Chelsea Manning -- whistleblower, torture survivor, hero -- is back behind bars for refusing to testify before a grand jury about her whistleblowing activity; for 16 days, she has been held in solitary confinement in a cell for 22 hours/day, not able to speak to others, denied access to the law library, and prohibited from having reading materials.

Here is a statement from Chelsea Resists!, Chelsea Mannings Support Committee.

We condemn the solitary confinement that Chelsea Manning has been subjected to during her incarceration at William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center.

Since her arrival at Truesdale on March 8th, Chelsea has been placed in administrative segregation[1], or adseg, a term designed to sound less cruel than solitary confinement. However, Chelsea has been kept in her cell for 22 hours a day. This treatment qualifies as Solitary Confinement[2].

Chelsea cant be out of her cell while any other prisoners are out, so she cannot talk to other people, or visit the law library, and has no access to books or reading material. She has not been outside for 16 days. She is permitted to make phone calls and move about outside her cell between 1 and 3 a.m..

As today is Day 16, Chelsea is now in Prolonged Solitary, as defined by Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture:[3]

I have defined prolonged solitary confinement as any period in excess of 15 days. This definition reflects the fact that most of the scientific literature shows that, after 15 days, certain changes in brain functions occur and the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible. Prolonged solitary confinement must be absolutely prohibited, because it always amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and may even constitute torture

The jail says keeping high-profile prisoners in adseg is policy for the protection of all prisoners, but there is no reason to believe jail officials view Chelsea as either a target or a risk. If Truesdale wants to prioritize Chelseas health and welfare, as they consistently claim, then they should make sure she is able to have contact with other people in the jail.

We have worked to monitor Chelseas well-being since her arrival at Truesdale. In her first week she contracted a bacterial infection which has since been resolved by antibiotics. More recently, she experienced the shift between the prolonged under stimulation of 22-hour lock-down and a 45-minute social visit as so jarring that she threw up.

Although the facility has accommodated Chelseas medical needs, including hormone medications and daily post-surgery treatment, keeping her under these conditions for over 15 days amounts to torture, possibly in an attempt to coerce her into compliance with the Grand Jury. The Mendez Report notes this tactic: I have observed that solitary confinement is often used as a deliberate method to obtain information or confessions. In such conditions, confinement amounts to a coercive tool and constitutes a cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and possibly torture.[4]

Chelsea is a principled person, and she has made clear that while this kind of treatment will harm her, and will almost certainly leave lasting scars, it will never make her change her mind about cooperating with the grand jury.

It bears repeating that while solitary confinement should not be used for anyone, it is especially immoral to place Chelsea in solitary, when she has not been accused of, charged with, nor convicted of any new crime.

We call upon the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center to remove Chelsea from Administrative Segregation and these conditions which effectively constitute solitary confinement immediately.

Stop Holding Chelsea Manning In Solitary Confinement [Chelsea Resists]

Last week, Chelsea Manning announced that she would fight a subpoena to appear before a Grand Jury and testify about her whistleblowing activities, citing her concern that "testimony before grand juries is secret, grand juries can create fear by suggesting that some members of a political community may be secretly cooperating with the government. In []

Last November, the Pentagon's Inspector General presented Congress with a "little-noticed" report on whistleblowing in the US military, revealing that those who come forward with claims of misconduct including sexual harassment and safety problems face a "culture of retaliation" including black marks on their service records, demotion, and suspension of security clearance; the IG also []

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Chelsea Manning is being held in prolonged solitary ...

Supporters of U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning are demanding she be released from solitary confinement, in which she has been held for 17 days since refusing to answer a grand jury's questions.

Chelsea Resists!, Manning's support committee, released a statement over the weekend denouncing her treatment and invoking the United Nations' own statements about the dangers and injustice of isolation in prisons.

"The United States Government has already tortured Chelsea Manning for months. She attempted suicide twice while incarcerated. Now they're torturing her again." Fight for the Future"We condemn the solitary confinement that Chelsea Manning has been subjected to during her incarceration at William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center," the group wrote.

"Chelsea can't be out of her cell while any other prisoners are out, so she cannot talk to other people, or visit the law library, and has no access to books or reading material," the committee added.

Other supporters on social media joined the call for Manning to be released.

This is outrageous. The UN considers anything more than 15 days in solitary confinement to be a form of torture.

The United States Government has already tortured Chelsea Manning for months. She attempted suicide twice while incarcerated. Now they're torturing her again. https://t.co/ANMTaZxe4d

Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) March 23, 2019

Chelsea Manning is now in solitary confinement, one of the cruelest methods of imprisonment, all for simply refusing to testify. This is horrifying and we should fight this tooth and nail.

FREE CHELSEA MANNING (@AdequateEmily) March 23, 2019

Chelsea Manning has been held in solitary since her confinement 16 days ago. She has lost weight and is only allowed to leave her cell from 1 am to 3 am. This is torture, plain and simple. ADC needs to put Chelsea into general population IMMEDIATELY. https://t.co/TOdT1b6Qz4

Ella Fassler (@EllaFassler) March 23, 2019

Manning has been held in isolation for 22 hours per day, with one break from 1:00 to 3:00am. Her treatment qualifies as prolonged solitary confinement according to Juan Mendez, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture.

"After 15 days," Mendez wrote in 2014, "certain changes in brain functions occur and the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible. Prolonged solitary confinement must be absolutely prohibited, because it always amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and may even constitute torture."

The group also condemned the prison system's use of the term "administrative segregation," or adseg, to whitewash Manning's treatment.

The term was "designed to sound less cruel than 'solitary confinement,'" wrote the committee. "However, Chelsea has been kept in her cell for 22 hours a day. This treatment qualifies as solitary confinement."

Manning arrived at the Truesdale detention center in Alexandria, Virginia on March 8 after appearing before a grand jury, which she says interrogated her about her 2010 decision to leak U.S. military documents to Wikileaks, making public possible U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Manning said she had already answered similar questions in 2010 when she was court-martialed before serving seven years of a 35-year prison sentence, and answered the grand jury by saying, "I object to the question and refuse to answer on the grounds that the question is in violation of my First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment, and other statutory rights."

She was found to be in contempt of court and imprisoned as a result.

"Chelsea is a principled person, and she has made clear that while this kind of treatment will harm her, and will almost certainly leave lasting scars, it will never make her change her mind about cooperating with the grand jury," the committee's statement reads.

See more here:
'Torture, Plain and Simple': Chelsea Manning's Supporters ...

Chelsea Manning is once again detained in conditions of solitary confinement while United States authorities deny this reality to the press.

Individuals with the support group, Chelsea Resists, visited Manning at the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center, where she has been detained since March 8 after she refused to answer questions before a federal grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

The group learned she is in administrative segregation, which the jail claims is standard for high-profile individuals like Manning.

The administrative segregation policy for the detention centeras outlined in an inmate handbook from July 2017is to house an individual for up to 22 hours per day. A break is given on an established schedule that typically lasts for two hours. A person can make personal phone calls and attend to hygiene needs.

According to Chelsea Resists, Manning has been granted a break every day from 1 am to 3 am. She vomited during their 45-minute visit because the stimulation of being outside of her 22-hour lockdown made her nauseous.

Manning is in the same facility as Maria Butina and Paul Manafort, two other high-profile detainees who have been held for months in similarly harsh conditions.

Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne insists this is not solitary confinement. Individuals confined at the facility in administrative segregation have access to visits, books, and recreation.

Yet Solitary Watch, a U.S. watchdog organization that monitors widespread use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails, defines solitary confinement as the practice of isolating people in closed cells for 22-24 hours a day, virtually free of human contact, for periods of time ranging from days to decades.

Solitary Watch notes most facilities do not refer to the practice as solitary confinement. They use other words like segregation. Sometimes it may even be referred to as involuntary protective custody. LGBTQ individuals are often placed in this type of isolation, as authorities claim it will keep them safe from harm in general population.

Chelsea Resists said Manning is not allowed to visit the law library and has no access to books or reading material, which contradicts the jails claim about access to books.

Manning was held in conditions of solitary confinement when she was in pretrial detention at the Quantico Marine brig in 2010 and 2011, confined to her cell about 23 hours each day. She was put on prevention of injury (POI) watch.

Although Col. Denise Lind, a military judge, granted Manning 112 days in sentencing credit for unlawful pretrial punishment during his time at Quantico, she contended Manning was not held in solitary confinement because that means alone and without human contact. However, there were no doors separating her, and there were regular walkthrough visits by commanding officers. She had human interaction, Lind added.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reacted, No prisoner is ever held in total isolation; theres always incidental contact with prison staff who deliver meals and perform other essential tasks.

In this country, solitary confinement has always gone by many names, whether it occurs in a so-called supermax prison or in a separate unit within a regular prison called disciplinary segregation, administrative segregation, control units, security housing units (SHU), special management units (SMU), or simply the hole, the ACLU added. But by any reasonable definition, being locked alone in a cell for 22 or 23 hours a day is solitary confinement.

Manning described in testimony during her court-martial how she was confined in a cell that was six-by-eight feet. It had a rack, a mattress on a large metal fixture where she slept. It was possibly two feet off the ground.

There was a toilet and sink about waist high. Nothing obstructed the view of the toilet. An observation room was slightly offset but right across from his cell and could see her entire cell. She was constantly observed. An officer in the brig regularly demand that she let the officer know if she was okay.

Manning recalled suffering from sheer complete out of my mind boredom. She spent a lot of time looking for things to stay active and found herself feeling like she was trapped in a cage. She had to focus to make sure she maintained an awareness of her environment and did not fall asleep. Sleeping and the appearance of sleeping was prohibited.

During her time at Quantico, authorities justified her harsh confinement conditions by claiming she posed a risk to herself. Officers took her underwear away, and she was placed on suicide risk twice. A medical officer objected to these designations, but the commanding officer of the brig disregarded the medical officers recommendations.

Manning was transferred to Fort Leavenworth in April 2011, where she was confined until trial and imprisoned until President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

She attempted suicide in July 2016. A three-member disciplinary board reviewed administrative charges brought against her and punished her with two weeks of solitary confinement.

We have worked to monitor Chelseas well-being since her arrival at Truesdale, Chelsea Resists declared in a statement. In her first week, she contracted a bacterial infection which has since been resolved by antibiotics.

Although the facility has accommodated Chelseas medical needs, including hormone medications and daily post-surgery treatment, keeping her under these conditions for over 15 days amounts to torture, possibly in an attempt to coerce her into compliance with the grand jury, the group added.

In March 2012, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez released a report where he condemned how the U.S. military imposed seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who had not been found guilty of any crime. Mendez stated the treatment she endured was a violation of [her] right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of [her] presumption of innocence.

Mendez characterized any period of solitary confinement that is longer than 15 days as prolonged solitary confinement.

Most of the scientific literature shows that, after 15 days, certain changes in brain functions occur and the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible, Mendez stated. Prolonged solitary confinement must be absolutely prohibited, because it always amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and may even constitute torture.

The European Court of Human Rights recognizes that sensory isolation, coupled with total social isolation, can destroy the personality and constitutes a form of inhuman treatment which cannot be justified by the requirements of security or any other reason.

While detention center authorities may claim it is necessary to house Manning and other high-profile individuals in such punitive conditions to maintain order, Mendez criticized this practice because it denies a detained person the opportunity to challenge the decision made.

Guards and prison personnel may easily make an excessive use of solitary confinement while invoking those reasons. Any case where the victims suffering reaches the required degree of severity will amount to ill-treatment and possibly to torture, Mendez additionally argued.

The impact of this round of prolonged solitary confinement is probably even worse for Manning, since she was already cruelly and inhumanely treated in this manner a little more than eight years ago. She is likely reliving the trauma of Quantico, as well as other horrible experiences from her prior incarceration.

Nevertheless, Manning remains committed to her grand jury resistance, even as prosecutors potentially use solitary confinement as a means to coerce her into testifying against WikiLeaks, the publisher that helped her expose the truth about war crimes and various other acts of misconduct by U.S. government officials.

Read more from the original source:
Chelsea Manning Is Once Again In Prolonged Solitary Confinement

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View original post here:
Chelsea Manning's 'support group' says she's being held in ...

Supporters say that Chelsea Manning has been held in prolonged solitary confinement and have called for her immediate release from those conditions.

In a press statement published Saturday, a support group calling itself Chelsea Resists! writes that the soldier-turned-whistleblower has been living in conditions that amount to solitary confinement. Jailed after refusing to testify before a grand jury as part of an ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks, Manning is said to have spent 22 hours of every day for the past 17 days locked in her Alexandria, Va., jail cell, unable to speak to other prisoners or access books or other reading material. The William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center medical staff have not denied Manning her hormone medications or daily post-surgery treatment, the group says, as is often the case for incarcerated trans people.

Alexandria Sheriff Dana Lawhorne denies the groups claims of solitary confinement, telling the Associated Press that Manning has been placed in something called administrative segregation, or adseg. Chelsea Resists! maintains that the only difference between administrative segregation and solitary confinement is semantic.

We condemn the solitary confinement that Chelsea Manning has been subjected to during her incarceration, writes Chelsea Resists! in its statement. It bears repeating that while solitary confinement should not be used for anyone, it is especially immoral to place Chelsea in solitary, when she has not been accused of, charged with, nor convicted of any new crime.

Juan Mndez, a United Nations expert on torture, condemned the use of solitary confinement in 2010 except in very exceptional circumstances, citing the severe mental pain and suffering it can cause. He called for an absolute prohibition on keeping prisoners in solitary confinement for 15 days or more. Manning has been living in such conditions for 17 days.

We call upon the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center to remove Chelsea from Administrative Segregation and these conditions which effectively constitute solitary confinement immediately, the statement continues.

Manning spoke out against her continued incarceration in a statement released March 8, the day of her jailing.

Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly stated ethical objections to the grand jury system, the statement reads. I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.

RELATED | Chelsea Manning Says She Will Not Comply With Grand Jury

Read this article:
Chelsea Manning Locked in Solitary Confinement, Supporters Say

Supporters of Chelsea Manning have demanded her release from effective solitary confinement, in which she has been held for more than two weeks since being jailed for contempt of court.

We condemn the solitary confinement that Chelsea Manning has been subjected to during her incarceration at William G Truesdale adult detention center, a committee of supporters said in a statement on Saturday.

Manning has been held in administrative segregation, or adseg, with up to 22 hours each day spent in isolation, for the duration of her detention.

A law enforcement official disputed that Mannings treatment constituted solitary confinement.

Manning was jailed on 8 March for refusing to testify before a Virginia grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, the transparency organization to which she leaked thousands of US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

She said she objected to the secrecy of the grand jury process and had revealed everything she knows at her court martial. After that process, Manning served seven years of a 35-year sentence that Barack Obama commuted in 2017.

In Virginia, US district judge Claude Hilton said Manning would be jailed until she testified or the grand jury concluded its work.

Mannings supporters said: The jail says keeping high-profile prisoners in adseg is policy for the protection of all prisoners, but there is no reason to believe jail officials view Chelsea as either a target or a risk.

If Truesdale wants to prioritize Chelseas health and welfare, as they consistently claim, then they should make sure she is able to have contact with other people in the jail.

In a subsequent statement, city of Alexandria sheriff Dana Lawhorne said the accusations by Mannings supporters were not accurate or fair. The sheriff said the facility does not have solitary confinement and administrative segregation inmates have access to visits, books and recreation.

Extended periods of solitary confinement amount to torture, according to the United Nations special rapporteur Juan Mndez, who has argued that solitary confinement should be banned by states as a punishment or extortion technique.

Mannings supporters said: Chelsea is a principled person, and she has made clear that while this kind of treatment will harm her, and will almost certainly leave lasting scars, it will never make her change her mind about cooperating with the grand jury.

Go here to read the rest:
Chelsea Manning: supporters demand release from solitary ...

Two years after being released from prison where she had served seven years for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chelsea Manning was jailed once again for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury, Manning declared in a written statement. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.

Noted whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg praised Manning. Chelsea Manning is in jail again, this time for resisting a grand jury system whose secrecy and lack of witness rights makes it prone to frequent abuse, Ellsberg told Truthout. She is also resisting its current abuse, as it is used to attack freedom of the press by pursuing criminal charges for publication of the very war crimes and corruption she courageously revealed to WikiLeaks nine years ago.

Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.

Manning wrote, The grand jurys questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago, and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events. I stand by my previous public testimony.

Prosecutors inadvertently disclosed last summer that they had a sealed indictment against Assange. Since 2010, when WikiLeaks published the documents Manning leaked, the U.S. government has been gunning for Assange. The Obama administration had decided against trying to charge him because of fears that establishing a precedent that his actions were a crime could chill investigative journalism, Charlie Savage wrote in The New York Times.

Manning told the judge at her guilty plea hearing that no one at WikiLeaks asked or encouraged her to give them documents. No one associated with WLO [WikiLeaks Organization] pressured me into sending any more information, she said.

Before contacting WikiLeaks, Manning tried to interest The Washington Post in publishing the documents, but she received no response. She was also unsuccessful in contacting The New York Times.

At the age of 22, Pfc. Manning, who was an Army intelligence analyst, gave hundreds of thousands of classified Pentagon and State Department documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. She ultimately served seven years, including time in pretrial custody, after Obama commuted the remainder of her sentence as he was leaving office.

Manning, a transgender woman, suffered in a male military prison and attempted suicide on two occasions in 2016. She was held in solitary confinement and was humiliated by being subjected to forced nudity during inspection for the first 11 months of her incarceration. United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mndez characterized her treatment as cruel, inhuman and degrading. He couldnt determine whether it amounted to torture because he was not permitted to visit her under acceptable conditions.

On March 8, U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton in the Eastern District of Virginia held Manning in contempt and jailed her for refusing to cooperate with the grand jury. The prosecution had offered her immunity from prosecution if she testified, but she declined. Manning will remain in custody until she agrees to answer questions or when the term of the grand jury expires, whichever comes first.

Since she was offered immunity, Manning could not claim the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. But in refusing to answer questions, she invoked her rights under the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendments.

I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech, she said in a statement.

Indeed, prosecutors have utilized the grand jury as a tool to serve those in power. In periods of great turmoil and dissent, when the exploited and oppressed vocally expressed their views, often for the first time, the grand jury, rather than protecting the rights of the dissenters, stood on the side of the rich and powerful, to protect the status quo, civil rights attorney Michael Deutsch wrote in a law review article tracing the history of abuse by grand juries.

During the pre-Civil War, Civil War and Reconstruction periods, the grand jury was enlisted to enforce slavery laws, Deutsch noted. Southern grand juries often indicted outspoken abolitionists for sedition or inciting slaves. They charged people with harboring runaways or helping fugitives escape. Reconstruction-era grand juries were used to deny political participation and suffrage to Black people.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, grand juries assisted the government in quelling the militant labor movement, indicting thousands of labor organizers, union leaders, and activists on framed-up charges, ranging from unlawful assembly to murder and bombings, according to Deutsch.

Grand juries indicted hundreds of socialists, Wobblies and antiwar activists for espionage and sedition during World War I, Deutsch wrote. The government also used the grand jury to suppress the Black nationalist movement.

Alleged communists were investigated and indicted during the redbaiting of the Cold War period. Nixon-era grand juries targeted opponents of the Vietnam War and participants in womens liberation and Black nationalist movements.

Former Sen. Edward M. Kennedy described the Nixon grand jury as a new breed of political animal the kangaroo grand jury spawned in a dark corner of the Department of Justice, nourished by an administration bent on twisting law enforcement to serve its own political ends, a dangerous modern form of Star Chamber secret inquisition that is trampling the rights of American citizens from coast to coast.

In 1972, the National Lawyers Guild founded the Grand Jury Project and wrote a comprehensive manual on representing witnesses before grand juries. Subpoenaed witnesses developed a coordinated strategy of non-collaboration where they would refuse to answer questions even after being granted immunity and facing contempt. Once a witness answers a question, he or she cannot then refuse to answer others.

People who are subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury cannot have counsel present. The prosecutor holds all the cards. Federal grand juries failed to indict in only 11 of 162,000 cases in 2010, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported.

In 1969, Daniel Ellsberg, who was a high-ranking Pentagon official, smuggled out of his office at the RAND Corporation and made public a 7,000-page top secret report documenting the decision-making during the Vietnam War. It was the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg knew he would probably spend life in prison for his expos.

The release of the Pentagon Papers led to the end of the Nixon presidency, and also the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese died. Ellsbergs courageous act helped to hold accountable leaders who had begun and conducted an illegal and deadly war.

Manning follows in the valiant tradition of Ellsberg. The reports she leaked contain evidence of U.S. war crimes. One notable example is the Collateral Murder video, shot from inside a U.S. helicopter gunship as it fired on 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, who were walking down a street in Baghdad. The U.S. soldiers then killed a man who was rescuing the wounded and they injured two children in his van. An American jeep drove over a body on the ground.

The actions of the U.S. soldiers depicted in that video amount to war crimes under the Geneva Conventions and the Army Field Manual, which prohibit the targeting of civilians, preventing rescue of the injured and defacing the dead.

Manning told the military tribunal during her guilty plea proceeding she was frustrated by her inability to convince her chain of command to investigate the Collateral Murder video and what she called war porn that was documented in the files she provided to WikiLeaks. I was disturbed by the response of the discovery of injured children at the scene, she said. Manning was troubled by the attitude of the soldiers depicted in the video, who seemed to not value human life by referring to [their targets] as dead bastards.

The Afghan War Diary documents, which Manning also leaked, were posted on WikiLeaks in coordination with The New York Times, the German magazine Der Spiegel and the U.K. Guardian.

I believe 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 as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan, Manning said while pleading guilty.

It might cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the [a]ffected environment everyday, she added.

Like Ellsbergs disclosures, Mannings revelations actually saved lives. After WikiLeaks published [her] documentation of Iraqi torture centers established by the United States, the Iraqi government refused Obamas request to extend immunity to U.S. soldiers who commit criminal and civil offenses there. As a result, Obama had to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, I wrote in 2013.

Manning knowingly risked her freedom then for truth-telling and actually suffered seven-and-a-half years in prison. I regard her as an American hero, and I admire her for what she is doing, risking and enduring right now, Ellsberg said. No one understands better than he does.

Here is the original post:
Daniel Ellsberg Calls Chelsea Manning an American Hero

The U.S. government, determined to extradite and try Julian Assange for espionage, must find a way to separate what Assange and WikiLeaks did in publishing classified material leaked to them by Chelsea Manning from what The New York Times and The Washington Post did in publishing the same material. There is no federal law that prohibits the press from publishing government secrets. It is a crime, however, to steal them. The long persecution of Manning, who on March 8 was sent back to jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury, is about this issue.

If Manning, a former Army private, admits she was instructed by WikiLeaks and Assange in how to obtain and pass on the leaked material, which exposed U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the publisher could be tried for the theft of classified documents. The prosecution of government whistleblowers was accelerated during the Obama administration, which under the Espionage Act charged eight people with leaking to the mediaThomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Stephen Kim, Manning, Donald Sachtleben, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden. By the time Donald Trump took office, the vital connection between investigative reporters and sources inside the government had been severed.

Manning, who worked as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009, provided WikiLeaks with over 500,000 documents copied from military and government archives, including the Collateral Murder video footage of an Army helicopter gunning down a group of unarmed civilians that included two Reuters journalists. She was arrested in 2010 and found guilty in 2013.

The campaign to criminalize whistleblowing has, by default, left the exposure of government lies, fraud and crimes to those who have the skills or access, as Manning and Edward Snowden did, needed to hack into or otherwise obtain government electronic documents. This is why hackers, and those who publish their material such as Assange and WikiLeaks, are being relentlessly persecuted. The goal of the corporate state is to shroud in total secrecy the inner workings of power, especially those activities that violate the law. Movement toward this goal is very far advanced. The failure of news organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post to vigorously defend Manning and Assange will soon come back to haunt them. The corporate state hardly intends to stop with Manning and Assange. The target is the press itself.

If we actually had a functioning judicial system and an independent press, Manning would have been a witness for the prosecution against the war criminals he helped expose, I wrote after I and Cornel West attended Mannings sentencing in 2013 at Fort Meade, Md. He would not have been headed, bound and shackled, to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. His testimony would have ensured that those who waged illegal war, tortured, lied to the public, monitored our electronic communications and ordered the gunning down of unarmed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen were sent to Fort Leavenworths cells. If we had a functioning judiciary the hundreds of rapes and murders Manning made public would be investigated. The officials and generals who lied to us when they said they did not keep a record of civilian dead would be held to account for the 109,032 violent deaths in Iraq, including those of 66,081 civilians. The pilots in the Collateral Murder video, which showed the helicopter attack on unarmed civilians in Baghdad that left nine dead, including two Reuters journalists, would be court-martialed.

Manning has always insisted her leak of the classified documents and videos was prompted solely by her own conscience. She has refused to implicate Assange and WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, although President Barack Obama in 2010 commuted her 35-year sentence after she served seven years, she was jailed again for refusing to answer questions before a secret grand jury investigating Assange and WikiLeaks. While incarcerated previously, Manning endured long periods in solitary confinement and torture. She twice attempted to commit suicide in prison. She knows from painful experience the myriad ways the system can break you psychologically and physically. And yet she has steadfastly refused to give false testimony in court on behalf of the government. Her moral probity and courage are perhaps the last thin line of defense for WikiLeaks and its publisher, whose health is deteriorating in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been holed up since 2012.

Manningwho was known as Bradley Manning in the Armyhas undergone gender reassignment surgery and needs frequent medical monitoring. Judge Claude M. Hilton, however, dismissed a request by her lawyers for house arrest. Manning was granted immunity by prosecutors of the Eastern District of Virginia, and because she had immunity she was unable to invoke the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination or to have her attorney present. The judge found her in contempt of court and sent her to a federal facility in Alexandria, Va. Hilton, who has long been a handmaiden of the military and intelligence organs, has vowed to hold her there until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury is disbanded, which could mean 18 months or longer behind bars. Manning said any questioning of her by the grand jury is a violation of First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights. She said she will not cooperate with the grand jury.

All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013, she said on March 7, the day before she was jailed.

I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury, she said later in a statement issued from jail. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system.

The grand jurys questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events, she went on. I stand by my previous public testimony.

Manning reiterated that she will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.

The New York Times, Britains The Guardian, Spains El Pas, Frances Le Monde and Germanys Der Spiegel all published the WikiLeaks files provided by Manning. How could they not? WikiLeaks had shamed them into doing their jobs. But once they took the incendiary material from Manning and Assange, these organizations callously abandoned them. No doubt they assume that by joining the lynch mob organized against the two they will be spared. They must not read history. What is taking place is a series of incremental steps designed to strangle the press and cement into place an American version of Chinas totalitarian capitalism. President Trump has often proclaimed his deep animus for news outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, referring to them as the enemy of the people. Any legal tools given to the administration to shut down these news outlets, or at least hollow them of content, will be used eagerly by the president.

The prosecutions of government whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, warrantless wiretapping, monitoring of the communications of Americans and the persecution of Manning and Assange are parts of an interconnected process of preventing any of us from peering at the machinery of state. The resulting secrecy is vital for totalitarian systems. The global elites, their ruling ideology of neoliberalism exposed as a con, have had enough of us examining and questioning their abuses, pillage and crimes.

The national security state can try to reduce our activity, Assange told me during one of our meetings at the embassy in London. It can close the neck a little tighter. But there are three forces working against it. The first is the massive surveillance required to protect its communication, including the nature of its cryptology. In the military everyone now has an ID card with a little chip on it, so you know who is logged into what. A system this vast is prone to deterioration and breakdown. Secondly, there is widespread knowledge not only of how to leak, but how to leak and not be caught, how to even avoid suspicion that you are leaking. The military and intelligence systems collect a vast amount of information and move it around quickly. This means you can also get it out quickly. There will always be people within the system that have an agenda to defy authority. Yes, there are general deterrents, such as when the DOJ [Department of Justice] prosecutes and indicts someone. They can discourage people from engaging in this behavior. But the opposite is also true. When that behavior is successful it is an example. It encourages others. This is why they want to eliminate all who provide this encouragement.

The medium-term perspective is very good, he said. The education of young people takes place on the internet. You cannot hire anyone who is skilled in any field without them having been educated on the internet. The military, the CIA, the FBI, all have no choice but to hire from a pool of people that have been educated on the internet. This means they are hiring our moles in vast numbers. And this means that these organizations will see their capacity to control information diminish as more and more people with our values are hired.

The long term is not so sanguine. Assange, along with three co-authorsJacob Appelbaum, Andy Mller-Maguhn and Jrmie Zimmermannwrote a book titled Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet. It warns that we are galloping into a new transnational dystopia. The internet has become not only a tool to educate, they write, but the mechanism to create a Postmodern Surveillance Dystopia that is supranational and dominated by global corporate power. This new system of global control will merge global humanity into one giant grid of mass surveillance and mass control.

All communications will be surveilled, permanently recorded, permanently tracked, each individual in all their interactions permanently identified as that individual to this new Establishment, from birth to death, Assange says in the book. I think that can only produce a very controlling atmosphere.

How can a normal person be free within that system? he asks. [He or she] simply cannot, its impossible.

It is only through encryption that we can protect ourselves, the authors argue, and only by breaking through the digital walls of secrecy erected by the power elite can we expose the abuses of power. But ultimately, they say, as the tools of the state become more sophisticated, even these mechanisms of opposition will be difficult and perhaps impossible to use.

The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, Assange writes, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen.

That is where we are headed. A few resist. Assange and Manning are two. Those who stand by passively as they are persecuted will be next.

Read this article:
Chelsea Manning and the New Inquisition - commondreams.org

Yesterday I took a look at the upcoming hearing where Chelsea Manning was facing possible contempt of court charges for failing to answer questions before a grand jury in Virginia. At the time I speculated that the judge might be hesitant to toss Manning in jail (for up to a maximum of 18 months or the end of the grand jurys impanelment) just because of the craptacular media circus that would follow. It turns out that Virginia federal court Judge Claude Hilton had no such qualms and he promptly turned around and threw Manning in the slammer after he continued to refuse to answer. (NY Post)

Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who was convicted for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, was thrown in jail Friday for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating the group.

Manning was taken into custody on contempt charges following a brief hearing in which she informed Virginia federal court Judge Claude Hilton that she had no intention of testifying.

Saying she objected to the secrecy behind grand jury proceedings, Manning told the judge she will accept whatever you bring upon me. She also said she told everything she knows to her court martial.

Manning can file all the appeals he likes, but Judge Hilton stated flatly that Manning would stay in jail until either he agreed to testify or the grand jury wraps up the case. I dont see any indication of how long this particular jury has already been in the box, so its tough to say when Manning might be getting out.

I wouldnt feel too badly for Manning in any case. As I speculated yesterday, this is precisely the type of drama and publicity hes seemed to crave since his release. You can hear it in the statements Manning made before the court. Saying he would accept whatever you bring upon me sounds like a line straight out of central casting for the soon-to-be martyr thats about to be burned at the stake by the evil inquisition.

Its a play thats already working, to be sure. Manning is getting just what he wants from outlets like Gizmodo. And theyre fully on board with the idea that Manning can protest the use of grand juries. (Emphasis added)

Why Chelsea Manning Decided to Go to Jail in Protest

Chelsea Manning is not accused of committing any new crime. But she is now a prisoner of the U.S. government once again and may remain one for up to 18 months

Manning, whose right to remain silent was supplanted as part of the grand jury process, was subpoenaed last month in the U.S. Justice Departments not-so-sealed investigation into Julian Assange. Her defiance of this secret inquisition, however, is not about protecting the WikiLeaks founder at all.

Manning says she is resisting because she, like many other politically minded Americans, believes grand juries are an illegal instrument designed to aide prosecutions on fishing expeditions; a tool for robbing witnesses of their constitutional rights that has historically been used against peaceful political activists by men in power who would label these activists enemies of the state.

How dramatic! An inquisition has made an activist a prisoner of the government, robbing them of their constitutional rights. Thats pretty much a movie treatment ready to submit to Hollywood with little further development required.

Let me just say that I could come up with a few complaints about the grand jury process myself. While I understand the need for secrecy and detailed investigations that can stretch on for months or years, the process is clunky and can result in a lot of misunderstandings. But its also the law of the land. If you are called in to testify and theres reasonable cause to believe that you have information relevant to the case, you have to answer the questions or be prepared to be punished for failing to comply. Im sure many people arent thrilled with the process, but if you dont like it you should start lobbying to change the laws.

In this case, there may be something big cooking regarding Julian Assange, in a case that could have serious implications for both national security and future questions about the limits of press freedom when it comes to revealing secret intelligence data. Manning is obviously in a position to offer some insights on that. And there was no need for him to fear giving answers because the prosecutors already granted him full immunity for any testimony he gave. (Hes also already protected by double jeopardy rules anyway.) This entire episode is looking more and more like a stunt.

I will disagree with Gizmodo on one other point, however. They heavily imply that theres no threat to America or national security going on here. I would argue theres definitely a threat to the nation in play. And hed still be in Leavenworth if Barack Obama hasnt commuted his sentence.

Continued here:
Chelsea Manning jailed for "not believing in the Grand Jury ...

South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who launched a an exploratory committee in January to run for president in 2020 as a progressive Democrat, is criticizing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for disclosing classified information.

Buttigieg left his day job as mayor to serve as a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve in Afghanistan in 2014, before returning to office. He said while deployed he was expected to read intelligence briefs before going on patrol and is criticizing Manning and Snowden, saying they abused their access to classified information.

Buttigieg told CBS News Radio on the sidelines of the South by Southwest Festival where he spoke over the weekend that he was "troubled" by former President Obama's decision to commute the 35-year prison sentence for Chelsea Manning days before he left office in 2017.

Manning was convicted of disclosing classified government and military documents to Wikileaks. Manning was arrested in 2010 as Bradley Manning, before announcing she was transgender.

Manning was ordered to return to jail last Friday after refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating Wikileaks.

Buttigieg also took aim at Snowden's leaks, but didn't say whether he thought Snowden should be returned to the U.S. from Russia, where he is avoiding prosecution. Buttigieg called this an "international diplomatic challenge."

"I certainly agree that we've learned things about abuses and that one way or another that needed to come out," Buttigieg said. "But in my view, the way for that to come out is through Congressional oversight, not through a breach of classified information."

The 37-year-old Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar, who married his boyfriend Chasten Glezman last June, also blasted a federal judge's ruling last week allowing the Trump administration to continue restrictions on transgender troops.

"Anybody who is competent to serve this country, and wants to do so and is willing to put their life on the line should have nothing but the support of their president, of their government," he said.

Buttigieg has also been speaking out against the former governor of his home state Vice President Mike Pence for what he calls a "social extremist ideology" attacking gay rights.

"I don't think he could possibly be a good president, and I don't think he's benefited our nation as Vice President either," Buttigieg said.

Buttigieg supports Supreme Court reform, comprehensive against climate change, and universal health care. But recent polls show support for Buttigieg among Democratic voters at less than one percent.

See original here:
2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg "troubled" by clemency for ...