Lamar W. Hankins : The Tyranny of the Manning Trial

Pfc. Bradley Manning. Graphic by DonkeyHotey / Flickr.

A failure of the justice system:
The tyranny of the Manning trial

Pfc. Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for embarrassing the government in a trial that grossly violated the constitutional guarantee of due process.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / September 3, 2013

The right to due process is the bedrock of the right to trial in this country. The recently concluded trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning [who has since expressed her intention to live as a woman and be known as Chelsea Manning] demonstrates that Manning did not receive due process, that is, procedural fairness and government actions that follow the law in all relevant aspects. Both the military courts and the civilian courts are controlled by the same Constitution, though Manning’s trial calls this proposition into question.

Certainly, Manning received the outward appearances of due process: he received notice of the charges against him; he had a jury trial presided over by an apparently unbiased judge; he was represented by able counsel; he had adequate time to prepare for trial; to a limited extent, he was given notice of the evidence against him, allowed to present evidence in his own defense, and permitted some cross-examination of the witnesses who testified against him; a written record was made of the proceeding; and the basis of the decision against him was made known.

If that’s all that were required, we could put this case behind us and move on, but the full story of the persecution (it was not just a prosecution) of Manning requires a more complete look at what the government did to him.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for leaking to WikiLeaks more than 700,000 classified files from the U.S. State Department, diplomatic cables, powerpoint presentations, lists of military addresses, military databases, videos of military actions, documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other similar materials.

No one disputes that Manning leaked these materials. What is disputed is how he should be dealt with for what he believed was his duty to expose wrongdoing.

Manning was charged with violations of Army regulations: failure to obey a lawful order or regulation, aiding the enemy, knowingly giving intelligence to the enemy through indirect means, wrongfully storing classified information, and related infractions.

From the beginning of Manning’s case, however, the government engaged in misconduct. After he was arrested he endured 11 months of solitary confinement in conditions that the United Nations special rapporteur on torture considers, based on article 16 of the convention against torture, as cruel, inhuman, and degrading -- very near to torture:

The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence.

Had the special rapporteur been allowed private access to Manning as a part of his investigation, he would have been able to gauge whether Manning’s treatment amounted to torture. Officials at the Pentagon denied the special rapporteur private communications with Manning, thus thwarting a complete investigation into the conditions of his imprisonment, a violation of human rights procedures according to the UN.

Manning was forced to sleep naked facing a lamp, confined to a 6-by-8 foot cell for over 23-and-a-half hours a day, and denied contact with other inmates. When they found him asleep, guards woke him up. When he danced to overcome the boredom, guards considered that he was mentally unstable. Besides, dancing was not a form of exercise approved by his jailers.

Manning’s harsh treatment was justified by his guards as punishment for the most serious charge -- aiding the enemy -- though he had not been convicted of any crime at the time (and subsequently was found not guilty of aiding the enemy). His pretrial confinement conditions will be one issue taken up on appeal.

Another issue on appeal will be that Manning was denied his right to a speedy trial through a procedure in which an Army commander complied with a prosecution request several times to remove from consideration a period of time that would otherwise have counted toward the speedy trial clock. Such a procedure makes a complete mockery of the right to a speedy trial.

One of the most egregious violations of due process that I have ever heard in my over 35 years of practicing law was the changing of the charges against Manning after the government had rested its case. That is, after all evidence in the case had been presented and closed, the presiding military judge allowed the prosecution to change the charges of larceny to a different offense.

Notice of the charges against a defendant before the trial begins is essential to due process. Changing those charges after all evidence has closed clearly violates the notice requirement.

Some actions relating to witnesses and evidence prevented Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, from pursuing the defense that he had chosen. For example, before the defense was allowed to call a witness, the witness had to be approved by the prosecution. Important evidence that Manning’s attorney wanted to present was not allowed, on the specious ground that it would compromise national security, though the evidence for this is minimal at best.

Further, although Manning could have used the defense that he had a duty under the U.S. military code and international law to which the U.S. subscribes to expose war crimes, he was denied the right to present evidence of this duty by both the court and the prosecution.

Some evidence that could have aided Manning was kept from the defense because it was declared classified. Coombs believes that classification was used to inhibit Manning’s defense. It was the government’s prosecutor alone who decided what classified evidence was beneficial and what was not. Coombs has a security clearance, so he could have looked at the evidence and decided its usefulness to Manning’s defense. That is a decision for trial counsel, not the prosecution.

 In civilian courts, where the prosecution has evidence that could be useful to the defense, but the prosecution is not sure of its usefulness, it is presented to judges privately and they decide what should be given to the defense. Not so in Manning’s trial. On the charge of “aiding the enemy,” of which Manning was found not guilty, Coombs had this to say after the trial:

Well, I think that, for starters, you go with an offense of aiding the enemy, and that offense really is unprecedented. When you look at how that was used in the past and how the government tried to use it in this case, they had to go back to an 1800s case to even make an argument, a colorable argument, as to why you would go after somebody who gave information to a journalist and say that they aided the enemy. That is an unprecedented aspect of this case.

Not only there, but in every other charging decision that they made, they pushed the envelope of, and even strained, any realistic reading of what the law is. And yet, they seemed to not have a problem with that. It was almost a win-at-all-costs mentality. And I think that ultimately will be something on appeal that will get reviewed, and perhaps at that point Brad will get some relief, even on appeal.

The claim of harm caused by Manning’s public disclosures seemed the most important reason for prosecuting him, but whether the disclosures had done actual harm was impossible for the government to prove. Coombs characterized the government’s evidence of harm, presented during the sentencing phase of the trial, as “pure speculation.”

Normally, witnesses are not allowed to speculate, but the government could find no actual evidence of harm to national security, so it was left to present witnesses who could only speculate about possible harm in the future, not even likely harm, but maybe some potential for harm.

It should not be surprising that no harm could be found. According to The Arizona Republic, 5 million government employees and contractors are eligible to see all of the information Manning leaked. U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter believes that the government has far too many records classified -- that we are in a period of “classification inflation.”

As a result, average Americans cannot know what their government is doing in matters that, if publicized, would not harm national security, but would severely embarrass the government.

Such secretiveness prevents journalists from informing the public about matters that we should know if we are to be citizens capable of making informed and intelligent decisions about government policy and practice. Considering the government actions that we do know about, what is surprising to me is that there are not more leaks.

Preventing such leaks is, in part, what the Manning trial was all about -- an attempt to discourage whistleblowing by essentially ending the lives of those who dare to let the public know about the actions of its government and its abuse of its authority. The government wanted Manning sentenced to nearly double the 35 years in prison he received -- a sentence that could have kept him in prison for the rest of his life.

Another troubling aspect of Manning’s trial, directly related to secrecy, was that some of it was closed to the public (and none of it was allowed to be broadcast so the public could see first-hand what the government was doing). Coombs believes that the government used closed sessions to convince the public that some information released by Manning was harmful. Otherwise, there would be no reason for closed sessions.

Coombs and many other observers believe that the government was embarrassed by the content of some of the leaks, as well as by the massive amount of leaks. Especially with regard to the diplomatic cables that became public, Coombs believes that having the truth come out was extremely embarrassing:

I think the damage there was an embarrassment of having other people see that we don’t always do the right thing for the right reasons as the United States, which might come as a surprise to some people. You would think that when we deal with other countries, when we deal with people who are less fortunate than our country, that we’re doing so in a way that helps everybody, that’s in everyone’s best interest.

But that’s not always the case. And, in fact, frequently we do things that are in our own national interests, and sometimes that is to the detriment of people who are struggling to have what we have here in America -- a democracy, a free and open press. And that’s a little disheartening when you see that. And I think that’s probably the biggest damage, because if people actually look to these documents, they will see that we don’t always do what we should do, and we are not always the country that we should strive to be.

Perhaps the most embarrassing leak (released by WikiLeaks), and certainly one of the most damaging to America’s image in the world, was the 2007 video of airstrikes in Baghdad by two Apache helicopter crews that killed a Reuters cameraman and his assistant, along with nine Iraqis, two of whom may have had weapons.

The attack was approved by the crews’ commander via radio communication at the crews’ urging. Not content with the killing and maiming they had just done, at least one of the Apache helicopter crews opened fire just minutes later on a van  that was trying to rescue the wounded. The van was occupied by a family that included two children who were both wounded.

No evidence has surfaced that any of the dead were insurgents. Their behavior did not indicate any activity that would have been considered threatening to nearby U.S. troops. It is not clear whether WikiLeaks obtained the footage from Manning first, or had obtained it before Manning released the material.

Regardless of where the Baghdad airstrike footage originated, what seems clear today is that Manning is, as Coombs described him, “a good young man who did what he thought was morally right, and for the right reasons, and he was sentenced the way we would sentence somebody who committed murder, the way we would sentence somebody who molested a child.”

It is a failure of the justice system, both military and civilian, that the callous, unjustified killing of innocent Iraqis, including children and journalists, has not been redressed, but Pfc. Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for embarrassing the government in a trial that grossly violated the constitutional guarantee of due process and was nothing short of tyrannical.

This is a time when all patriotic Americans should be questioning the ability of their government to follow the values that are the foundation of our country. Manning should be at least as free as those who carried out the 2007 massacre in Baghdad.

NOTE: Quotes from David Coombs are from an interview he gave to independent journalist Alexa O’Brien just after the Manning trial ended. To join an effort to free Manning, go here.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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James McEnteer : Escape to Ecuador

Edward Snowden and the flag of Ecuador. Image from Salon.com.

Rehanging the crepe paper:
Escape to Ecuador

Edward Snowden is the latest insider who pulled back the curtain to reveal the wizardry of American Freedom as the diabolical machinations of a surveillance state.

By James McEnteer / The Rag Blog / June 25, 2013

QUITO, Ecuador -- The colored crepe paper we hung up has tattered and fallen. The balloons we tied to the walls and ceiling have deflated or popped. Confetti remains in bags, unthrown. The welcome party we planned for the arrival of Julian Assange has had to be postponed indefinitely. Graffiti on the city walls prophesying his advent have begun to chip and fade away.

We know Assange is safe and still active in his Ecuadorian Embassy sanctuary in London. But we can’t help feeling disappointed that he never actually landed here among us. It’s not simply that we wanted the spotlight of his celebrity to shine a bit on the rest of us. There is so much here that we wanted to show him.

The bracing air of the Andes would revive his spirits. The sight of snow-covered volcanic peaks bespeaks a primordial reality which dwarfs the foolish vanity and paranoia of the people and the governments who want him silenced and punished. Julian Assange and Wikileaks have spotlighted the new political reality.

Our primary struggle now is not a conflict of countries or religions or ideologies against one another, but the wars of governments against their own peoples. The governments of China, Russia, and the United States have more in common with one another than they do with their own populations. Ours is a battle between state control and personal freedom.

The Turkish people know this. So do the Syrians and the Brazilians and the Egyptians. They have fewer illusions than Americans do because they can’t afford them. They have learned to trust their own eyes and ears rather than rely on the televised, predigested propaganda churned out by corporate U.S. media in service to the state.

Julian Assange and Ecuador's Foreign
Affairs Minister Ricardo Patiño Aroca
at Embassy in London.

Americans cling to their comforting delusions, that we are the greatest, freest country on earth, that the political landscape is painted blue and red, that liberals and conservatives are battling for dominance, and the extremes of tea-party libertarianism and radical leftist socialism should be reviled and feared.

All this is irrelevant and distracting, like the clash of Christianity versus Islam. Or the flood of professional sporting events and pornography that drowns our awareness with vivid images. Americans are bad at organizing, still suffering from the cult of rugged individualism. But when we do form trade unions or progressive political groups or student protests against wars or the depredations of Wall Street, the tentacles of government are quick to infiltrate, defame, and destroy.

Edward Snowden is the latest insider who pulled back the curtain to reveal the wizardry of American Freedom as the diabolical machinations of a surveillance state. Is he a hero or a traitor? Where you stand depends on where you sit. For all those growing fat off the surveillance state, the toady media, the corporate Congress, the social networks and other minions of the ruling oligarchy, Snowden is a trouble-maker, messing with the dominance of their masters.

For the rest of us, trying to survive and live our lives as well as we can, Snowden is a freedom fighter, exposing the intrusion of the state apparatus into our private affairs. That is why we have begun to rehang the crepe paper here, inflate new balloons and prepare once again for a welcome party fit for a man of principle and courage.

Snowden would add luster and gravitas to our community. We can only hope he really comes. Then we have to find a way to spring Bradley Manning. Manning’s only crime was believing he could appeal to the conscience of the American people over and above the violent authoritarian regime masquerading as a democracy.

It would be great to have Assange, Manning, and Snowden all here in Ecuador. They could all have faculty positions at the IIF (International Institute of Freedom). I think they’d have a lot of valuable lessons to teach. You know we’ll have a good time then.

[James McEnteer is the author of Shooting the Truth: the Rise of American Political Documentaries (Praeger). He lives in Quito, Ecuador. Read more of James McEnteer's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Lamar W. Hankins : Government Lies and Secrecy Destroy Credibility

Whistleblower Edward Snowden. Image from MGN Online.

Government lies and
secrecy destroy credibility

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2013

When a high government official blatantly lies in testimony before Congress, it is rare that we learn of the lie as quickly as we did this past week. Sometimes, such misconduct takes decades to be revealed.

But thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, who once worked for the CIA and was, until recently, a civilian employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a National Security Agency (NSA) private contractor, we now know of the lie.

In March, James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, boldly and knowingly lied in response to Sen. Ron Wyden’s question, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied “No.”

When Snowden released proof of vast electronic spying on all Americans who use telephones and the internet, Clapper’s lie became obvious. However, President Obama has made no move to oust Clapper for his lie or take other corrective action.

Actually, Clapper’s demeanor during and immediately after the lie made me suspicious from the beginning -- his rapid eye-blinking and nervous extended spot-rubbing of a spot on his bald head are behaviors that have been identified by some psychological research as indications of lying.

But I did not know until the Guardian published Glenn Greenwald’s essay on his interview with Snowden that my suspicions were confirmed. Even more remarkable to me is that Clapper knew he would be asked Wyden’s question the day before he testified, and still he lied.

Now, Greenwald and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who has been briefed in a classified meeting about the extent of the National Security Agency’s electronic spying on Americans, have both confirmed that what has been revealed so far by Snowden is just the “tip of the iceberg” regarding NSA’s domestic electronic spying.

The Washington Post has now reported that actual phone conversations have been listened to, and emails have been read, all without specific judicial approval. Sen. John Tester, a member of the Homeland Security Committee, has said that he was not aware of the electronic spying that Snowden revealed.

Ever since this story broke, we have been bombarded by columns and essays from various pundits and arguments by electronic spying supporters that the real problem is the character, personality, and motivation of Edward Snowden. Thanks to political columnist Juan Cole, we have a list of ways Snowden will be smeared in order to discredit him with the public.

Snowden will be labeled a traitor and a defector (for going to Hong Kong); his mental health will be questioned; it will be claimed that he didn’t understand the spying program he revealed; his accusations will be called untrue; charges Snowden did not make will be labeled incorrect (attack by misdirection or a “red herring”); claims will be made that the spying is legal (which can’t be confirmed because the courts will not allow anyone standing to sue); minor parts of the allegations may be acknowledged to divert attention from the major intrusion on Americans’ lives; it will be claimed that Snowden has given aid and comfort to terrorists; and since this is a democracy we can always have a debate about the spying (although meaningful debate is impossible with regard to a secret program).

Already, every one of Cole’s points have been used by some writer or politician to attack Snowden.

Similar propaganda was directed at Bradley Manning, Julian Assange (a conduit of whistleblowing information through Wikileaks), and most other whistleblowers and reporters who have revealed unsavory, if not illegal, secret government actions.

Perhaps the most thorough personal attack on Snowden, bearing out Cole’s prognostications, was by New York Times columnist and PBS NewsHour commentator David Brooks. What seems to bother Brooks more than the real or imagined events of Snowden’s life, is that Snowden has no respect for authority or loyalty to authority.

Brooks seems to believe that such respect and loyalty are bestowed on government like a divine right of kings, mainly because respect and loyalty are essential for a democratic society to function properly. Brooks doesn’t believe that respect and loyalty must be earned by the government, just as it must be by individuals.

When members of Congress don’t know the extent of our government’s activities, especially those activities that appear to violate our constitutional rights, the system of checks and balances has failed, and trust in our government is nearly impossible for many Americans. But when the source of our distrust comes by way of whistleblowers, the American public seems confused. Even so, a Reuter’s poll shows that more Americans approve of Snowden’s actions than disapprove.

From my limited personal experience with whistleblowing, I have concluded that the institutional culture of large organizations in both the private and public spheres is not to make waves and to protect colleagues, as well as higher-ups. This trait is so ingrained that there is often little chance that anything will be done about wrong-doing that is reported within an organization. Worse, the wrong-doing will not become known by the public.

Bradley Manning seemed to know what I have figured out from my limited experience with corrupt authority -- the only way to get the information about U.S. atrocities to the people of the U.S. is to bypass the military and the politicians entirely.

Without Manning’s actions, we would not know how eager those with their fingers on the triggers were to kill innocent Iraqi civilians and members of the news media. We would not know how we were conducting the Middle East wars. We would not know our government’s policies and practices nearly as well as we know them now.

Manning has admitted to what he did, but the government wants to convict him of aiding the enemy -- treason. The charge would be true if the American public were the enemy. Article Three, Section Three, of the U.S. Constitution, appears to require collaboration with an actual wartime enemy of the United States (though the Supreme Court has yet to clarify this matter).

Manning released his information to the media, and it was published by such notable news purveyors as The New York Times and The Washington Post. In truth, the government was embarrassed by Manning’s disclosures and had to explain itself, which it has not been able to do successfully.

Manning’s disclosures could be termed "treason-by-embarrassment." No enemy received a tactical or strategic advantage by seeing video of the intentional murder of innocents by Americans. If al-Qaeda got some propaganda value from the release, it is of little more value than the entire immoral Afghanistan-Iraq-Pakistan-Yemen-Somalia debacle we call our War on Terror.

During Clapper’s hearing, Sen. Diane Feinstein sat silent as Clapper lied, and she has defended him since by attacking Snowden, as have many other members of Congress and the administration. Even serial liar Dick Cheney has weighed in on the electronic spying. Cheney’s position is that if elected officials in Congress and the administration approved the actions, we should trust that they are appropriate and legal. No surprise there.

But Clapper’s perjury, the propaganda attack on Snowden and the other whistleblowers, and the continuing cover-up by the administration and the Congress make it difficult to trust the government. It has little credibility, which is unfortunately true of most governments that prefer keeping the people in the dark about what the government is really doing.

Congress has oversight responsibilities, but its members would rather look into made-up scandals to hurt political opponents than keep tabs on policies that can harm the country and its people, and violate the Constitution. Most Americans have good reason to believe that the Fourth Amendment protects us from governments that engage in secret, unaccountable searches and seizures:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

And the American people assume that they are protected further by the Fifth Amendment, which provides in pertinent part: “No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

When the government engages in massive electronic spying on its citizens on a scale that rivals or exceeds the abandoned Total Information Awareness program adopted after 9/11, the liberty we have accepted as our birthright has been taken from us without due process. All three branches of government -- legislative, administrative, and judicial -- have worked together to keep us from finding out how much our rights have been abused by keeping the information secret.

As Glenn Greenwald has written,

...the Obama DOJ has repeatedly thwarted efforts by the ACLU, EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] and others to obtain judicial rulings on their legality and constitutionality by invoking procedural claims of secrecy, immunity and standing. If Democrats are so sure these spying programs are legal, why has the Obama DOJ been so eager to block courts from adjudicating that question?

One of the most troubling aspects of what has happened to us over the last nearly twelve years, is that we have acquiesced to this violation of basic rights, largely out of fear of another terrorist attack under the mistaken belief that only by diminishing our rights can we be safe.

Benjamin Franklin’s statement made in the Revolutionary period seems apt for this situation: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

But when none of the three branches of our government will allow us even to seek a remedy for apparent rights violations, perhaps it is unfair to use Franklin’s words to suggest that “we the people” have acquiesced to our loss of liberty.

Once again, the ACLU is attempting to obtain a court ruling on the constitutionality of NSA’s electronic spying. Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU deputy legal director, had this to say about the lawsuit the ACLU filed last week:

This dragnet program is surely one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens. It is the equivalent of requiring every American to file a daily report with the government of every location they visited, every person they talked to on the phone, the time of each call, and the length of every conversation. The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy.

Along with many Americans, I am worried about another terrorist attack in the U.S. But unlike New York Times columnists Tom Friedman and Bill Keller, I don’t find the NSA’s activities “well-regulated” when data mining has allowed the government to access anyone’s phone conversations or email communication without obtaining a warrant from an appropriate court -- even the almost-always-obliging FISA court.

And I suggest that the government’s electronic spying is different from commercial data-gathering: there is a difference between having a corporation’s computer, using an algorithm, determine our buying interests and showing us an advertisement for a product we may be interested in buying, and allowing the NSA to read our emails and listen to our phone conversations based on its access to data it acquires directly from the servers of Yahoo, Google, and other internet sources without participation by those companies.

This activity is an unprecedented breach of our constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of speech.

It is time we elected people to office who will put a stop to such activity, or our government will never again be trusted, or be worthy of our trust. A government that fights accountability at every turn cannot be trusted.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Rules are Rules: 'The Passion of Bradley Manning'

Rules are rules as any fool can see: 
'The Passion of Bradley Manning'

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / May 9, 2012

[The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History by Chase Madar (2012: OR Books); Paperback; 190 pp.; $15.]

I remember the very first time I saw the Wikileaks-released video filmed from a U.S. gunship showing the murder of a dozen unarmed civilians including two journalists. The video proved the true brutality of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the distressing disregard for human life common among U.S. soldiers.

Sadly, I wasn’t shocked or surprised at what I saw. Even after having heard about such incidents in conversations with returning veterans, the visual evidence was still quite disturbing to watch.

That video was the first time most Americans had heard about Wikileaks. Not long after, the name of Bradley Manning also entered the U.S. consciousness. He would be accused of releasing that video and thousands of other documents relating to the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, along with thousands of diplomatic cables describing in oftentimes explicit detail the crimes and morally questionable actions and words of Washington officials.

Soon, Mr. Manning would be charged with treason and aiding the enemy (among other charges) for his actions. He is currently on trial in a U.S. military court located at Fort Meade, MD. and faces life imprisonment. It is my belief that only an immense and broad popular movement could possibly change that fate.

Bradley Manning’s decision and the subsequent reaction is the subject of a newly published book by civil rights attorney and commentator Chase Madar. This book, titled The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History, presents Manning’s decision in the context it was meant to be understood: as a political act by a man who saw his duty to humanity to be greater than his orders to protect the Pentagon and politicians that sent him and thousands of other GIs to war.

Madar attacks the very system of secrecy Manning is charged with violating. He details the overzealous use of secret and top secret classifications by government officials, calling it a “tragic, bloated farce.” He questions the use of the Espionage Act to charge Manning and other men whose actions are not about aiding the enemy, but about exposing the misdeeds of the U.S. government.

In discussing the frequent use of strategic leaks by government officials to get a piece of legislation approved, Madar surmises that Manning’s biggest mistake is that, unlike those government officials, he didn’t break the law properly.

What did the documents Manning sent to Wikileaks contain? While it is impossible to even begin to summarize the millions of words in those documents in the brief space of Madar’s text, he does list the basics of some of the content.

The documents showed a brutal pacification campaign in Afghanistan where civilian deaths were all too common and sometimes intentional. They acknowledged massive civilian casualties from U.S. fire in Iraq and detailed Washington’s retail diplomacy with the Vatican hoping to convince the Holy See to call the U.S. wars just.

 In other areas, the diplomatic cables exposed the role of the U.S. Embassy in Haiti in fighting attempts to raise the minimum wage there to 61 cents an hour and U.S. complicity in covering up Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Yet, despite the revelations they contained, the U.S. government has been unable to prove that the leaks harmed any individual. Unfortunately, neither have they changed the essence of U.S. policy.

After acknowledging this, Madar writes about two leaks that probably did matter. One was a 1968 leak by Daniel Ellsberg to presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy that detailed the Johnson administration’s plans to expand the U.S. war to Laos and Cambodia. The leak and Kennedy’s revealing it probably prevented that expansion under LBJ. Of course, Nixon wasted little time in doing exactly what Johnson didn’t do.

Another more recent example occurred in 2003 when the national intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability was leaked. This document stated clearly that Iran had no nuclear weapons and was not building any at the time. That leak probably prevented the U.S. from attacking Iran.

Like it or not, since his arrest Manning's treatment has been shameful. His imprisonment, which includes solitary confinement and forced nakedness, is nothing short of torture. Indeed it has been condemned as such by the German Bundestag and several other individuals in European governments and even some high ranking U.S. officials.

Madar’s discussion of Manning's treatment is revealing and likely to garner a number of denials by liberals and neocons in the halls of power. This is especially true when he argues against the view promulgated by U.S. liberals that the treatment is an aberration.

The fact is, writes Madar, the abuses experienced by Manning and by prisoners in U.S.-run prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan are also commonplace in U.S. prisons. Furthermore, torture is a common occurrence in U.S. jails at all levels of the penal system.

In the early 1970s Kris Kristofferson recorded a song whose chorus includes the lines, “The law is for protection of the people/ Rules are rules as any fool can see...” The song proceeds to show the use of this maxim by the powers that be to lock up those that disrupt their rule. The sarcasm of the lyrics continues, pointing out how laws are not only applied unequally, but are often written only to protect the wealthy and powerful. If Kris Kristofferson were to add a verse to his tune in 2012, it could be about Bradley Manning.

When pressed to explain the charges arrayed against Manning, the reason given most often is that he broke the rules regarding classified information and that is reason enough. As Madar points out over and over in his book, these rules are broken quite often by government officials in the pursuit of certain policies and those violations are rarely challenged.

Furthermore, and considerably more appalling, is the reality that the atrocities and diplomatic maneuverings revealed in the documents Manning released are not illegal. Why? Simply put, because the laws are written by the warmakers and profiteers. So, those who reveal the machinations of the powerful are more likely to go to prison than those who kill, torture, bribe, and steal in the name of empire.

Simultaneously an indictment of a government obsessed with secrecy and a nation addicted to war, The Passion of Bradley Manning is also a concise and clear explanation of who Bradley Manning is. It explains why he risked his life and future by committing the overtly political act of exposing his government’s crimes and lies.

Perhaps most importantly, it is a call to us to act not only in defense of Manning, but in defense of our futures.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Richard Raznikov : Bradley Manning and the Obama Grand Jury

Bradley Manning. Art from Rossi Projects.
Uses of the grand jury system:
Feds move on Bradley Manning

Anyone who might expose inconvenient 'secrets' -- truths -- is an enemy of the state, and what is being done to Bradley Manning, right in front of us, is meant to discourage and to intimidate.

By Richard Raznikov / The Rag Blog / July 6, 2011

Once upon a time, the grand jury was a safety device, a mechanism through which members of a community, behind closed doors, could review the evidence being gathered by a prosecutor and ensure that the rights of the individual were protected.

Predictably, humans being what we are, this intention was long ago subverted when prosecutors discovered that grand juries could be brought to do pretty much anything since the evidence they see is controlled by the state and the targets of the state have no lawyers present to help them.

The Obama government has empaneled a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia. Since it might have chosen any venue, Alexandria is especially fortuitous for the prosecutors because its population has the highest concentration of government employees in the nation.

Obama is going after Bradley Manning, the Pfc. accused of leaking documents, including the infamous video of U.S. soldiers aboard an Apache attack helicopter joyously committing murder, to Wikileaks, and his Justice Department is using this grand jury to do it.

The U.S. government doesn’t want the American people to know what it’s doing. That is perfectly understandable since much of what it is doing won’t stand the light of day.

Bradley Manning has been in custody, without official charges and without being given any of the ordinary rights of an accused, for more than a year. Much of that time was spent at Quantico, Virginia. He was recently moved to Leavenworth, Kansas. The conditions of his imprisonment have been condemned as torture and as a violation of international law by Amnesty International and other such organizations. It is quite plain that the Obama government’s policy has been to destroy him psychologically since it cannot break him lawfully.

I have no idea whether Manning was the main source of the treasure trove of "secret" documents Wikileaks has been releasing. Whoever did this is a hero to the human race. In the U.S., however, rattle-brained pols such as Mike Huckabee are calling him a traitor and demanding that he be executed.

The Alexandria grand jury has been taking testimony from people who themselves are being deprived of their rights. Witnesses are issued “immunity certificates” which nullify their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, which coerces compliance with the government’s operation.

The U.S. government doesn’t want the American people to know what it’s doing because if that were to happen there might be serious consequences.

During the Vietnam War, shortly after the Tet Offensive in early 1968, a CBS camera captured video of the Saigon Police Chief summarily executing a bound suspect, shooting him in the head. Although the American people had seen much of the war on television and certainly knew of its brutality, something about this particular film registered with surprising power. Perhaps it was because it is one thing to hear or read of something, to "know" it intellectually, and another to witness it.

The stunning Wikileaks video which recorded the cold blooded murder of more than a dozen innocent people, including several who had stopped their van to try to aid the wounded, and which included the voices of the crew -- U.S. soldiers asking for permission to shoot and exulting in their kills -- was an ugly contradiction to the bland, phony “Support Our Troops” propaganda with which we are daily assaulted in the mass media.

The Obama government did not investigate the killings or punish the perpetrators; it sought to find and punish those who made it public.

Even now, even with the publication of much of the Wikileaks revelations in some areas of the U.S. and on the internet, it is not at all widely known that the U.S. government and the Pentagon have been systematically covering-up the enormity of the civilian deaths in Iraq. Internal Pentagon documents show that more than 100,000 such deaths have simply gone unrecorded in the figures released to the public, although the actual numbers are internally collected.

During the Vietnam era, the military cooked the books to show far more "enemy" dead than was true in order to make it look like the war was being won. Today, the books are being cooked to make civilian deaths disappear as though they did not happen.

Control of the news is vital to any government which is undemocratic and wishes to disguise what it is doing. When the information escapes into the public space, the lies which support tyranny begin to fail. This is what has happened in much of the Middle East, and although the western media never mentions it, some of the Wikileaks exposure has helped fuel the pro-democracy movements in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere.

In America there has been a concerted effort to control the news, both through the privatization of the public space -- ownership of CNN, NBC, and all the rest in few, corporate hands -- and by suppression by the government and its agents of dissent.

Anyone who might expose inconvenient "secrets" -- truths -- is an enemy of the state, and what is being done to Bradley Manning, right in front of us, is meant to discourage and to intimidate.

By the way, a second federal grand jury has been set up by the Obama regime, this one investigating “antiwar” activists.

Two days ago, the nation’s birthday celebration. Hope you enjoyed the fireworks.

[Richard Raznikov is an attorney practicing in San Rafael, California. He blogs at News from a Parallel World.]

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