http://news.linktv.org Link TV News Videos (Filtered by topics: United States v. Bradley Manning) en-us Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:12:00 -0700 Copyright 2011 Link Media, Inc. http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-speaks-army-whistleblowers-court-testimony-leaked?start=0 A leaked audio recording has emerged of the statement Army whistleblower Bradley Manning delivered at his pre-trial hearing in military court late last month. Manning acknowledged he gave hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, saying he wanted to show the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan." This is the first time Manning's voice has been heard publicly since he was arrested nearly three years ago. We air excerpts of his remarks, hearing Manning describe in his own voice the moment he decided to release the documents, and the outrage he felt at the "Collateral Murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq. <br /> Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:12:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-speaks-army-whistleblowers-court-testimony-leaked Bradley Manning, United States v. Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, WikiLeaks, Afghanistan, Iraq, US Army, Afghanistan War, Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present, Military justice A leaked audio recording has emerged of the statement Army whistleblower Bradley Manning delivered at his pre-trial hearing in military court late last month. Manning acknowledged he gave hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, saying he wanted to show the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan." This is the first time Manning's voice has been heard publicly since he was arrested nearly three years ago. We air excerpts of his remarks, hearing Manning describe in his own voice the moment he decided to release the documents, and the outrage he felt at the "Collateral Murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq. http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-pleads-guilty-to-lesser-charge-in-wikileaks-case?start=0 Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking thousands of secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, has pleaded guilty to some of the lesser charges he faces at a military hearing in Washington DC. Washington Correspondent Matt Frei reports. Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:06:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-pleads-guilty-to-lesser-charge-in-wikileaks-case Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, United States v. Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico (newspaper), Foreign policy of the United States, Military justice, Plea Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of leaking thousands of secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, has pleaded guilty to some of the lesser charges he faces at a military hearing in Washington DC. Washington Correspondent Matt Frei reports. http://news.linktv.org/videos/wikileaks-whistleblower-bradley-manning-describes-torture?start=0 A military judge has approved the verbiage of Private First Class Bradley Manning's appeal where he would plead guilty to some charges of sharing sensitive information to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The judge has yet to approve the deal, but if agreed upon it could land Manning 16 years behind bars. On Thursday, Manning recalled his treatment while being detained in both Kuwait and Quantico, Virginia. Liz Wahl has more. <br /> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:51:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/wikileaks-whistleblower-bradley-manning-describes-torture Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, United States v. Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, Military justice, Solitary confinement, Sleep deprivation, Plea bargain, Suicide watch, Torture A military judge has approved the verbiage of Private First Class Bradley Manning's appeal where he would plead guilty to some charges of sharing sensitive information to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The judge has yet to approve the deal, but if agreed upon it could land Manning 16 years behind bars. On Thursday, Manning recalled his treatment while being detained in both Kuwait and Quantico, Virginia. Liz Wahl has more. http://news.linktv.org/videos/exclusive-julian-assange-on-wikileaks-bradley-manning-surveillance-state?start=0 In his most extended interview in months, Julian Assange speaks to Democracy Now! from inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been holed up for nearly six months. Assange vowed WikiLeaks would persevere despite attacks against it. On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the credit card company Visa did not break the European Union's anti-trust rules by blocking donations to WikiLeaks.<br /> Thu, 29 Nov 2012 09:09:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/exclusive-julian-assange-on-wikileaks-bradley-manning-surveillance-state Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, United States v. Bradley Manning, European Commission, United States, Cypherpunk, Whistleblower, European Union, Pentagon In his most extended interview in months, Julian Assange speaks to Democracy Now! from inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been holed up for nearly six months. Assange vowed WikiLeaks would persevere despite attacks against it. On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the credit card company Visa did not break the European Union's anti-trust rules by blocking donations to WikiLeaks. "Since the blockade was erected in December 2010, WikiLeaks has lost 95 percent of donations that were attempted to be transferred to us over that period ... our rightful and natural growth, our ability to publish as much as we would like, our ability to defend ourselves and our sources has been diminished by that blockade." Assange also speaks about his new book, "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet." "The mass surveillance and mass interception that is occurring to all of us now who use the Internet is also a mass transfer of power from individuals into extremely sophisticated state and private intelligence organizations and their cronies," he says. Assange also discusses the United States' targeting of WikiLeaks. "The Pentagon is maintaining a line that WikiLeaks inherently as an institution, that tells military and governmental whistleblowers to step forward with information, is a crime. They allege that we are criminal moving forward," Assange says. "Now the new interpretation of the Espionage Act that the government is trying to hammer into the legal system, and which the department of justice is complicit in, would mean the end of national security journalism in the United States." http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-offers-plea-on-wikileaks-charges?start=0 Accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning is ready to plead guilty to some, but not all, of the charges against him, his lawyer says. Manning, who has been in jail since May 2010, is willing to admit providing classified information to WikiLeaks but will not plead guilty to espionage or aiding the enemy.<br /> Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:45:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/bradley-manning-offers-plea-on-wikileaks-charges Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, US Army, Classified information, Democracy Now!, Whistleblower, United States v. Bradley Manning, Military justice, Court-martial, United States Accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning is ready to plead guilty to some, but not all, of the charges against him, his lawyer says. Manning, who has been in jail since May 2010, is willing to admit providing classified information to WikiLeaks but will not plead guilty to espionage or aiding the enemy. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012?start=883 For just the third time since he was arrested over two years ago, alleged Army whistleblower Bradley Manning was seen by the public this week at a pretrial hearing in a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland. Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:05:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012 Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, Whistleblower, United States v. Bradley Manning, United States, Court-martial, Trial, Military justice, 2012 al-Qubair massacre, Bil'in For just the third time since he was arrested over two years ago, alleged Army whistleblower Bradley Manning was seen by the public this week at a pretrial hearing in a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland. The 24-year-old private is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, including secret files on the Iraq and Afghan wars. Manning's attorneys are seeking the dismissal of 10 of the counts against Manning as well as the release of hundreds of thousands of documents relating to the alleged leak. We speak with Kevin Gosztola, a civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake.com who has been attending Manning's pretrial hearing. For just the third time since he was arrested over two years ago, alleged Army whistleblower Bradley Manning was seen by the public this week. His three-day pretrial hearing wraps up today before a military court at Fort Meade in Maryland. Manning faces 22 charges, including the capital offense of aiding the enemy, as well as violating the Espionage Act, computer fraud and theft of records. The 24-year-old private is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, including secret files on the Iraq and Afghan wars. Manning's attorneys are seeking the dismissal of 10 of the counts against him. His defense team says the counts are either unlawfully vague or fall short of amounting to a prosecutable offense. Manning's military trial is scheduled for September. Earlier this week, his legal team submitted a motion calling for the U.S. government to release hundreds of thousands of documents relating to the alleged leak. The government is reportedly in possession of 250,000 pages of documents related to the case but has refused to turn them over to Manning's defense team. To find out more about the military trial, we're going to Washington, D.C., to talk to Kevin Gosztola, civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake. He's been attending Manning's pretrial hearing. He's co-author with Greg Mitchell of the ebook Truth and Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Kevin. Tell us what's happened so far in the pretrial hearing. Well, to sum it up, I would say that this proceeding has been all about discovery of evidence. David Coombs, who is Manning's defense lawyer, has been trying to get the government to provide him with documents that would show just how the government responded to the leaks that came from the WikiLeaks disclosures. Particularly, he's been interested in the U.S. embassy cables. So, a lot of the focus in the past couple months, at least going back to March, has been about getting the State Department damage assessment report. And that's how we saw State Department witnesses taking the stand yesterday during the proceeding. In addition to that, we've also seen, you know, they've litigated trying to get the dismissal of computer fraud charges and arguing that he could not have exceeded authorized access because he did in fact have clearance for his computer. We've had a discussion in the courtroom about getting access to an FBI law enforcement file. And so, the main focus of this proceeding has really been about forcing the discovery of evidence. And the effort by his attorney to get some of the charges dismissed—what's the difference between those that the attorneys are not trying to get dismissed at this point and those that they are? Well, going back to March, throughout all of these motion hearings, they have made some attempt to dismiss charges. For the record, they did try to get all charges dismissed, because they believe that the military prosecutors and government haven't been doing a due diligence search for information that would have to do with whether Bradley Manning is guilty or innocent, or it could be used to reduce his sentence if he is in fact convicted. And so, in this hearing in June, these charges have broken down to being espionage charges and also the two computer fraud charges. And this particular set has come up in the proceeding mainly because this is where Coombs is at as a lawyer. He's tried to get other charges dropped, and so far the judge has not been—has not entertained these motions and sided with the defense. Judge Denise Lind has ordered the U.S. government to hand over crucial documents, including the State Department's preliminary damage assessment of Manning's actions to the defense. Manning's lawyers are arguing the information is vital to Manning's defense. What is coming of this, Kevin? There's been a huge development in the last month with this assessment report, in that the defense is actually going to get this draft. Now, the government tried to, in May, argue that this draft only contains speculative information. And in court in June, the press and public heard that the judge was not going to buy this argument. That's not a legitimate reason for the defense to not get to see the contents. And so then what became the issue with this damage assessment report was Coombs has the document, but he wanted to know if it was the most up-to-date version of the report, because it stops on August 2011. And so, three witnesses were called yesterday. One of the witnesses, Rena Bitter, is actually the member of the operations center that oversaw the crisis response, who was in that center. She participated in that effort. And so, these people were there, and they were testifying about the contents and helping David Coombs to realize and understand exactly what was in the assessment, but this also became an effort to figure out what other records might the State Department have. And Kevin, what about Manning himself, his demeanor in the courtroom? He's rarely been seen throughout this whole several years now. Does he have any interaction with other people in the courtroom? How does he seem? He doesn't—he has very limited interaction with people who are in the audience. He's mostly unaware of what supporters are doing, as evidenced by the fact that he became—he became aware during this proceeding that there were in fact people in the audience that had "truth" shirts, and he smiled at this, that there were people here that were supporting him. During the proceeding, he's—sometimes he's tuned in, sometimes he's writing, sometimes he's scribbling. He pays attention. There's—sometimes when the proceeding gets very interesting, you can tell he's engaged, he's talking to his lawyer. And for the most part, you know, he's behaving like somebody who was 24 years old would if they were in a military proceeding where they were largely unfamiliar with the legalese that is being discussed. And Kevin, you, also Democracy Now! and other media organizations and journalists, filed a petition last month in attempt to grant the public and press access to more information about the court-martial of Manning. So far the military court has refused to make public the government's motion papers, the court's own orders and transcripts of the proceedings. Where is this going? Judge Lind announced at the opening of the proceeding that there was this petition before the court of appeals, the Army Criminal Court of Appeals, and that she did not think that there needed to be a stay of proceedings, so there wasn't any reason for the proceeding to be put on hold so that this could be decided. The key issue here is that, in the proceeding, as a reporter, I don't get to go look at these decisions, these motions, some of these orders in the aftermath. And that means that I'm listening to what is being said in real time. I'm basically trying to do my own transcript of the proceeding in order to put together reports for readers after the proceedings are concluded for the day. And this is very problematic because, in some ways, it's hard to confirm what is being said. I know, for an example, that you have misspellings of names. You have trouble with numbers and key details. And it's hard because you're putting all the burden on the military briefer to provide you with information. You're also trying to keep up with what is being read, and it just—it's totally unreasonable that there wouldn't be any sort of documentation provided to the press and public so that they could confirm the accuracy of the reporting. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012?start=1484 Bradley Manning appears at a pretrial hearing in a military court ahead of his September trial, as a new book documents his trajectory from a difficult childhood to his current predicament. And more from the Democracy Now! interview with the filmmakers behind "Five Broken Cameras," a new documentary that tells the story of a West Bank village's resistance to the Israeli separation barrier. Plus headlines, and more.<br /> Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:05:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-8-2012 Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, Whistleblower, United States v. Bradley Manning, United States, Court-martial, Trial, Military justice, 2012 al-Qubair massacre, Bil'in The new book, "Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History," tracks Manning's trajectory from growing up as a gay teen in small-town Oklahoma to joining the U.S. Army, where he found success as an intelligence analyst before being charged with the largest U.S. intelligence breach on record. We speak with the book's author, Denver Nicks. "In many ways Bradley Manning's story is the story of the United States in the post-9/11 era," Nicks says. "[His] life is sort of quintessentially American, in that he's gay at a time when gay rights goes mainstream. He joins the Army — and as an intelligence analyst, no less — at a time when the national security state really starts to metastasize into something that we have never seen before. ... We have more people with more access to more secret information than ever before, while we are living in the post-9/11 era of foreign policy conducted, as Dick Cheney said, in the shadows. We are more dependent than ever on leaks to know what our government is doing. Leaks are not only inevitable, but necessary. ... Bradley Manning had access to an extraordinary amount of classified information — more, in fact, than he leaked." In addition to Kevin Gosztola, we're joined by Denver Nicks, author of a new book on Bradley Manning called Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History. He's also a regular contributor to The Daily Beast. Kevin Gosztola is a civil liberties blogger at Firedoglake. Why did you decide to write this book? The Bradley Manning story is one of—easily one of the most important stories of the last decade, certainly. In many ways, Bradley Manning's story is the story of the United States in the post-9/11 era. Bradley Manning's life is sort of quintessentially American, in that he was—he's gay at a time when gay rights goes mainstream. He joins the Army—and as an intelligence analyst, no less—at a time when the national security state really starts to metastasize into something that we have never seen before. And, of course, his life intersects with this sort of out-of-control growth in the secrecy state that has existed since 9/11. It's a hugely important story, and I wanted to tell it from the beginning and get into Manning's life and who he is. And you focus quite a bit on his early life, his friendships and his development as a geek, before he even got into the military. And could you talk about that, his early life and his family? Yeah. I mean, I think that's an important part of the story that has been—I wouldn't say it's been overlooked. It's been covered. I mean, it's a part of his life that other figures in the media have talked about and looked into, but I didn't feel that it had been looked into with enough depth and honesty before. Brad, of course, grew up in Crescent, Oklahoma, not far from where I'm from. I come from Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the circumstances of his early life were really humble. He grew up in a farmhouse outside of a small town. And as I said before, his life is sort of quintessentially American in that he becomes deeply interested in computers and sort of a computer whiz, as it were, at a time when the computer becomes the essential form of—the essential tool for communication. He's gay in a small conservative town in Oklahoma. And in short, due to the fact that he has this working-class background, he—and his family falls apart when he's about 13 years old, he has a pretty difficult youth. Bradley Manning joined the Army, like many, many young men and women do in this country, because it was a great opportunity for him, and, frankly, because it was a great opportunity for the Army. It's too often overlooked, I think, that Bradley Manning was very well positioned to be a successful intelligence analyst in the United States Army, and by all accounts, in many ways, was a successful intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army. Certainly had troubles along the way, but he was good at his job, and the Army saw that. One of the interesting aspects of the book is you sort of counterpose the early life of Julian Assange, as well, of him growing up in Australia and his run-ins, as a hacker, with the law in Australia. But then you point out the fact that both Assange and Bradley Manning were influenced by a Richard—the work of Richard Stallman, an advocate of free software and a more open internet. Could you talk about Stallman and how he influenced both of them? Right. Richard Stallman is sort of one of the guru figures in the hacker community, if you will. He's the primary proponent and the founder of what's called the Free Software Foundation, the primary proponent of the notion of free software, which is about, as Stallman would say, free as in freedom, not free beer. The idea basically is that the—is that information should be free. This is one of the places where this idea comes from, that the fundamental currency of politics and culture is information and that information should be free-flowing for a healthy society, for a healthy culture and healthy politics and, in Stallman's case, for a healthy computer. Julian Assange was part of this hacker culture in the '80s and early '90s, and continues to be, but he was at that time. And like many people who are involved in that scene, Assange gets involved in writing open-source software, software based on the premises that Richard Stallman founded, the sort of free software ideals. Bradley Manning, later in his life, becomes good friends with a fellow named Danny Clark, who worked for Richard Stallman at the Free Software Foundation, and to some degree, I think, became interested in Stallman's ideas and the notion that information should be free. So talk about his trajectory from a computer geek, young kid from Oklahoma—interestingly, right near Kerr-McGee and near where Karen Silkwood was killed— That's right. —one of the major whistleblowers of this country, anti-nuclear whistleblower. She was killed leaving a meeting from Crescent, Oklahoma. That's right. It's strange that Karen Silkwood comes from—that she died right outside of Crescent. It's a very, very small town. And, I mean, the odds that two of the world's most famous whistleblowers would come from this small town are tiny. And talk about how he goes from what he was doing in high school to the military. Right, his—so, Bradley goes to high school in the U.K., in Wales. And he goes back to Oklahoma to get out of a bad situation. He was living with his mom, who was dealing with some health problems and alcohol abuse problems. So he goes back to the United States, moves in with his father. And that situation becomes riddled with conflict pretty quickly. Basically, it comes to a point where he gets kicked out of the house, he's got to leave, and he's homeless in Tulsa for a while. Goes on a brief journey from Tulsa to Chicago, lands in Maryland, living with his aunt, and he's working at a Starbucks. Essentially, he's—Bradley Manning is a very ambitious and very bright, thoughtful kid. He knew that he was made for more than working at a pizza parlor in Tulsa or spending the rest of his life working at a Starbucks in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. And he, apparently, after prodding from his father and probably after interacting with people in the national security, in the government universe around in these D.C. suburbs, decides to join the Army, or to look into it, anyway. He made the decision without consulting with many people in his family, announced to his aunt, who he was living with at the time, that he had already joined. When he went to her and told her he was thinking about it, he had already signed his papers. It was the best option available to him, frankly, and a good option for him. One wishes that—you know, as I've said before, he joined the Army before the financial crisis hit in this country; however, if you are in the sort of bottom working-class rung of our socioeconomic structure, the financial crisis began in about 1980. And that's the financial crisis Bradley Manning was living in. That's why joining the Army was the best option available to him. He wanted to get a college education and didn't have a clear route to one. You also chart out that there were numerous indications throughout his life of some amount of anger management problems, emotional instability, that manifested itself in his early life as well as in the military. Right. Could you talk about that? Yeah. I mean, that's certainly true. There are—there are these moments in his life when he manifests emotional problems, emotional instability. It's important to note that if you take any life and put it under a microscope, you're likely to find instances in which a person appears to be crazy. I'm sure—I know that would be true of me. I assume it would be true of—well, I won't speak for the both of you— Never of Amy. Never of Amy. Certainly not Amy, but maybe Juan and I. So there's that fact, you know, that people have moments of emotional instability. Everybody does. However, it is clear that Bradley Manning—I mean, he had a rather difficult life. It's not that he had nothing to be upset about. And the moments of emotional instability manifest themselves throughout his young life and leading up to the Army. And there are indications that the Army, had systems been functioning as they are designed to function, should probably have revoked his security clearance before he—before he was arrested, certainly. There was even discussion about leaving him in the United States when his unit deployed to Iraq. Because? Because he had—because he had had these moments of outburst while he was a soldier at Fort Drum awaiting deployment, enough to cause concern with some of his superiors that maybe he wasn't in the right state of mind to deploy to Iraq. Ultimately, the exigencies of a protracted war won out in the calculus, and the Army needed bright, good intelligence analysts, and that's what Bradley Manning is—was—not an intelligence analyst anymore. But he's still—he's still a soldier in the Army. And so, very quickly, he goes to Iraq. Where is he? And what does he have access to? Talk about the Lady—what he is charged with in the Lady Gaga CDs. Right. Well, he's—so he goes to Iraq, and he had long had access to substantial amounts of information, more information—I mean, Bradley Manning and his peers had more access to state secrets than people in their position of any previous era, because we classify more information than ever and because we, at the same time, share information between agencies in an effort to bulk up our national security and help our intelligence agents do their work. So Bradley Manning had access to an extraordinary amount of classified information—more, in fact, than he leaked. He goes to Iraq, and he finds himself, as he says, troubled by some of the things he sees. On the other hand, I don't have the impression that Bradley Manning is a pacifist or was wholly against the war, certainly not when he arrived there. In fact, he talks in some of the chat logs that I quote in my book, chat logs with a friend of his—he talks about wanting to—about considering applying to West Point, about maybe working—about maybe reenlisting and working in the United States Cyber Command. So he has access to an extraordinary amount information, and he's accused of obviously using that access to download information onto—well, initially, apparently, onto CDs and transferring that from his work computer to his computer in his—what's called a CHU, in his room on base, which is—which was only possible, one should note, because it was a very common practice at FOB Hammer, and apparently in many places in Iraq, to burn information onto CDs, classified information onto unmarked discs, and transfer it out of the secure facility, primarily in order to share it with the Iraqi authorities. Denver, you focus a great deal in Private, the book about Bradley Manning, on his sexuality. Why? Yeah. Well, sexuality is an important part of all of our identities, for one thing. For Bradley Manning, it was an important part—it was an exceptionally important part of his identity socially and his identity politically. I think that much too much has been made of the notion that Bradley Manning lashed out at the Army because he was angry about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I have never seen any evidence to support that suggestion. And frankly, that comes—I think that comes from the right-wing blogosphere, and there's nothing to back it up. However, Brad was—he was very close friends with a fellow named Toby, who was and is a prominent gay rights activist and a politico in the D.C. area. Brad was deeply concerned personally about the fight for marriage equality. These are important driving factors for him ideologically. So that's why I focus on it. And, of course, his relationship is a hugely important part of his life, leading up to the point when he's arrested. You raise the issue of whether he should be called Breanna or Bradley. Uh-huh, right. I mean, that's a—that's a difficult issue. What Amy's referencing, of course, is the fact that, not long before he was arrested, Brad apparently created a sort of—I'm not sure what the proper terminology is, but he apparently created an alter ego for a transgendered self that he intended to become that he named Breanna. One asks—you know, one asks oneself if the proper thing to call Brad Manning is in fact Breanna. When Brad Manning indicates to the world that he is now Breanna Manning, I'll call him Breanna, certainly. I mean, I'll absolutely respect that. But as of right now, I don't think we have a clear indication of what exactly Manning prefers to be called. You also obviously point out the fact that, in this new metastasized national security state that we have with all of this emphasis on gathering of information, that the system itself becomes more vulnerable, because the more that it gathers so much information, centralizes it, shares it, the more that individuals like Bradley Manning, a mere private—he may have been very skilled, but he was just a private in the military—can have access, can get keys into this trove of intelligence. That's absolutely right. As I—I wrote in The Daily Beast just today about this instance in which, last week, the New York Times ran these two cover stories about insider information in the Obama administration, one about the origins of the Stuxnet virus and the other about the so-called kill list and the drone assassination program, both of which were widely believed to reflect well on the president for political electoral purposes. I'm not sure that both of those stories do reflect well on the president, but certainly they were interpreted to. Both of those—both of those stories quote high-level, confidential sources divulging classified information. Senator McCain has made a big deal about this, as others have, that there is apparently this flow of classified information emanating from—from the White House, but there doesn't seem to be a concerted effort on the part of the White House to crack down on those leaks. Legislators have announced the intention to introduce legislation to crack down on leaks even further, but that doesn't get at the source of the problem. The problem, as I say, is not that the ship is too leaky, it's that the ship is too full. We have more people with more access to more secret information than ever before, while we are living in the post-9/11 era of a foreign policy conducted, as Dick Cheney said, in the shadows. We are more dependent than ever on leaks to know what our government is doing. Leaks are not only inevitable, but necessary. So, as I say in the piece, if the administration is leaking information for political gain, it's reprehensible, but the least of our problems. Finally, what happened to Bradley Manning while in jail? We've just passed the two-year anniversary of him being imprisoned. That's right. And what we understand has taken place, what a number of human rights groups and leaders have called treatment that amounted to torture— That's right. —taken from Quantico—taken from Iraq to Kuwait, then held at Quantico—describe his treatment—and now moved on. And we shouldn't forget that this happened. I mean, it was a miscarriage of justice that I think every reasonable person recognizes was a miscarriage of justice at this point. After he was—Bradley Manning was moved to Kuwait initially after his arrest, and then he was taken from Kuwait to Quantico Marine Base, a brig that was not apparently designed as a pretrial confinement facility, though it served that purpose in this instance. Manning was deeply, deeply fraught when he was first arrested, as I certainly would be in that position. But shortly after he was moved to Quantico, the mental health specialists at Quantico determined that he didn't have to be—that he didn't need to be kept under suicide watch. Suicide watch is the—was the pretense for keeping him in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement. Bradley Manning's attorney, David Coombs, tried, from very early on, to get his client moved into lesser—to less harsh conditions. He was, for example— Stripped naked at night. He—early on, he was—he wasn't stripped naked at night exactly, but he was like not allowed writing utensils in his cell, allowed only one piece of reading material at a time, had to surrender all of his clothes but his underwear in the evening, had to respond verbally to guards to make sure that he was still living but could not converse with guards, and kept in his cell for like 23 hours a day, one hour a day allowed to walk figure eights in an empty gymnasium, essentially. Later, the situation gets much, much worse, and he is apparently—there's a moment that he talks about in a complaint that he filed, that is attorney posted on his website, in which the Marine guards, after a protest outside Quantico protesting his treatment, the Marine guards come to him and basically just start harassing him. You know, no answer is the right answer. They are yelling at him. More guards than usual are escorting him around. That situation becomes more aggravated, as he's stripped naked and is sort of forced to stand at attention naked, which one should note—forced to stand at ease, which is with the feet placed about shoulder width and the hands behind the back—not a good position to sort of modestly cover oneself in front of strangers. So that situation—that situation got totally out of control. It was, frankly, shameful, and at this point—and ultimately totally backfired on the government. I mean, to be perfectly honest with you, I think that Bradley Manning's treatment at Quantico, while deeply unfortunate and a terrible ordeal to go through, was ultimately a positive for him. He raised money, because of what the government did to him, for his legal defense, and was impressed, I think, more sympathetically than ever before on the public mindset. The government's overreaction in that case backfired on the government, made them look—made certain officials look ridiculous. The Quantico brig was ultimately closed. And Bradley Manning has been moved to Fort Leavenworth. Right. We're going to have to wrap it up there, but I want to thank you very much for being with us, Denver Nicks, author of Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History.