Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now! 

Chelsea’s appellate attorneys on the Espionage Act, the appeals process

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees! Donate today!

February 19, 2015 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

Nancy Hollander & Vincent Ward

“But if we’re going to have freedom of speech… we have to know what our government is doing, and we clearly didn’t know what our government was doing… We are all thankful to Chelsea for opening this up… and now it’s up to us to do her appeal, it’s up to everyone to support her.”Nancy Hollander, Chelsea Manning’s attorney for her upcoming legal appeals

On Tuesday, February 17th, Chelsea Manning’s appellate attorneys Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward joined Trevor Timm (Exec. Dir., Freedom of the Press Foundation) for a panel discussion at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.  The panel focused on the expansion of the Espionage Act under the Obama Administration, the threat to journalists and future whistleblowers provided by the government’s continually modified position on national security, the selective prosecution of individuals for government leaks, and more.
Hastings Law Professor Ghappour moderated the discussion, sponsored by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

Watch the complete video of the panel discussion here

Prof Ahmed Ghappour, Chelsea Manning’s appellate attorneys Nancy Hollander & Vincent Ward, and Exec Dir, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm at a panel discussion at Hastings College of Law Feb 17, 2015

Excerpts from Nancy Hollander:

“This is a law that was poorly written in the beginning and is clearly becoming more and more abused. It was meant to punish spies and saboteurs during the war in 1917, during the World War. But the way the courts have interpreted the law, it’s really become little more than a trap to ensnare those that embarrass the government and that’s exactly how it was used in this case.

We have to appeal this on Chelsea’s behalf. And we have to appeal this for all of our sake, and that’s because there is no public interest defense. Chelsea wasn’t even allowed to put on the defense of why she felt it important for the public to know about these human rights abuses. That she could only put it on during her sentencing and not during the case. And this is not the first time this has happened. This has happened in federal court and in other cases, and we really have to stop this because it is illegal for the government of the United States to classify info that embarrasses the government. That’s a violation of the law and yet that’s what we’re seeing. That’s what we saw in this case, that’s what we saw in other cases, we see it in the Guantanamo cases where the us has classified the thoughts, memories, and observations of people who were tortured by the United States.

So, the problem for Chelsea and for any whistleblower like Chelsea is one that we really have to attack. And this of course… really could involve journalists. And it makes it difficult for people to report on what the US is doing. And one of the other ways that this becomes a problem is that it becomes illegal, it is illegal for someone to expose national security information.

But the question is, “what is national security information?” It’s the government that decides that and I can give you an example of why this is a problem. You all recall that recently the US traded 5 Guantanamo prisoners that were allegedly Taliban with a prisoner of war. Before those prisoners were moved out of Guantanamo we were all told, oh they’re forever prisoners, we can never let them go because it would harm the national security of the us and then all of a sudden well, it’s really okay- our national security will be okay if these 5 men are released so what that tells us is the concept of national security itself is a moving target and the government gets to decide how big it is and how small it is.”

Excerpts from Trevor Timm:

“The government classifies whole subjects of classified material, whether we’re talking about foreign policy or national security, where it’s almost impossible to do national security reporting without touching on classified information. You know, we hear about these giant leaks, we were talking about Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, but if you open up the Washington Post or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or basically any national newspaper on any given day, you’re likely to find classified information on the front page. This has been true not just in the last decade, but for decades, centuries even. And with the- especially with the Obama administration’s approach to prosecuting leaks the amount of information the public is used to knowing about foreign policy subjects is under threat.

We have seen, under the Obama administration, that they have prosecuted more sources of journalists than all administrations before it combined. There was actually only three prosecutions under the Espionage Act, as horrible as the law was, during the WW1 era and just after.

…Another thing that defendants are not allowed to talk about in Espionage Act trials is harm to national security. This happened in Chelsea Manning’s case as well. You know, the government was screaming from the rooftops at first when the Wikileaks cables first started coming out that Julian Assange and Wikileaks had blood on their hands, that this was going to cause catastrophic damage to national security. It came out that no one died because of Chelsea Manning’s leaks and they couldn’t prove any harm, yet this was inadmissible during her trial. It was only until after she was found guilty during the sentencing this was allowed to be brought up.

You know, this has happened over and over again in Espionage Act trials and it makes it easier for the government… The government has such a low burden to get a guilty verdict in these cases that it’s almost impossible for the defendant to overcome. That in turn makes it easier for them to bring prosecutions which then makes it much more chilling on the journalists that are trying to talk to sources even about innocuous information that’s not classified. And so it’s kind of a vicious circle that ends up not only harming the government employees that are trying to expose wrongdoing, but it harms the journalists that are spied on as a result, and then the public that loses out on the information that they should be knowing from the start”

Excerpts from Vincent Ward:

“I think one of the issues that people don’t think about as much… are do service members get a fair shake in the court-martial system and did Chelsea get a fair shake? One of the issues in Chelsea’s trial is, if you look at Chelsea’s sentence in comparision with other Espionage Act cases it isn’t even in the same stratosphere. So I think it leads to an appropriate discussion of whether that’s the product of an unfair military system.
..The kinds of issues you should all be aware of that the appeal will deal with are things like- Chelsea sat in a military brig for over a year awaiting charges… In our legal system people are entitled to a speedy trial, and proponents of the military justice system often argue that one of the benefits of the military justice system is that people can get a trial faster than if they were in federal or state court system. But if you look at Chelsea’s case, she sat there for a really long time awaiting charges- is that fair? Did the court deal with it appropriately? That will be one of the issues on the appeal.
One of the issues that Nancy spoke about, the way Chelsea was treated, when she was in pre-trial confinement… As Nancy describes it, it was torture. Is that appropriate for a service member who wasn’t at that time wasn’t found guilty of anything, to be treated like she was? That’s an issue that will be addressed on appeal.”

Watch the complete video of the panel discussion here