Bradley Manning is escorted
from a hearing, on January 8, 2013 in Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning has
told a military tribunal that he leaked incident logs from the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks in order to start a "public debate".
March 5, 2013 |
The following is a Democracy Now! interview with Glenn Greenwald on the terrifying persecution of Bradley Manning.
As
we broadcast from the Freedom to Connect conference, we look at one
whistleblower who used the Internet to reveal the horrors of war: U.S.
Army Private Bradley Manning. Military prosecutors have decided to bring
the maximum charges against Manning after he admitted during a pretrial
hearing last week to the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history.
In a bid to secure a reduced sentence, Manning acknowledged on the
stand that he gave classified documents to WikiLeaks in order to show
the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a debate about
foreign policy." Manning pleaded guilty to reduced charges on 10 counts,
which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. But instead of
accepting that plea, military prosecutors announced Friday they will
seek to imprison Manning for life without parole on charges that include
aiding the enemy. Manning’s court-martial is scheduled to begin in
June. We speak with Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has long
covered the case, about what this means for Manning and its broader
implications for whistleblowers and the journalists they often approach.
Glenn, welcome Democracy Now!
GLENN GREENWALD: Great to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk
about the significance of what the military prosecutors are pushing for
now, life without parole for Bradley Manning, and what he said in court
last week, not far from here, just down the road at Fort Meade.
GLENN GREENWALD: There
are several levels of significance, the first of which is the most
obvious, which is that this is a case of extraordinary prosecutorial
overkill. The government has never been able to identify any substantial
harm that has come from any of the leaks that Bradley Manning is
accused of and now admits to being responsible for. Certainly nobody has
died as a result of these leaks, even though the government originally
said that WikiLeaks and the leaker has blood on their hands. Journalists
investigated and found that there was no evidence for that. So, just
the very idea that he should spend decades in prison, let alone be faced
with life on parole, given what it is that he actually did and the
consequences of it, is really remarkable.
But even more
specifically, the theory that the government is proceeding on is one
that’s really quite radical and menacing. That is, that although he
never communicated with, quote-unquote, "the enemy," which the
government has said is al-Qaeda, although there’s no evidence that he
intended in any way to benefit al-Qaeda—he could have sold this
information, made a great deal of money, had he wanted to. All the
evidence indicates that he did it for exactly the reason that he said,
with the intent that he said, which was to spark reform and to bring
attention to these abuses. The government is proceeding on the theory
that simply because the information that’s leaked ended up in the hands
of al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda had an interest in it, that constitutes aiding
and abetting the enemy. And what that essentially does is it converts
every form of whistleblowing or leaks into a form of treason. There’s
evidence that Osama bin Laden was very interested, for example, in Bob
Woodward’s book—books, which have all sorts of classified information in
them at a much higher level of secrecy than anything Bradley Manning
leaked. That would mean that not only the leakers to Woodward, the
highest-level members of government, but even Woodward himself, could be
depicted as a traitor or be accused of aiding and abetting the enemy.
It’s an extraordinarily menacing theory to journalism and to
whistleblowing and leaking.
AMY GOODMAN: The judge in the case,
Denise Lind, asked an interesting question of prosecutors. She said,
Would you be going after him in the same way if he had given this
information to The New York Times, as opposed to WikiLeaks?
GLENN GREENWALD: Right, and they said, "Absolutely."
AMY GOODMAN: They said, "Yes, Ma’am."
GLENN GREENWALD: And
there’s even an indication that you could take this theory and use it
to prosecute journalists, as well. Obviously journalists are not
subjected to the uniform rules of military justice, but there are
theories that the Obama—that the Bush administration has suggested, and
that the Obama administration has even played around with, that if
journalists are participating in or somehow encouraging leaks of serious
classified information, that they, too, could be prosecuted under the
Espionage Act for endangering American national security. And so, it
isn’t just a threat to Bradley Manning, it’s not just a threat to
whistleblowers, it’s really a threat to the very act of investigative
journalists. And if you talk to real investigative journalists, even one
at establishment newspapers like The New York Times, Jim Risen—the most
decorated investigative journalist in the country, one of them, the
Pulitzer Prize winner, has himself been implicated and drawn into some
of these cases—there is an extraordinary chilling effect that has
descended, by design, over the entire news-gathering process.
AMY GOODMAN: I
just wanted to go to some of Bradley Manning’s quotes. Testifying
before a military court Thursday, U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning said
of his motivation to leak classified documents, quote, "I believed that
if the general public, especially the American public, had access to
the information ... this could spark a domestic debate on the role of
the military and our foreign policy in general." He added, quote, "I
believed that these cables would not damage the United States. However, I
believed these cables would be embarrassing." He said he took the
information to WikiLeaks only after he was rebuffed by The Washington
Post and The New York Times. It was interesting. He said he had gone
to The New York Times and The Washington Post first.
GLENN GREENWALD: Right.
Well, what’s really interesting about that statement—obviously he’s
making the statement in court when he’s facing a prospect of life in
prison, and so some people might call the sincerity of those statements
into question. The interesting thing to me, though, is that in the chat
logs that were published over a year ago with the government informant
who turned him in, he said very much the same thing while he thought he
was speaking in complete confidence, to somebody who had promised him
confidentiality, about what led him on this path, that he had become
disillusioned first about the Iraq war when he discovered that people
they were detaining weren’t really insurgents but were simply opponents
of the Maliki government, and he brought it to his superiors, and they
ignored him. He then looked at documents that showed extreme amounts of
criminality and deceit and violence, that he could no longer in good
conscience participate in concealing. It was really an act of
conscience, pure conscience and heroism, that he did, knowing he was
sacrificing his liberty. And what’s so persuasive to me isn’t just this
extremely deliberative, thought-out statement that he gave in court, but
how closely it tracks to what he thought was a private conversation
explaining his behavior, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who is covering this trial?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well,
what’s really fascinating is that there have been several individuals
who have been covering every single step of the trial, and almost none
of them works for a major media outlet. There are independent
journalists—like Kevin Gosztola, who writes for Firedoglake, the liberal
blog; there is Alexa O’Brien, who is simply an independent journalist
who writes on the Internet and covers her own expenses and operates
independently—who are the real sources for the coverage of the Manning
trial.
The Guardian, the newspaper for which I write, has actually
done a very good job, as well, of sending a reporter most of the time
and covering the proceedings, but for a long time The New York
Times simply ignored the trial. The newspaper that battled the Nixon
administration over the Pentagon Papers, that was a beneficiary not only
of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaks but also Bradley Manning’s leaks, simply
ignored it and had to be shamed into finally sending somebody by those
independent journalists, who kept banging on the table, saying, "Why
isn’t The New York Times here?" And then, finally, their own public
editor said it’s actually disgraceful that The New York Times hasn’t
done more—or done anything—to cover this trial.
And I know, as
somebody who writes about this case a lot, who has an extreme amount of
interest in it, that I get my news from Kevin Gosztola, Alexa O’Brien,
independent journalists who are at the trial, from The Guardian, as
well. But in general, American establishment media outlets—I don’t think
the name Bradley Manning has been mentioned on MSNBC once in the last
two years, except maybe on a weekend morning show. He just doesn’t exist
there. He doesn’t exist on CNN. It just has been blacked out.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the transcripts of decisions, of what’s going on in court?
GLENN GREENWALD: Well,
the irony of this proceeding is that what led Bradley Manning to do
what he did was that virtually everything the U.S. government does is
cloaked in secrecy, everything it does of any significance, and that
whistleblowing and leaks, unauthorized leaks, is the only way we find
out about what our government is doing. And a perfect microcosm
illustrating how true that is is the Manning proceeding itself. There is
more secrecy at this proceeding than there is even at Guantánamo
military proceedings under George Bush. The docket is often classified
and kept secret. Court orders are kept secret. There is no transcript
available, so Alexa O’Brien had to transcribe his statement, Bradley
Manning’s statement, using whatever instruments that she could. It
really is a mockery of justice, what has taken place, and it really
reflects the motivations that led Manning to do this in the first place.
AMY GOODMAN: The decision that came down from the Supreme Court on surveillance, you see it in some ways tying into this.
GLENN GREENWALD: I
see it completely connected. That decision last week—in 2008, the
Democratic-led Congress passed a law essentially authorizing massive new
surveillance powers, allowing the U.S. government to surveil and
eavesdrop on the conversation of American citizens without
warrants. And
instantly, theACLU filed a lawsuit saying that this law, this major new
eavesdropping law, is unconstitutional. And they got all kind of
journalists and activists and human rights groups to say that the mere
existence of this eavesdropping power severely harms them. Five years
later, the Supreme Court said, because this eavesdropping program is
shrouded in secrecy, nobody can prove that they’re being subjected to
the eavesdropping, and therefore nobody has standing to sue; we won’t
even allow the law to be tested in court about whether it violates the
Constitution.
So, this has happened over and over. The government
has insulated its conduct from what are supposed to be the legitimate
means of accountability and transparency—judicial proceedings, media
coverage, FOIA requests—and has really erected this impenetrable wall of
secrecy, using what are supposed to be the institutions designed to
prevent that. That is what makes whistleblowing all the more imperative.
It really is the only remaining avenue that we have to learn about what
the government is doing. And that is why the government is so intent on
waging this war against whistleblowers, because it’s the only thing
left that shines light on what they were doing. And those who want to
stigmatize whistleblowing as illegal would have a much better case if
there were legitimate institutions that were functioning that allow the
kind of transparency that we’re supposed to have. But those have been
all shut down, which is what makes whistleblowing all the more
imperative and the war on whistleblowing all the more odious.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re
talking to Glenn Greenwald. He’s a columnist and blogger for The
Guardian. He’s author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law
Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. And he is a
constitutional lawyer.
