Pack the Courtroom: Free Bradley Manning!
June 30, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Inside Fort Meade, a U.S. military base near Baltimore that houses the headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA), Bradley Manning is undergoing a court martial in front of a military judge. Manning is the Army private who made available to WikiLeaks in 2010 a huge trove of classified information about U.S. war crimes and torture. (See "High Stakes in the Cruel and Unjust Trial of Bradley Manning".)
Bradley Manning has supporters around the U.S. and the world who recognize him as a hero. But in the fourth week of his trial the prosecutor targeted those attending it because the public seats in the courtroom are not filled every day.
So as Debra Sweet from World Can't Wait told Revolution: "It's time to get our bodies in that courtroom and manifest support for this brave, principled man who acted to expose the government's crimes. And it's time to get many more people to know about and to support Bradley Manning because, as he said, 'I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the [Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as well as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.'" www.bradleymanning.org/learn-more/in-his-own-words
David Coombs, Bradley's attorney, recently told supporters: "When I'm in the courtroom, I stand up and I look to my right and I see the United States government, the United States government with all of its resources, all of its personnel. I see them standing against me and Brad, and I have to admit to you that can be rather intimidating and I was intimidated, especially when the President of the United States says, 'Your client broke the law.' Especially, when Congress members say, 'Your client deserves the death penalty.' I want to tell you, though, today as I stand here, I'm no longer intimidated. I am not intimidated because when I stand up, I know I'm not standing alone. I know I'm not alone because I turn around and I see the support behind me. I see members here today in the audience that are there every time we have a court hearing. I see, what now I'm going to affectionately call the 'truth battalion,' those who wear... a black shirt, it has the word 'truth' on it and they're behind me."
See "5 reasons to attend Army whistleblower Bradley Manning's trial" at bradleymanning.org.
World Can't Wait has put out a call to mobilize and step up support for Bradley Manning:
- Pack the courtroom for the trial of Bradley Manning, beginning Tuesday, June 25.Updates and directions are available at BradleyManning.org, and World Can't Wait is coordinating transportation from New York City. Call 866.973.4463.
- Free Bradley Manning contingents will march in four LGBT Pride Parades on Sunday, June 30. More events and details at orders.bradleymanning.org/support_events.
- Go to bradleymanning.org to find out about other ways to support Bradley Manning.
Interview with Kevin Gosztola
On the Bradley Manning Trial and the Broader Context
The following excerpts are taken from an interview by Revolution on June 21 with Kevin Gosztola, who has been attending the trial of Bradley Manning.
Revolution: Let me go back to something; you said he already pled guilty, we’re well into the fourth week of the trial. Why is the government going ahead with this trial despite the guilty plea from Bradley Manning? What have they been out to establish through this hearing?
Kevin Gosztola: The trial of Bradley Manning is much more than holding Bradley Manning responsible for doing something that the military will say is clearly outlined in rules, that you’re not to disclose classified information without proper authorization; they’ll tell you that’s what this case is about, a soldier that did that. They’ll tell you that this is about a person whose acts ended up aiding the enemies of the United States or advantaging a foreign nation, giving them information that they could use to their advantage against the United States. That’s not really what this is about; what this is about is the Obama administration and the United States government, the National Security State, wanting to control information. It’s not about just holding someone responsible for a crime; otherwise you could just put him in prison for five, ten, fifteen years. There’s no reason to zealously pursue him unless you need to send a message to all other people in the military, all other people in government with these kinds of cases. Bradley Manning is one of eight people now who’ve been charged under the Espionage Act as leakers. The Espionage Act was never intended to criminalize leaks. Though it was always used to go after dissidents and dissenters when it was passed in 1917, that law had actually not been used against government employees or even military officers until you had Daniel Ellsberg charged under the Espionage Act when he blew the whistle and provided the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.
The Obama administration has taken a massive step forward in using the Justice Department to come down on individuals, just recently Edward Snowden being charged with the Espionage Act violation. Bradley Manning’s case is a part of making it clear to everyone that the United States government isn’t about to allow government employees to come forward and bring out any information that they think is in the public interest or any information that they think reveals corruption or wrongdoing. The broader issue here is that there are people in government who recognize that there are too many secrets, and that the government is classifying an incredible amount of material. This information, if it was public, could be helpful in court cases; there are torture victims whose cases are thrown out because they can’t argue, the government invokes state secrets privilege. There are people who go to court and say they think they’re having their phones tapped by the NSA, but they’re not allowed to challenge warrantless wiretapping laws because they can’t prove with the secret information that they’re being spied upon. The classified information of not knowing how surveillance works, that throws it out.
I’m just giving the bigger picture here of what the context is of this trial. There’s an incredible task before these prosecutors. They’re not just there prosecuting Bradley Manning, they’re there to convict Manning, they’re there also to put together a stepping stone for the Obama Justice Department, so it can move on to Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, and the wider WikiLeaks organization/staffers. If you pay attention to what [Julian Assange’s] lawyers, Michael Ratner and Jennifer Robinson, are saying as they monitor the Bradley Manning trial, it’s very clear they’re concerned about what is being said. Julian Assange has been a key focus of the prosecutors. They very much want to get the judge to accept that Manning was communicating with Julian Assange personally, although they have not presented actual proof. They’ve shown that there’s a chat, a user address called “press association,” and that address is associated with WikiLeaks, and perhaps Julian Assange used the address, but they have not been able to prove that Julian Assange was the person who was sending messages from that address.
Revolution: You talk about how people have really come to cherish what Bradley Manning represents; he’s a very courageous individual, on the basis of really deep convictions you were alluding to a while ago, who has exposed these crimes and has suffered severely already; he’s been in prison over three years, I think, tortured, he’s been in solitary confinement for nine months. How aware is he? Does he know about the activities that took place at Fort Meade, at the beginning of the trial, and throughout the world during the course of it? I’m just wondering how he’s doing; does he get encouragement from these developments?
Gosztola: From what I know, Bradley Manning is well aware that he has many supporters; he’s aware that people from around the world are demonstrating in support of him in rallies. He’s aware because his lawyer, David Coombs, really one of the only people that he can confide in (he has to rely on him quite a bit to know about what is going on)... I assume he gets to watch some news, so he might be aware of some of the events developing. I imagine, I wonder if he identifies with Edward Snowden, being that this person is quite similar to Bradley Manning, in my opinion. I see them as really being from the same kind of demographic of people, of tech people who believe in this sort of thing of the goodness of technology, even though they were working for institutions like the CIA and the NSA that don’t do what, things that I think are good for the world, of these people actually believing that the country could be different, and trying to do good things from inside the belly of the beast. So I think when I’ve seen him in court, he’s been intelligent, articulate. There hasn’t been any sense that he is afraid or that he’s not willing to show confidence and take responsibility for the act of conscience or civil disobedience that he engaged in, however you want to regard his act, and it seems quite clear that at this point I think it’s fair to say that it’s clear that he’s come to accept whatever future that he has before him.
I think having all these tens, hundreds of thousands of supporters around the world, also having officials in governments around the world. We can’t just limit the group that supports him to citizens; there are actual officials and people in human rights groups around the world that support Bradley Manning. We have to think of this... one of the things the government may not realize, and I’ll leave you this as a final thought: One of the things that the U. S. government may not realize is, by putting Manning in prison for life, for “aiding the enemy”—should they choose to do that, they are actually alienating multiple governments around the world. They are insuring that he will be the most famous political prisoner in the world for at least the next two, three decades, possibly, and that there will be regular meetings with diplomats where Manning will be a recurring topic, where they have to confront whether it’s possible he’ll be pardoned or released some time soon. And they’ll have to deal with the fact that individuals who think that the information he provided started debates that were important, gave us information that our government was keeping secret from us that we should have known about, like torture, like war crimes, corruption, diplomatic scandals that should not have been kept under the rug. We’ve got United States diplomats spying on United Nations people, collecting their biometric data, and doing all kinds of heinous stuff. I mean it’s just obviously we all don’t think this is the kind of government we want to live under. People like Barack Obama and the next president after him will have to confront people from all around the world, making their lives miserable with constant questions about when are you going to set Bradley Manning free.
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