Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update –March 1, 2013

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Stand-Out For Bradley- Wednesdays From 5:00-6:00 PM

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Since September 2011, in order to publicize Private Manning’s case locally, there have been weekly stand-outs (as well as other more ad hocand sporadic events) in various locations in the Greater Boston area starting in Somerville across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop on Friday afternoons and later on Wednesdays. Lately this stand-out has been held each week on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 6:00 PM at Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street just outside the Redline MBTA stop, renamed Manning Square for the duration of the stand-out) in order to continue to broaden our outreach. Join us there in calling for Private Manning’s freedom.President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!

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The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward an early summer trial now scheduled for June 2013. The news on his case over the past several months (since about April 2012) has centered on the many pre-trial motion hearings including recent defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial. Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now at over 1000 days and will be over well over 1000 days by the time of trial. That motion has now been ruled on by Military Judge Lind and she had denied the defende motion for dismissal, the last serious chance for Bradley Manning to go free before the scheduled June trial. She ruled furthermore that the various delays were inherent in the nature of this case and that the military authorities except in one short instance had been diligent in it efforts to move the proceedings along. For those of us with military experience this is a classic, if perverse, case of that old army slogan-“Hurry up, and wait.” This is definitely tough news for Private Manning although perhaps a good appeal point in some future civilian review.

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The defense contends that the charges should be dismissed because the military by its own statutes (to speak nothing of that funny old constitutional right to a speedy trial guarantee that our plebeian forbears fought tooth and nail for against the bloody British and later made damn sure was included in the Amendments when the founding fathers“forgot” to include it in the main document) should have arraigned Private Manning within 120 days after his arrest. They hemmed and hawed for almost 600 days before deciding on the charges and a court martial. Nobody in the convening authority, as required by those same statutes, pushed the prosecution forward in a timely manner. In fact the court-martial convening authority, in the person of oneColonel Coffman, seems to have seen his role as mere “yes man” to each of the government’s eight requests for delays without explanation (and without informing the defense in order to take their objection). Apparently the Colonel saw his role as a mere clearing agent for whatever excuse the government gave, mainly endless addition time for clearing various classified documents a process that need not have held up the proceedings. The defense made timely objection to each governmental request to no avail.

Testimony from military authorities at pre-trial hearings in November 2012 about the reasons for the lack of action ranged from the lame to the absurd (mainly negative responses to knowledge about why some additional delays were necessary. One “reason” sticks out as a reason for excusable delay -some officer needed to get his son to a swimming meet and was thus “unavailable” for a couple of days. I didn’t make this up. I don’t have that sense of the absurd. Jesus, a man was rotting in Obama’s jails and they let him rot because of some damn swim meet). The prosecution, obviously, has argued that the government has moved might and main to move the case along and had merely waited until all leaked materials had been determined before proceeding. We shall see.

The defense has also recently pursued a motion for a dismissal of the major charges (espionage/ indirect material aid to terrorists) on the basis of the minimal effect of any leaks on national security issues as against Private Manning’s claim that such knowledge was important to the public square (freedom of information issues important for us as well in order to know about what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs). Last summer witnesses from an alphabet soup list of government agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, etc., etc.) testified that while the information leaked shouldn’t have been leaked that the effect on national security was de minimus. The Secretary of Defense at the time, Leon Panetta, also made a public statement to that effect. The prosecution argued, successfully at the time, that the mere fact of the leak of classified information caused irreparable harm to national security issues and Private Manning’s intent, even if noble, was not at issue.

The recent thrust of the motion to dismiss has centered on the defense’s contention been that Private Manning consciously and carefully screened any material in his possession to avoid any conflict with national security and that most of the released material had been over-classified (received higher security level than necessary).(Much of the materials leaked, as per those parts published widely in the aftermath of the disclosures by the New York Times and other major outlets, concerned reports of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and diplomatic interchanges that reflected poorly on that profession.) The Obama government has argued again that the mere fact of leaking was all that mattered. That motion has also not been fully ruled on and is now the subject of prosecution counter- motions and a cause for further trial delay.

A defense motion for dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command (a three-star Army general, not the normal concern of someone so far up the chain in the matter of discipline for enlisted personal) while Private Manning was first detained in Kuwait and later at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011 has now been ruled on. In late November and early December Private Manning himself, as well as others including senior military mental health workers, took the stand to detail those abuses over several days. Most important to the defense was the testimony by qualified military mental health professionals citing the constant willful failure of those who held Private Manning in close confinement to listen to, or act, on their recommendations during those periods

Judge Lind, the military judge who has heard all the pre-trial arguments in the case thus far, has essentially ruled unfavorably on that motion to dismiss given the potential life sentence Private Manning faces. As she announced at an early January pre-trial hearing the military acted illegally in some of its actions. While every Bradley Manning supporter should be heartened by the fact that the military judge ruled that he was subject to illegal behavior by the military during his pre-trial confinement her remedy, a 112 days reduction in any future sentence, is a mere slap on the wrist to the military authorities. No dismissal or, alternatively, no appropriate reduction (the asked for ten to one ratio for all his first year or so of illegal close confinement which would take years off any potential sentence) given the seriousness of the illegal behavior as the defense tirelessly argued for. And the result is a heavy-handed deterrent to any future military whistleblowers, who already are under enormous pressures to remain silent as a matter of course while in uniform, and others who seek to put the hard facts of future American military atrocities before the public.

Some other important recent news, this from the November 2012 pre-trail sessions, is the offer by the defense to plead guilty to lesser charges (wrongful, unauthorized use of the Internet, etc.) in order to clear the deck and have the major espionage /aiding the enemy issue (with a possibility of a life sentence) solely before the court-martial judge, Judge Lind (the one who has been hearing the pre-trial motions, not some senior officer, senior NCO lifer-stacked panel. A wise move, a very wise move.). Also there has been increased media attention by mainstream outlets around the case (including the previously knowingly oblivious New York Times), as well as an important statement by three Nobel Peace Laureates (including Bishop Tutu from South Africa) calling on their fellow laureate, United States President Barack Obama, to free Private Manning from his jails.

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Check the Bradley Manning Support Network -http://www.bradleymanning.org/ for details and future updates.

*Contribute to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund- as the trial date approaches funds are urgently needed! The government has unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Bradley. And the Obama government is fully using them. We have a fine defense civilian lawyer, David Coombs, many supporters throughout America and the world working hard for Bradley’s freedom, and the truth on our side. Still the hard reality of the American legal system, civilian or military, is that an adequate defense cost serious money. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ for

*Sign the online petition at the Bradley Manning Support Network (for link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ )to the Secretary of the Army to free Bradley Manning-1000 plus days is enough! The Secretary of the Army stands in the direct chain of command up to the President and can release Private Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him at his discretion. For basically any reason that he wishes to-let us say 1000 days is enough. Join the over 25,000 supporters in the United States and throughout the world clamoring for Bradley’s well-deserved freedom.

*Call (Comments”202-456-1111, write9 The White House, 1600 Pennsylvana Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) the White House to demand President Obama pardon Bradley Manning- The presidential powers to pardon is granted under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution:

“The President…shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in case of impeachment .”

In federal cases, and military cases are federal cases, the President of the United States can, under authority granted by the U.S. Constitution as stated above, pardon the guilty and the innocent, the convicted and those awaiting trial- former President Nixon and former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for example among others, received such pardons of their heinous crimes- Free Bradley Manning ! Free the whistleblower!

Live-blog: updates from Ft. Meade where Bradley Manning to explain guilty plea and WikiLeaks releases

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Check back here for updates throughout the day from the courtroom in Fort Meade, MD, where PFC Bradley Manning will discuss his submission of a guilty plea and discuss releasing documents to WikiLeaks.

Bradley Manning, sketched by Clark Stoeckley of the Bradley Manning Support Network

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. February 28, 2013.
5:25 PM: Court is in recess for the day. After going through all specifications at issue in Bradley Manning’s plea of guilty to lesser-included offenses and not guilty to the remaining charged offenses, and confirming that he understands them, Judge Lind accepted the plea as provident. The government said it will still prosecute the original 22 offenses. Bradley can withdraw the guilty plea at any time before trial.
Tomorrow, the parties will go on record at 10 AM ET for a short discussion in which parties will offer briefs relating to Article 104 (aiding the enemy) and its history, and any potential updates to the case calendar. Then they’ll move to another closed session to discuss how to handle classified information at trial, which the press and public won’t be allowed to see.
3:27 PM: Brief recess. We just learned that Bradley released the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs while on mid-tour leave at a Barnes and Noble in Maryland, USA.
Judge Lind is continuing to question Bradley to ensure that he understands and still agrees with each element of his plea. He said he knew he was violating the law when he chose to remove classified documents from his T-SCIF in Iraq but did so anyway.
12:55 PM: Bradley finished reading his entire statement, a nearly two-hour defense of whistleblowing, transparency, and the refusal to be complicit in that which you cannot abide. “I believed and still believe these are some of most important documents of our time,” he said of the war logs he passed to WikiLeaks. Bradley affirmed his belief that the documents he released needed to be in the public realm (specifically the American public), that he “only wanted docs I was absolutely sure wouldn’t cause harm to the United States,” and that he’d hoped the release would result in domestic debate and a reevaluation of the United States’ war on terror.
He “became depressed with the situation we were mired in” in Iraq. In counterterrorism operations, he said, the U.S. became ‘obsessed with capturing and killing people.’
Bradley discussed his horror at the ‘Collateral Murder’ video of US Apache soldiers gunning down Reuters journalists and those who came to rescue the injured. He said the U.S. gunner who wanted to shoot the wounded in Collateral Murder video “seemed similar to a child torturing ants w/ a magnifying glass.” He was also aghast at the way that David Finkel had characterized the killings in his book, The Good Soldiers. When he learned that Reuters had attempted to acquire the video and was stonewalled by the U.S., Bradley said he’d wanted to try to get the video to Reuters so they’d be able to view the incident and the U.S. rules of engagement so their journalists could better avoid this from happening again.
He also revealed that while he was on a mid-tour leave in the U.S., he’d wanted to give documents to the Washington Post, but that the reporter or editor he talked to didn’t seem interested, especially without more information. He then called the New York Times’ public editor and left a message leaving his phone number – no one called him back. He’d wanted to try to talk to Politico about sharing documents with them, but he was stranded in Maryland when a blizzard hit. He then turned to WikiLeaks.
He said he had many conversations in anonymous, secure chat rooms with someone who called him/herself ‘Nathaniel,’ whom Bradley believed to be someone who worked for WikiLeaks, namely Julian Assange or Daniel Domscheit-Berg. He said that he would occasionally propose certain documents to ‘Nathaniel,’ but that “no one from [WikiLeaks] pressured” him to give more information.
The “decisions to send were my own,” he said, “and I take full responsibility.”
After lunch, at 2:00 PM ET, we’ll return from recess and Judge Lind will begin questioning Bradley on issues arising from his statement and his plea.
10:55 AM: 15-minute recess after Judge Lind reviewed Bradley’s plea aloud. She ensured that he understood his plea, understood that he’s waiving his right to 6th Amendment and RCM 707 protections of a speedy trial. She also ensured that Bradley gets that this is a “naked plea,” meaning it’s not the result of an agreement with the government, so prosecutors don’t have to prove what he’s pleading guilty to. Also, they can use his plea of lesser-included offenses to prove up the greater offenses. After the break, Bradley will read his 35-page statement to orient the court as to facts about his plea. Then the providence inquiry will begin and Judge Lind will ask her questions. In addition to ensuring he understands the plea and his rights, the inquiry is supposed to “explore whether there are valid defenses” available.
Bradley’s pleading guilty to having unauthorized possession of one classified Army intelligence agency memo, more than 20 classified CIDNE Iraq documents, more than 20 CIDNE Afghanistan documents, more than 5 classified documents regarding Farah, and a video (Collateral Murder). He’s also pleading guilty to willfully communicating those to an unauthorized person and that doing so was service discrediting to the Armed Forces and was prejudicial to the good order and discipline of the Armed Forces. He’s not pleading guilty to the fact that those documents related to the national defense or that he had reason to believe that the disclosure of the documents could be used to harm the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation. A foreign nation need not be a nation-state. Back at the next recess, likely our lunch break.
Original post
Today PFC Bradley Manning is scheduled to engage in a providence inquiry with Judge Denise Lind, wherein she’ll question him at length about his offer to plead guilty to several lesser-included offenses, and to plead not guilty to the majority of the government’s charges. It’s important to note that Bradley’s plea is not part of an agreement with the government; he’s proffering the plea for the judge to accept or reject, and the government may still attempt to prove up the offenses it has charged.
Here’s Alexa O’Brien’s rundown of Bradley’s anticipated plea. He is expected to plead guilty to 10 of the 22 specifications against him: 9 of those are lesser-included offenses, meaning they are altered versions of what the government is charging, striking federal statutes to modify the culpability and mens rea elements and to lower maximum possible sentences from 10 years to 2 years in prison. He’s expected to plead not guilty to the remaining 12 offenses, including the most serious charge of ‘aiding the enemy.’
The objective of today’s inquiry is for the judge to determine if Bradley is pleading ”voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently,” meaning he wasn’t coerced and that he understands the offenses and why they violate the UCMJ. However, on Tuesday of this week, we learned that Bradley had submitted a statement to the court giving background on his releasing documents to WikiLeaks. It’s yet to be determined if Judge Lind will allow Bradley to read that statement today in part or in full, but we learned that it included that Bradley hoped that the release of Iraq War Logs would ‘spark a domestic debate on the role of our military and foreign policy in general,’ so the discussion could delve into Bradley’s more personal and political beliefs, if the judge allows.
Due to the expected statements from Bradley under oath, today’s press pool is likely the most full yet — nearly two dozen reporters here. Proceedings are expected to start at 10:00 AM ET.

Report from Bradley Manning’s hearing, 2/27/13

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Closed session deals with classified information, Judge Lind rules on the defense’s over-classification witnesses, and the Department of Defense finally publishes legal filings
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. February 27, 2013.

Judge Denise Lind. Sketch by Clark Stoeckley, Bradley Manning Support Network.

A pretrial hearing for PFC Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, MD, ended early for the press and public today, as the court moved to a closed session in the afternoon to litigate how to handle classified information during trial. Prosecutors intend to call 141 witnesses during the trial, and they expect testimony from 73 of those to include classified information.
The defense proposes to substitute, redact, or summarize the classified material, or to use code words to refer to secret names, dates, or places. But the government argues that 33 of its witnesses will discuss material too complex to be summarized or referred to by code, and it requests closing the sessions for those portions of their testimony. Judge Denise Lind challenged that assertion, agreeing with the defense that she needs to know more about what the witnesses will discuss before deciding to close future sessions.
Judge Lind continued to argue for keeping the courtroom open as much as possible during trial, saying the parties should exhaust all alternative methods before closing sessions. She asked for just one of the government’s witnesses to come to a pretrial hearing, to give a test run that would inform how to handle the remainder of the witnesses at trial. The government objected to this, but said it’d submit a formal response to the judge’s request later.
When it became clear that litigation couldn’t continue without more information, Judge Lind ordered a closed session for after lunch, so the government could privately explain to the defense and judge in more detail what it expects witnesses to divulge. The parties could then explore potential alternatives to closing the court during trial.
Prosecutors said they might be able to remove witnesses from their list after discussion of Bradley Manning’s plea, depending on what’s revealed. Tomorrow, Bradley and Judge Lind will have a ‘colloquy,’ or a discussion in which she asks him questions about the plea he’s offering and issues surrounding it.
The plea gives Bradley an opportunity to take responsibility for releasing some documents to WikiLeaks while opposing the way that the government has charged him. He submitted a statement supplementing the plea to Judge Lind, we learned yesterday. The colloquy gives him a chance to explain some of his reasoning at greater length. For instance, his statement to the court is said to explain that Bradley hoped that the Iraq War Logs release would ‘spark a domestic debate on the role of our military and foreign policy in general.’
Defense witnesses and evidence regarding over-classification
Judge Lind largely granted a government motion that prevents PFC Bradley Manning’s defense from calling witnesses to testify regarding U.S. over-classification. The defense wants to call witnesses who could explain that some of the documents Bradley is accused of releasing could not be reasonably expected to incur harm to the U.S. The defense says the witnesses could discuss rampant over-classification – i.e. needlessly making documents secret (which the Support Network wrote about in January 2012) – to give context for Bradley’s state of mind at the time of the disclosures.
But the judge did say she’d take judicial notice of two of the defense’s proposed adjudicative facts. She took notice of the fact that Congress made findings in section two of the Reducing Over-Classification Act (though not of the act itself). Therein, Congress found that the so-called 9/11 Commission determined that “security requirements nurture over-classification and excessive compartmentation of information among agencies.”
Furthermore, Congress said,

“The 9/11 Commission and others have observed that the over-classification of information interferes with accurate, actionable, and timely information sharing, increases the cost of information security, and needlessly limits stakeholder and public access to information.”

Judge Lind also said that she would take notice of statements from J. William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, if proven relevant. For example, Leonard has discussed findings of an ISOO study, concluding that only 64% of documents they studied were properly classified.
Even though many of the defense’s witnesses weren’t accepted, these judicially noticed facts can help the defense prove that Bradley knew that over-classification was a serious problem in the military and that releasing the documents he did would not harm the U.S.
Some court documents are finally available
The biggest news of the day may have come from outside the proceedings, as the Department of Defense announced that it’s made 84 judicial orders and rulings in Bradley Manning’s court martial publicly available online, and will continue to release filings. The release comes after over a year of protest from journalists and activists demanding access to basic court documents. Reporters and lawyers have said Bradley’s proceedings have had less press access than secretive military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. Journalists covering the case have long complained that the lack of public filings makes covering the case extremely difficult, not least because Judge Lind reads her lengthy rulings too quickly to transcribe.
The move may be an effort to circumvent the lawsuit levied by the Center for Constitutional Rights seeking public access to the documents. When Judge Lind rejected that, the CCR appealed to the Court of Appeals of the Armed Forces for a First Amendment ruling that would ensure press access to filings in all U.S. courts martial. The appeals court has yet to rule on the CCR’s suit.
The Support Network has previously pressured the military to make documents public when Judge Lind refused to. In October, hundreds of supporters flooded Fort Meade’s public affairs office phone lines with calls for an open trial.
Still, the vast majority of the 30,000 pages in Bradley’s case remain unavailable. The Washington Post’s Julie Tate called the DoD’s announcement “an important symbolic step toward long-awaited transparency in the case.” Speaking to the Guardian, the CCR’s president emeritus Michael Ratner criticized the DoD for releasing only a tiny portion of the legal filings.

Rally for Bradley Manning. Join us at Fort Meade on June 1, 2013.

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Join us at Fort Meade in support of Bradley Manning. By the time his court martial begins in June, he will have spent more then 3 years in prison. All for having done the right thing, for having exposed war crimes! Saturday, June 1, 2013 RALLY FOR BRADLEY AT FORT MEADE

By the Bradley Manning Support Network, February 25, 2013.
• 1pm Gather (Reece Road and US 175, Fort Meade, Maryland)
• 2pm March
• 3pm Rally and Speak Out
Sponsored by the Bradley Manning Support Network and the national Veterans for Peace organization, with the help of Courage to Resist, and many other groups.
After more than three years of imprisonment, including nine months of torture, Nobel Peace
Prize nominee Bradley Manning’s trial is finally scheduled to begin June 3, 2013, at Fort Meade,
Maryland. The outcome of this trial will determine whether a conscience-driven 25-year-
old WikiLeaks whistle-blower spends the rest of his life in prison. Bradley believed that the
American people have a right to know the truth about what our government does around the
world in our name. We the People must send a message to the military prosecuting authority,
and President Obama, that Bradley Manning is a patriot and heroic truth-teller.
June 1st is the International Day of Action to Support Bradley Manning. Join us at Fort Meade on
the eve of Bradley’s court martial. Solidarity actions are welcome at bases, recruiting centers and US
embassies worldwide. We ask that Veterans for Peace join us in cosponsoring these historic events.
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Monday, June 3, 2013
ATTEND THE BEGINNING OF US v. BRADLEY MANNING
8:30 am, enter Fort Meade at Reece Road and US 175, Fort Meade, Maryland
9:00 am scheduled daily start of hearings at Magistrate Court
4432 Llewellyn Avenue, Fort Meade, MD. It is 2 miles from the Main Gate.
The court martial is expected to last 6-12 weeks. Supporters are encouraged to attend as many days of
this trial as they are able.
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Parking for Saturday, June 1, 2013. We hope to come to an understanding with local
authorities regarding the best place for supporters to park for the Saturday rally. Parking is
available about one mile south near Blue Water Blvd (Weis Market) and US 175. We’ll try to
help shuttle folks as needed.
Portable toilets are expected to be available.
Join us in the courtroom for the trial beginning June 3, 2013. Drive (or taxi) to the Fort Meade Visitor
Control Center at the Fort Meade Main Gate (all the other gates are for military ID holders only), Reece
Road and US 175, Fort Meade, Maryland. We suggest arriving when the visitor center opens at 7:30am,
and certainly before 8:15am. The proceedings are scheduled to begin at 9am daily. The multiple layers
of security take time to navigate, and procedures often change from day to day. Each person will need
a valid state or federal photo ID such as a driver’s license, state photo ID card, or passport. Foreign
passports are accepted. Anyone driving on to Fort Meade will be required to submit their driver’s
license, vehicle registration, and printed (not digital) proof of insurance. Your vehicle will be subject
to search, and you may be required to cover over political bumper stickers on your vehicle. Consider
walking on base if there are any questions at all regarding your vehicle and paperwork.
The proceedings will be held at the Magistrate Court, 4432 Llewellyn Ave, Fort Meade, MD
20755 (this is one mile from the Visitor Center). Electronic devices, including cell phones,
computers, cameras, are not allowed in the courtroom, and should be left in your vehicle.
There are no pre-registration requirements for the public to attend the proceedings. However,
those wishing to attend as credentialed media should contact the US Army Military District of
Washington Public Affairs Office at 202-685-4645.
GETTING THERE
The Fort Meade Main Gate is less than 10 miles south of the Baltimore-Washington DC
International (BWI) airport. It is located between Washington DC and Baltimore MD.
Driving:
From Washington, DC, take MD-295 N towards BALTIMORE to US 175 EAST, then follow
175 EAST until you come to Reece Road. From Baltimore, MD, take MD-295 S towards
WASHINGTON to US 175 EAST, then take 175 EAST until you come to Reece Road.
Buses:
We hope to charter buses for supporters from both downtown Washington DC and Baltimore,
Maryland.
There is regional bus service from BWI Airport to the Arundel Mills Shopping Center (Bus 017).
Then take the CTC K to the Main Gate. For a Google Maps public transit view of this option:
http://alturl.com/3ehis
Train:
Note that the nearby Odenton MARC train station serves commuter trains only and does not
run on the weekend. Amtrak does not stop at this station.
WHERE TO STAY
There are many hotels serving this area just south of the BWI Airport. The closest of these are
5-6 miles from the Ft. Meade Main Gate. One option is Aloft Arundel Mills, 7520 Teague Rd,
Hanover, MD, 21076 (866-539-0036), $80-$100 night. A hotels.com search of the area turns up
rooms nearby starting at $60 a night. The only lodging really close to the Ft. Meade Main Gate
is the White Gables Motel; however, for a number of reasons, we strongly suggest avoiding it.

Bradley Manning’s speedy trial motion denied, despite nearly three years without trial

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In a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade, MD, Judge Denise Lind denied the defense’s motion to dismiss charges for lack of a speedy trial. She listened to arguments over government evidence, a written statement from Bradley, and an updated plea offer. Bradley will get a chance to explain his releases to WikiLeaks in a public discussion with the judge on Thursday.
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. February 26, 2013.

Defense lawyer David Coombs and PFC Bradley Manning, sketched by Clark Stoeckley of the Bradley Manning Support Network.

On PFC Bradley Manning’s 1,005^th day in prison without trial, military judge Denise Lind ruled that the government has not deprived him of his due process right to a speedy trial. Rules for court martial require the military to arraign defendants within 120 days, and more than 600 passed before prosecutors arraigned Bradley. Judge Lind denied the defense motion to dismiss charges, ruling that the delays excluded by the Convening Authority were justifiably removed from the speedy trial clock.
Judge Lind repeatedly referenced the “complexity” of the case and the “voluminous” set of documents at issue. She did say that prosecutors mishandled discovery documents and were not justified in delaying 6 days from the speedy trial clock shortly following the Article 32 pretrial hearing in December 2011. However, those caveats didn’t outweigh her decision that the government was otherwise largely diligent.
The ruling, a verbose litany of dates, delays, and correspondence, took more than two hours to read and was virtually impossible to transcribe in full. Judge Lind refuses to make her rulings, or any filings or transcripts for that matter, publicly available, so reporters are left to scramble and summarize.
Defense, Judge Lind question government’s prejudicial evidence
Judge Lind then questioned the prejudicial nature of the government’s request to submit evidence allegedly retrieved at Osama bin Laden’s raided compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Prosecutors said they want to prove that the United States’ enemy “received” documents that Bradley’s accused of releasing. But defense lawyer David Coombs said that the government could show evidence from anyone to prove that the documents were in fact published on the Internet, and that this move is intended to incur prejudice against Bradley, either from a potential jury or in the court of public opinion. Prosecutors have chosen bin Laden, Coombs implied, to impugn Bradley’s character in connecting him to America’s enemies.
Furthermore, Coombs said that this request contradicts the government’s previous contention that events after the fact – such as the lack of damage done to national security – are irrelevant to whether Bradley committed the offense. The defense is not allowed to show that WikiLeaks’ releases brought no harm to the U.S. on the grounds that later harm isn’t relevant.
Bradley Manning to make his case on Thursday
Finally, the defense has submitted a written statement explaining Bradley’s offer to plead guilty to several lesser-included offenses and not guilty to some of the major specifications. Bradley is expected to proffer to plead guilty to lesser offenses, such as “unauthorized possession” of documents instead of “exceeds authorized access,” that would carry a maximum of 20 years in jail. The plea offer triggers an in-session colloquy between Bradley and Judge Lind, currently scheduled for Thursday, in which she’ll ask him a series of questions to ensure he understands to what he’s pleading. Bradley submitted the supplemental statement, which is at least 25 pages long, to educate Judge Lind ahead of the discussion.
The government objected to the statement, claiming many of the personal and political factors Bradley wishes to discuss are irrelevant to the charged offenses. By way of these objections, we learned that included in the statement are some of Bradley’s explanations and feelings about WikiLeaks’ releases. For instance, he wrote to Judge Lind that he’d hoped the release of the Iraq War Logs would ‘spark a domestic debate on the role of our military and foreign policy in general.’
The statement also alludes to the seminal incident in the Army in which Bradley objected to Iraqi Federal Police detaining political dissidents for distributing literature. As he told Adrian Lamo in chat logs published by Wired, Bradley reported the repressive arrests to his superiors but was told to keep quiet and continue helping Iraqi police. This stonewalling, it was implied, led Bradley to look for alternative outlets to expose this abuse.

Soldier Admits Providing Files to WikiLeaks

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Pfc. Bradley Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the leak to WikiLeaks.

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: February 28, 2013 414 Comments

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FORT MEADE, Md. — Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he released the information to help enlighten the public about “what happens and why it happens” and to “spark a debate about foreign policy.”

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WikiLeaks Archive — Cables Uncloak U.S. Diplomacy

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Pfc. Bradley Manning in April 2012. His guilty pleas Thursday exposed him to up to 20 years in prison.

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Appearing before a military judge for more than an hour, Private Manning read a statement recounting how he joined the military, became an intelligence analyst in Iraq, decided that certain files should become known to the American public to prompt a wider debate about foreign policy, downloaded them from a secure computer network and then ultimately uploaded them to WikiLeaks.

“No one associated with WLO” — an abbreviation he used to refer to the WikiLeaks organization — “pressured me into sending any more information,” Private Manning said. “I take full responsibility.”

Before reading the statement, Private Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the huge amount of material he leaked, which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were killed, logs of military incident reports, assessment files of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a quarter-million cables from American diplomats stationed around the world.

The guilty pleas exposed him to up to 20 years in prison. But the case against Private Manning, a slightly built 25-year-old who has become a folk hero among antiwar and whistle-blower advocacy groups, is not over. The military has charged him with a far more serious set of offenses, including aiding the enemy, and multiple counts of violating federal statutes, including the Espionage Act. Prosecutors now have the option of pressing forward with proving the remaining elements of those charges.

That would involve focusing only on questions like whether the information he provided counted as the sort covered by the Espionage Act — that is, whether it was not just confidential but also could be used to injure the United States or aid a foreign nation.

Private Manning described himself as thinking carefully about the kind of information he was releasing, and taking care to make sure that none of it could cause harm if disclosed.

The only material that initially gave him pause, he said, were the diplomatic cables, which he portrayed as documenting “back-room deals and seemingly criminal activity.”

But he decided to go forward after discovering that the most sensitive cables were not in the database. He was also motivated, he said, by a book about “open diplomacy” after World War I and “how the world would be a better place if states would not make secret deals with each other.”

“I believed the public release of these cables would not damage the United States,” he said. “However, I did believe the release of the cables might be embarrassing.”

Private Manning said the first set of documents he decided to release consisted of hundreds of thousands of military incident reports from Afghanistan and Iraq. He had downloaded them onto a disk because the network connection at his base in Iraq kept failing, and he and his colleagues needed regular access to them.

Those reports added up to a history of the “day-to-day reality” in both war zones that he believed showed the flaws in the counterinsurgency policy the United States was then pursuing. The military, he said, was “obsessed with capturing or killing” people on a list, while ignoring the impact of its operations on ordinary people.

Private Manning said he put the files on a digital storage card for his camera and took it home with him on a leave in early 2010. He then decided to give the files to a newspaper.

“I believed if the public — in particular the American public — had access to the information” in the reports, “this could spark a debate about foreign policy in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

Private Manning said he first called The Washington Post and spoke to an unidentified reporter for about five minutes. He decided that the reporter did not seem particularly interested because she said The Post would have to review the material before making any commitment.

He said he then tried to reach out to The New York Times by calling a phone number for the newspaper’s public editor — an ombudsman who is not part of the newsroom — and leaving a voice mail message that was not returned.

In January 2010, around the time when Mr. Manning called the public editor’s line, voice mail messages were checked by Michael McElroy, the assistant to Clark Hoyt, then the public editor. Both Mr. Hoyt, now the editor at large at Bloomberg News, and Mr. McElroy, now a staff editor at The Times, said on Thursday that they had no recollection of hearing such a message.

“We got hundreds of calls a week, and I tried to go through them all,” Mr. McElroy said. “If I’d heard something like that, I certainly hope I would have flagged it immediately.”

Private Manning eventually decided to release the information by uploading it to WikiLeaks. To do it, he said, he used a broadband connection at a Barnes & Noble store because his aunt’s house in a Maryland suburb, where he was staying, had lost its Internet connection in a snowstorm.

In February 2010, after he returned to Iraq, Private Manning sent more files to WikiLeaks, including a helicopter gunship video of a 2007 episode in Iraq in which American forces killed a group of men, including two Reuters journalists, and then fired again on a van that pulled up to help the victims.

Private Manning said the video troubled him, both because of the shooting of the second group of people, who “were not a threat but merely good Samaritans,” and because of what he described as the “seemingly delightful blood lust” expressed by the airmen in the recording. He also learned that Reuters had been seeking the video without success.

Private Manning said he copied the files from the secure network onto disks, which he took back to his quarters and transferred to his personal laptop before uploading them to WikiLeaks — initially through its Web site, and later using a directory the group designated for him on a “cloud drop box” server.

One set of files, he said, described the arrest by the Iraqi police, supported by Americans, of 15 people for printing “anti-Iraqi” pamphlets. None were tied to militants, he said, and the pamphlets were “merely a scholarly critique” of government corruption. To his frustration, WikiLeaks did not publish those files.

After that episode, Private Manning said, he became interested in detainees, which led him to the Guantánamo files. He said the United States was holding detainees who were “innocent, low-level foot soldiers, or didn’t have useful intelligence and who would be released” if they were still in the war zone.

At the same time, he was increasingly engaged in online conversations with someone from WikiLeaks who he said he assumed was a senior figure like Julian Assange, its founder, whose name he mispronounced as “as-sahn-JAY.” He said he greatly valued those talks because he felt isolated in Iraq. But, in retrospect, he said the relationship was “artificial.” He did not elaborate.

The judge, Col. Denise Lind, pressed Private Manning to explain how he could admit that his actions were wrong if his motivation was the “greater good” of enlightening the public. Private Manning replied, “Your Honor, regardless of my opinion or my assessment of documents such as these, it’s beyond my pay grade — it’s not my authority to make these decisions” about releasing confidential files.

Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Death Sentence for Defending her Client? Lynne Stewart

February 27th, 2013

A Death Sentence for Defending her Client? Lynne Stewart

[col. writ. 2/21/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Listen to Mumia’s message by clicking here.

Lynne Stewart, a brilliant gung-ho trial attorney, has a stellar history that many attorneys would kill for. A defense attorney who truly fights for her clients. And, far more often than not, brings them home. She has battled some of the biggest cases in New York history, beating quite a few and beating the government as well. After her representation of Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, for daring to speak out publicly in his defense, and delivering a messaage of his thoughts to the public, she was charged with: conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists – convicted, sentenced to, after an appeal, 10 years in federal prison, and disbarred.

Lynne, 73, is a breast cancer survivor, and recently, the cancer has returned. Her treatment in federal custody is, to say the least, far from optimal. That 10 years, increased by order of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, from 28 months, may prove a death sentence for a courageous, principled, and brilliant defense lawyer, who has been a bane to the state since she first walked in a courtroom.

Andrew Napolitano, former judge and conservative Fox TV contributor, has called the Stewart convinction “a perverse victory for the Justice Department, and a travesty of justice, designed to intimidate all lawyers from vigorously advocating for their clients.” To find out how you can help win justice for Lynne Stewart, contact: lynnestewart.org.

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Free Lynne Stewart Now!

Legal Team Files Cert Petition in Lynne’s Case

February 27th, 2013
Lynne Stewart’s defense team filed her Cert Petition – asking the Supreme Court to hear her case – on February 21, 2013. Click here to read the Cert Petition (PDF).
Excerpt:
“Freedom of speech does not exist in the abstract. It can only flourish in an effective forum. For, in reality, free speech is found in a multitude of circumstances. Not long ago it was young people, with long hair, tramping around a federal courthouse chanting, “No. No. We won’t go!” It is an American flag sewn to a pair of old blue jeans. It’s all this and much more that defy description. It is indivisible. We cannot save it for one person and deny it to another. It must exist for all of us, or there is a real risk that, someday, it may not exist for any of us. And, so, it must exist for Lynne Stewart along with everyone else because her words are entitled to the same protection from prosecution as other political speech. Under no circumstances should her words and beliefs subject her to eight more years of imprisonment.”

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Freedom Now for Tinley Park 5!

Workers Vanguard No. 1018	22 February 2013

Freedom Now for Tinley Park 5!

Chicago

On January 4, a Cook County court sentenced five anti-racist militants to prison terms of three and a half to six years on “armed violence” charges that stem from the breaking up of a fascist meeting last spring. Plans to convene a “White Nationalist Economic Summit” attracted a group of the scum, some with links to the Stormfront Web site run by a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon, to the Ashford House restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park on May 19. Having gotten wind of this outrage, at least 18 anti-racists went to the restaurant and put an end to the “summit,” sending some of the creeps to the hospital. Shortly after, police pulled over and arrested a carload of five anti-fascists from Bloomington, Indiana—Jason Sutherlin, Cody Lee Sutherlin, Dylan Sutherlin, Alex Stuck and John Tucker—who have come to be known as the Tinley Park 5. The trouncing of the “white nationalists” was a courageous act in the interest of the working class and all the fascists’ intended victims. Free the Tinley Park 5!

Each of the five was initially charged with 37 felony counts, including armed violence, property damage and mob action, with bond set at $175,000 to $250,000 apiece. The cops and prosecutors applied continuous pressure to force them to give up names of those involved in sending the fascists scattering, which the five have steadfastly refused to do. Unable to meet the exorbitant bonds, they spent seven months in Cook County Jail while legal proceedings dragged on. Facing the prospect of up to another year behind bars to go to a trial whose outcome they could not predict, the five accepted a non-cooperating plea bargain in which each pled guilty to three counts of armed violence in return for guarantees of time off for good behavior.

The witchhunt against the Tinley Park 5 was part and parcel of the hysteria whipped up against protesters at the NATO summit taking place that same May 19-20 weekend in downtown Chicago. With the city center turned into an armed camp, politicians, cops and the local media vilified and violence-baited the anti-NATO protesters, particularly anarchists and those participating in Black Bloc actions. Three anti-NATO protesters are still in jail after being set up by a police provocateur and charged under Illinois anti-terrorism statutes, the first time these laws were ever used (see “Defend Anti-NATO Protesters!” WV No. 1003, 25 May 2012).

It is a good thing that the fascist “summit” was dispersed and the Hitler-loving vermin were sent scurrying. The fascists are not simply carriers of a genocidal worldview but deal in race terror against black people, Jews, immigrants, gays and anyone else they perceive as “impure.” Last August, a neo-Nazi skinhead murdered six Sikhs at a temple in Wisconsin, and in July 2011 a fascist massacred 69 people at a social-democratic youth camp in Norway. In 1999, a disciple of fascist Matthew Hale went on a racist shooting rampage in Illinois and Indiana, killing a black former Northwestern University basketball coach and a Korean student and wounding nine others, including six orthodox Jews. In 2007, another Hale follower torched a black family’s home in Joliet.

The fascists pose a deadly threat to the entire labor movement and left. The capitalist rulers hold these shock troops in reserve so that in times of crisis and social struggle they can be unleashed to defend the bourgeois order. Take the example of Greece, where the fascist marauders of Golden Dawn are today carrying out daily attacks on immigrants and leftists in collusion with the capitalist cops and courts.

As Trotskyists, we look to the organized power of the working class, standing at the head of all those targeted by the fascists, as the force that can drive this scum off the streets. We have initiated labor/black mobilizations to stop Klan provocations, including one in Springfield, Illinois, in 1994. Such mobilizations are important in helping to make the working class conscious of its historic interest and potential social power as the gravedigger of the decaying capitalist system that breeds fascism.

The Partisan Defense Committee, a legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League, has donated $100 to the defense fund for the Tinley Park 5 and their families. Donations can be made at www.wepay.com/donations/legal-defense-fund-for-the-tinley-park-five. 

New York Times Disappears Bradley Manning

Workers Vanguard No. 1018	22 February 2013

New York Times Disappears Bradley Manning

The following February 13 letter by Ray Bishop, Workers Vanguard editor, was sent to the Public Editor of the New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, following the publication of her article “Keeping Secrets” (9 February).

You applaud the Times’ decision to finally report the location of a U.S. drone base in Saudi Arabia while bemoaning how long it took the Times to approve releasing the information, which had been kept secret at the government’s request. Maureen Dowd’s column (“I’m Begging, Don’t Hack the Hacks”) printed the same day objects to the policy of drone attacks while raising alarm over Chinese hackers breaking into government and media computer systems. In neither piece was any mention made of Bradley Manning, who has suffered enormous abuse and faces a possible life sentence if a military court finds him guilty of releasing a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks. That material shed welcome light on U.S. diplomatic schemes and wartime atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The omission of his case is simply cowardice on the part of the Times, which you had earlier taken to task for ignoring the bulk of Manning’s pretrial hearing in December.

You acknowledge that the policy of the Times is to keep information from the public when Washington officials make the case that such news would threaten “national security.” The other side of that coin is that, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, then-Times reporter Judith Miller recounted tales of Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” (the pretext for the U.S. invasion of Iraq). By contrast, making the documents available to WikiLeaks—which were subsequently published in part by the Times—was an act of truth-telling. If indeed it was Bradley Manning who released the videos, reports and cables, he provided a valuable service to humanity and now deserves the support of all who oppose the barbarity and machinations revealed in them. 

Class, Race and the Black Struggle in the U.S.

Workers Vanguard No. 1018	22 February 2013

Black History Month

Class, Race and the Black Struggle in the U.S.

Claude McKay, 1922

Claude McKay, a Jamaican-born poet active on the left in the U.S. and Britain, traveled to Soviet Russia for the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in November 1922. In his presentation at the Congress (reprinted in “Blacks and Bolsheviks,” Black History and the Class Struggle No. 5, February 1988), McKay stressed the centrality of black oppression to American capitalism and criticized American Communists for not adequately addressing this issue. It took the intervention of the Comintern to get the American Communists to begin to actively fight for black rights.

At the time of the Congress, he drafted notes about the situation of black people in the United States, the Caribbean and Africa. The notes are unsigned, but McKay referred to them in other correspondence. We print below excerpts from the sections on the black struggle in the U.S., which we obtained from Tamiment Library at New York University. The original is in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow. In his notes, McKay refers to the African Blood Brotherhood, a Harlem-based organization, mainly comprising Caribbean immigrants, whose leadership had recently joined the American Communist Party.

*   *   *

During the World War the economic status of the Negro Race in the New World underwent a swift transition for the better. Especially was this the case in the United States where, on account of the giant war industries and the shutting down of immigration, the services of Negro workers were greatly in demand in the northern industrial zone. During this period it is estimated that over 500,000 Negro workers left the South for jobs in the less hostile atmosphere of the North.

Along with the improvement in their economic status came a great wave of emotional racialism, aroused in part by the wrongs suffered by the race and the sacrifices it was called upon to make for “World Democracy,” as well as by the fine democratic phrases with which the Entente statesmen were gassing the credulous liberals of their own countries and misleading the peoples of the colonies. This racialism among the Negro workers at first took the form of a proletariat movement but has been to a great extent perverted by subsequent activities of opportunists and charlatans with their cowardly compromises and surrenders and their grafting of all sorts of stock schemes upon the mass movement....

The prey of unscrupulous leaders who glibly promised everything but accomplished nothing save the periodical emptying of the pockets of their credulous followers, the Negro masses are discouraged and suspicious, yet there are organizational possibilities on a wide scale for any organization that can, first, win their confidence and, second, push energetically the campaign of organizing and, third, keep up interest in the organization.

The Negro masses are leavened by an increasingly large body of race radicals and class radicals. The former are Negroes who, while roused to thought and action by the wrongs of the race, have not yet recognized the essential class nature of the struggle, nor the exact cause and source of their oppression, which they blame indiscriminately upon the entire white race. They are, however, generally inclined to side with and follow the leadership of the class radicals who, fully cognizant of the value of race radicalism for rousing the masses and as a natural and necessary step toward class radicalism, have not been slow in utilizing it and even in helping in its development.

Comparatively few Negro workers are in the unions for the reason that, until recently, they were almost universally barred from the ranks of Organized Labor. However, several thousand are now unionized. Some in the regular unions, but many in segregated unions which are generally affiliated with the national bodies.

Most of the class radicals are to be found in the ranks of the “African Blood Brotherhood” and the “Friends of Negro Freedom”—the latter an organization backed by the Socialist Party of America; the former said to have Communist tendencies.

A large group of race radicals are also in the African Blood Brotherhood (which makes a race as well as a class appeal); and a larger group in the so-called “Garvey Movement” of “Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.” The true race radical should not be confused, however, with the motley crowd of fanatics, emotionalists, title and tinsel worshippers who make up the huge mass of the Garvey organization....

The petit-bourgeoisie, with whom the race is honeycombed, find expression chiefly in the “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” in which a group of bourgeois gentlemen (colored and white) and gentlemen who, while lacking the bourgeois gold, carry around the bourgeois psychology, dominate a large but not compactly organized or effectively functioning body of workers and professionals. The domination of the bourgeoisie is here more open and complete than in the Garvey Movement which, while cursed with petit-bourgeoisie for leaders, has a rank and file wholly made up of workers, and the bourgeoisie in the latter movement have been accordingly forced to resort to camouflage tactics. The compact organization of the Garvey Movement, together with the mighty enthusiasm and blind fanaticism of most of its membership have made it in the past more of an obstacle to the proper prosecution of the Negro Liberation Struggle than has been the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People....

As is well-known, the Negro workers are the most viciously oppressed and poorly paid of any group of workers in the United States. No matter what a Negro’s ability and fitness there are positions which he may not fill and trades whose doors are closed to him. As a rule, only the most menial jobs are open to him during normal times. Made to believe that the antagonistic attitude of Organized Labor is wholly responsible for his exclusion from the better-paid industries, he becomes a willing—and often a joyous—tool of the Interests, and a scab in times of crisis for Organized Labor. He knows that in numerous instances White Labor opposes his employment. He knows, too, of frequent and widely heralded “philanthropies” to his race—by way of subsidies to Negro colleges, etc.—on the part of the White Bourgeoisie and being at least as backward as White Labor, which by its silly prejudices splits the ranks of Labor, he is not able to see the facts as they really are.... His doubts are further increased when he is shown that the white bourgeoisie controls the press, the schools, the churches, the theatres, etc., in which race prejudice is engendered and promoted....

And this leads naturally to a consideration of the present aspirations of the Negro Race. The vast masses of the race in America have only the very simplest aspirations, viz: to be permitted to live and eke out a mean and miserable existence in peace. Of the various groups that rise above this low level, the aspirations of some are confined to safety of life and property and the protection of their women from insult and rape at the hands of white men. Other groups would have political equality in addition; while the most progressive groups demand nothing less than full equality: political, economic, racial; and the abolition of human exploitation.