Initially imprisoned in Kuwait, he was transferred two months later to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where he has been held in particular harsh conditions.
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs, wrote Glenn Greenwald in salon.com.
His treatment is harsh, punitive and taking its toll, his lawyer David Coombs told The Daily Beast.
Would the pressure on Manning be as intense if the successful prosecution of WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange did not hinge on the former accepting to testify against the latter?
Manning, accused of being the chief source of WikiLeaks and principle purveyor of classified documents to the website, has been charged with transferring classified data and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source.
If convicted by the military court, PFC Manning could spend the next fifty years in jail.
The US authorities hope to establish a link between Assange and Manning in order to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder on conspiracy charges.
In order to do so, they must establish that Assange solicited the classified material and aided and abetted the informant.
Invoking the 1917 Espionage Act is considered too hazardous and uncertain. The authorities would, in theory, be compelled to prosecute not only The New York Times, exclusive publisher of the leaks in the US, but anyone else who may have read or discussed the classified cables.
Indeed, according to Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University, one of the flaws of the Espionage Act is that it draws no distinction between the leaker or the spy and the recipient of the information, no matter how far downstream the recipient is….Taken at its word, the Espionage Act makes felons of us all.
Hence, the conspiracy route is the preferred option, all the more so as it avoids a ruthless confrontation with defenders of the First Amendment.
Unfortunately for the Justice Department however, no evidence, yet, has emerged proving that Assange insigated the leak, although it seems that Manning did communicate with the WikiLeaks editor.
I mean, I’m a high profile source…and I’ve developed a relationship with Assange…But I don’t know much more than what he tells me, which is very little.
It took me four months to confirm that the person I was communicating with was in fact Assange, Manning allegedly told Adrian Lamo, a former hacker with whom he held a series of online chats, between May 21 and May 25, 2010.
On May 26, Lamo reported Manning to the FBI…
Nevertheless, pursuing the conspiracy approach could also threaten all investigative journalists who routinely solicit confidential, secret or classified information from their sources. If Assange is prosecuted today, it may be their turn tomorrow…
Who is Bradley Manning and why is he accused of being WikiLeaks' informant?
He grew up in Crescent, a small town in Oklahoma.
Interestingly, a previous whistleblower had made the town famous thirty-six years ago…
Karen Silkwood, a union activist and employee of the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant, was found dead in her car on Highway 74. She was driving to Oklahoma City to meet a NYT reporter, David Burnham, on November 13, 1974. The documents she was to give the latter, and which purportedly exposed egregious safety violations at the plant had disappeared.
The plant was closed one year later.
Meryl Streep played Silkwood in a 1983 Hollywood film about the case…
Manning’s father Brian spent five years in the Navy before his son’s birth, and after his parents divorced, Bradley went to live with his Welsh mother in Wales.
An intelligent though aloof youth, Manning was known as a geek in his teen years.
After high school, Manning returned to the US to live with his father, but the latter threw him out of the house when he discovered that his son was gay…
After being temporarily homeless, he moved in with an aunt.
In 2007, he joined the Army. He seemed to have faith in the US and its ability and willingness to change the world for the better.
I think he thought it (enlisting) would be incredibly interesting and exciting.
He was proud of our successes as a country. He valued our freedom, but probably our economic freedom the most.
I think he saw the US as a force for good, Jordan Davis, a friend of Manning’s wrote the journalist Denver Nicks.
His relationship with Tyler Watkins, a student at Brandeis University, brought him into contact with the local hacker community.
Friends said Private Manning found the atmosphere here to be everything the Army was not: openly accepting of his geeky side, his liberal political opinions, his relationship with Mr. Watkins and his ambition to do something that would get attention, wrote Ginger Thompson of the NYT.
He trained as an intelligence analyst and was sent to Iraq in late 2009.
Yet, Manning had difficulty adapting to the military environment.
The diminutive five-foot-two, one hundred and five pound young man became increasingly isolated and ill at ease.
I‘ve been living a double life, he said.
Last May, he was demoted for assaulting an officer…
As an intelligence analyst, Manning had access to all sorts of classified material.
As a result, the more material he was exposed to, the more he became disillusioned with US policies, and the role the US military was playing in Iraq.
The event that may have spurred him to action was the following: asked to investigate why the Iraqi Federal Police had arrested fifteen individuals, Manning quickly discovered that they had been detained only because they had published a document critical of the Iraqi Prime Minister, denouncing the corruption prevalent in the Prime Minister’s Office.
I immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees, he allegedly told Lamo.
I had always questioned [how] things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where I was a *part* of something… I was actively involved in something that I was completely against, he added.
Manning felt that he could no longer countenance the US military’s deceptive and unethical behavior in Iraq.
He had lost faith in the ability or willingness of the US to fulfill its stated objectives in Iraq and elsewhere, and of betraying its ideals.
I don’t believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore…only [in] a plethora of states acting in self-interest…with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless, he allegedly told Lamo.
He had sought out the former hacker, whom he believed would sympathize with his predicament. He could no longer bear his situation. I mean, I was never noticed…regularly ignored…except when I had something essential…then it was back to « bring me coffee, then sweep the floor »…felt like I was an abused work horse, he purportedly told Lamo.
As such, it was time to act, and attempt to influence the course of events.
If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight plus months, what would you do he allegedly asked Lamo?
Manning himself was obviously weighing what do with this information, much of which contradicted the official version of events released by the US military, and exposed unethical if not criminal behavior.
He had unearthed what he characterized as incredible, awful things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington D.C.
To ascertain the credibility of WikiLeaks, he sent them what he called a test cable in January 2010. WikiLeaks published the Reykjavik 13 cable February 18.
Then, he allegedly sent what became known as the Collateral Murder video depicting a scene in which an Apache helicopter fired on civilians in Baghdad, killing sixteen, including a Reuters photographer and his driver.
A video of the Granai raid in Afghanistan followed. WikiLeaks has yet to release it.
The US air strike killed some 140 civilians including women and children.
WikiLeaks also released the Afghan War Logs, and some 500,000 documents on the Iraq war.
According to the chats published by wire.com, downloading all this material proved remarkably simple.
I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like Lady Gaga.
He would then erase the music, all the while singing the Lady Gaga song Telephone
and download classified information.
He also removed any incriminating evidence from his computer.
What was Manning allegedly trying to do?
Provoke, hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms…if not… than we’re doomed as a species. I will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens.
I want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public, Manning said according to the published chats.
Manning wanted accurate information to be released so that we could all come to our own conclusions based on facts and not the official propaganda released by the US government.
He stated clearly that he was not a spy, and had no interest in selling or giving the information to the enemies of the US.
It’s public data. It belongs in the public domain. Information should be free .It belongs in the public domain…he allegedly insisted.
Manning and Assange obviously share the same belief in the intrinsic value of transparency. Only total access to all the facts can allow a citizen to reach a truly informed opinion.
This issue is at the heart of the WikiLeaks controversy.
If Manning broke the law, he should be prosecuted and tried.
No one who believes in justice and the rule of law can dispute this point.
This administration however, has a proven track record of prosecuting whistleblowers, even outdoing its predecessors, yet no one else.
Why?
Why this double standard?
The list of wrongdoings committed by the previous administration is a distressingly long and familiar one: warrantless wiretapping, secret prisons, ghost detainees, extraordinary renditions, torture in Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and God only knows where else…
The Obama Administration has not considered it worthwhile to investigate, let alone prosecute anyone for these egregious abuses.
Why not?
Is it political pusillanimity or has Obama simply co-opted his predecessor’s national security agenda?
The Afghan war is now Obama's war and he has increased the number of US troops there.
He has significantly expanded the use of drones, a practice initiated by former President Bush, to kill terrorist suspects in Pakistan (the administration is also urging the Pakistani authorities to authorize an escalation of Special Ops raids on Pakistani soil…).
He has done the same in Yemen, and launched US air strikes there as well, some of which have killed civilians, including women and children.
He vowed to close Guantanamo, but has not done so.
He suspended military commissions only to reinstate them, allowing the disgraceful trial and conviction of Omar Khadr.
He has repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege to prohibit all judicial review of past Bush and now Obama policies and practices.
In essence, by adopting the Bush national security agenda, he has made it his own, including all of its excesses, which he had pledged to reverse.…
Treating Manning as if was a convicted high profile terrorist, even though he has yet to be tried, is one of them.
The Obama administration clearly hopes that by prosecuting and mistreating Bradley Manning, other potential leakers will think twice before releasing classified information that could embarrass the US.
If Obama was truly interested in justice and the rule of law however, he would prosecute all those who broke the law in the name of national security (and, by doing so, not only undermined the constitutional rights of every citizen, but also sullied America’s reputation and good standing around the world), and not merely easy, and ultimately, harmless targets such as Manning…
(the photograph above of Manning was found here)
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