In addition to being defense attorney in one of the most controversial and important ongoing cases today, Coombs was described as being a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves having done 12 years of active duty, with 15 years experience practicing and teaching law.  Additional speakers included Emma Cape and Kevin Zeese of the Bradley Manning Support Network, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, and Marsha Coleman-Adebayo of the National Whistleblower Center.

Mr. Coombs spoke on topics including Bradley's mistreatment at Quantico and Bradley's personality and future dreams, as well as Mr. Coombs own opinion of the military, and how having supporters worldwide inspired him and gave him hope.  Bradley Manning spent the first nine months of his pretrial incarceration in a 6x8 ft cell in solitary conditions described as "degrading and inhuman" by the UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez.  Regarding Coombs' lengthy ongoing motion to have Bradley's charges dismissed due to 'unlawful pretrial punishment,' he explained, "I’m enjoying my opportunity to cross-examine those who had Bradley Manning in those conditions for nine months"

The audience was particularly excited to hear Coombs talk about Bradley as a person.  Coombs said that Brad is one of the smartest young men he'd ever met, who does things from the heart, and relayed a conversation he had about Bradley's future goals:  "And he told me that his dream would be to go to college, go into public service, and perhaps one day, run for public office.  And I asked Brad, why would he want to do that? And he said, 'I want to make a difference. I want to make a difference in this world.'"

While Coombs acknowledged he has been intimidated facing off against a government prosecution with "unlimited resources and personnel," he relayed that actions by supporters gave him hope. He also acknowledged the political significance of his case, "It is by far the most important military case, but it's a case that is significant for all of us," says Coombs. "We live in a country that is built on freedom of speech. We live in a country that is built on government accountability and informed citizens."  He said that Bradley is "excited" his case is finally going forward.

Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has launched a lawsuit against the US military demanding Bradley Manning's court documents be made public.  He is available for interviews.

You can watch the first hour of the presentation on CSPAN's website:
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Attorney-for-Alleged-WikiLeaks-Source-Discusses-Case/10737436204/

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Protest & Action at the Berkeley (CA) Marine Corps officer recruiting center

2019 Shattuck ave Tuesday November 27th at 12pm noon!
(1 Block North from Downtown Berkeley BART, cite of 2008 Marine recruiting protests)

Show solidarity with whistle-blower Bradley Manning who will begin his next round of pre-trial hearings this same day on the East Coast at Fort Meade army base as the defense will be facing off with the military prosecution to argue that all charges be dismissed because of "unlawful pretrial punishment".

At this extremely important hearing, Bradley's lawyer David Coombs will focus on the abuse Bradley endured in Quantico, VA. It is now well-known that Bradley was held for nine months in solitary confinement, in conditions that were declared by UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez to be "cruel, inhuman and degrading." David Coombs will present evidence that brig psychiatrists opposed the decision to hold Bradley in solitary, and that brig commanders misled the public when they said that Bradley's treatment was for "Prevention of Injury".

It was US Marine Corps officers including then-Lt General George Flynn who reportedly directed PFC Bradley Manning’s illegal pretrial confinement conditions.

USMC Lieutenant General George Flynn, who was serving as the Commanding General of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command at the time, ordered Manning’s solitary confinement, arbitrary suicide restrictions and unjust and cruel treatment which amounted to torture at the Quantico Marine Brig in Virgina all in violation of Article 13 which safeguards against unlawful pretrial punishment.

This is one of the defense's final chances to reduce possible sentencing, second in importance only to the court martial which begins next February 4th.

Come rally with us outside the US Maine Corps officers recruiting office and demand that Bradley's mistreatment be accounted for! Speakers will include leading members of the Bradley Manning Support Network and partner organizations.

Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/250776948382044/

More on Mannings pretrial conditions:
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/mannings-torturous-confinement-controlled-by-top-military-lt-general-at-the-pentagon

And, if you'd like to follow along with the sibling action at Fort Meade, you can access the Facebook Event here:
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/299364776834766/?context=create

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