News Release

Manning Verdict Today

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The Guardian reports: “Bradley Manning, the self-confessed source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of US state secrets, will learn his fate on Tuesday [at 1 p.m. ET] when a military judge announces her verdict in the most high-profile prosecution of an official leaker in at least a generation.

“The army private faces a possible sentence of life in military custody with no chance of parole should Colonel Denise Lind find him guilty of the most serious charge — that he knowingly ‘aided the enemy’ by transmitting intelligence to WikiLeaks.

“In the course of the eight-week trial, which ended on Friday, the U.S. government sought to create a new precedent by arguing that Manning knew he was helping al-Qaida when he released more than 700,000 documents to the anti-secrecy website.”

NATHAN FULLER, nathanlfuller at gmail.com, @nathanLfuller, @SaveBradley
Also via Emma Cape, emma@bradleymanning.org
Fuller is with the Bradley Manning Support Network and has been blogging every day of the trial. The Network’s recent posts are: “European Parliamentarians call on President Obama to Free Bradley Manning” and “Manning Judge Alters Charges to Assist Government Ahead of Verdict.”

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin.gosztola at firedoglake.com, @kgosztola
Gosztola is a civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake, and is one of only a handful of journalists covering the Manning trial on a daily basis.

Gosztola recently wrote the pieces “Through Clips from ‘Collateral Murder’ Video, Defense Attempts to Show ‘Truth’ About Bradley Manning” and “In Closing Argument, Government Casts Bradley Manning as ‘Anarchist,’ ‘Hacker’ & ‘Traitor’” He said today: “The verdict in Bradley Manning’s trial is expected to be issued by the judge [Tuesday]. It also is the day that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa would like to see designated as National Whistleblowers Day because of the historic significance of July 30; in 1778, the first whistleblower protection law in America was passed.

“That Manning could be convicted by a military judge on the same day that Congress might end up designating as a day to honor whistleblowers is indicative of the disconnect in government. Officials choose which whistleblowers to celebrate and which whistleblowers to prosecute as leakers or spies, who aided the enemy. They support whistleblowing so long as it does not force them to rethink major agendas or policies like the ‘war on terrorism’ or how America generally conducts itself in the world, and that is why there are very, very few ‘proper channels’ for military or national security whistleblowers to go through without facing retaliation.”

LAUREN McNAMARA, zjemptv at gmail.com, @ZJemptv
A defense witness in the trail, McNamara notes that the issue of gender identity has barely been raised. She just wrote the piece “The Humanity of Private Manning.”

ADAM KLASFELD, aklasfeld at courthousenews.com, @CNSAdamKlasfeld
Klasfeld is a reporter for Courthouse News Service who has been regularly covering the trial. His pieces include “‘Open Diplomacy’ or Espionage?

DEB VAN POOLEN, debijo777 at gmail.com, @dvanpoolen
Van Poolen is an artist who has attended the trial daily. She said today: “Bradley was an idealistic soldier who responded in action to what he saw as needless extinguishing and torturing of innocent human beings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is a very important quote from Manning’s chats with Adrian Lamo: ‘Hypothetical question: If you had free reign over classified networks over a long period of time, if you saw incredible things, awful things, things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C., what would you do?'” Reuters has reported that officials have described the WikiLeaks revelations as “embarrassing but not damaging.”

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a lawyer for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said: “The idea that [Manning] was a traitor came from a witness who never wrote anything down, who clearly made it up after the fact, about something about his attitude toward the flag. The idea that he was doing it for fame was ridiculous, because, as David Coombs, the lawyer for Bradley Manning, pointed out, he tried to be anonymous the whole time. …

“[Judge Col. Denise Lind] Yeah, she’s been given, apparently, from a Washington Post report, an appellate judge job, the higher court, which I found pretty extraordinary. I don’t know whether it’s — I don’t think it’s necessarily illegal, but it does — it’s interesting to me that she’s going upstairs during the very trial that’s going on, and given that promotion. And it reminded me when the Ellsberg judge, the judge in Daniel Ellsberg’s case, the federal judge, during Ellsberg’s trial on espionage was offered to be the head of the FBI, secretly, by the Nixon administration. And, of course, there was a huge stink. I don’t see any stink so far in any of the media about the fact that Denise Lind, the judge, is being offered a higher position.”