Hey, I'll check out the audio book of Lou Rockwell's fascism versus capitalism narrated by me Scott Horton at audible.com It's a great collection of his essays and speeches on the important tradition of Liberty from medieval history to the Ron Paul revolution Rockwell blasts our status enemies profiles our greatest libertarian heroes and prescribes the path forward in the battle against Leviathan fascism versus capitalism by Lou Rockwell for audio book find it at audible Amazon iTunes or just click in the right margin of my Website at Scott Horton org.
All right, you guys Scott Horton show Scott Horton org for the full archives 4300 something interviews something like that going back to 2003 there for you Scott Horton org and Of course all the newest stuff.
Everything is first posted at Libertarian Institute org Scott Horton show the big badass new Libertarian Institute me and Sheldon will Greg and Jerry LaBelle And by the way, three of the four of us me Sheldon and Jared will be in DC for the Students for Liberty conference next month, February 17th through 19th I think it is so See you there All right, cool.
Introducing Chase Medard our old friend Chase Medard.
He's a lawyer from New York City but I like him anyway, and His whole thing is he wrote a book called the passion of Bradley Manning and now Chelsea Manning And he's got news hi Chase, welcome back to the show Hey, I'm delighted to be here even more delighted After yesterday's good news.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's great to talk to you again So go ahead and break the story for the people who don't know How the big news is that a president Obama is commuting?
Chelsea Manning sentence if this is was a 35 year sentence that was handed down in 2013 but now it's being commuted to time served plus a few more months and Chelsea will be released from Fort Leavenworth on May 17th of this year and This is a big surprise to me.
I did not expect this kind of clemency.
I would have preferred a full pardon restitution for all the suffering that the government has inflicted on Chelsea Manning and even the Presidential Medal of Freedom even though that currency has been a bit debauched given all the the reprobates who have been awarded that honor of late But I still think this is wonderful news clemency for Chelsea Manning the WikiLeaks source or anyone who doesn't know Chelsea Manning is the young soldier who and deployed to Iraq as an army intelligence officer leaked to WikiLeaks Thousands of field reports and war logs from the Iraq war from the Afghan war and then about 250,000 diplomatic cables that have given us a much more accurate and clear picture of American statecraft in the world today, and it's had a big impact it's enriched our public debate if not necessarily our foreign policy always and She did a great service to the world and above all to the United States we have so much to benefit from You know making foreign policy decisions that are well-informed that are not done recklessly in the dark So I think her commutation is just wonderful and I welcome it with open arms cool Well, so a couple of things here someone tweeted to me yesterday and said, you know Why may it seems like that just basically gives Trump enough time to reverse the decision But can he do that can can one executive undo a clemency granted by a previous executive?
You know, I mean, I know there's really no such thing as the rule of law at all and they can do whatever they want They just send in a JSOC hit squad to shoot her ten times if they want, but I mean supposedly under the rules My highly placed sources in the federal Department of Justice's clemency unit say that they looked into this and they found that the answer to be no that a president really cannot undo a commutation or a pardon issued by Them that and they said that they asked that too So they looked at that's their answer now you do point out that the rule of law is It's at best a myth and Would Trump find a way around it?
It's not impossible and I won't I will heave a big sigh of relief at the end of May 17th When Chelsea is completely released and out of prison and and that's the end of it Sources why they didn't just go ahead and say let her go on the 19th of this month.
I Wasn't able to get that question in But the way that all the commutations that Obama has been handing down Work is that there's usually an extra few months added on often for bureaucratic reasons that I don't fully understand But that the federal, you know Bureau of Prisons might be able to to explain.
I don't think it's a good reason I think You know releasing her today or tomorrow would be much better or Friday morning even But that's kind of standard practice for the now couple thousand Commutations that Obama has handed down.
In fact what I was really worried about was that Obama given that he loves to split the difference You know, that's his style It's what he looks more than anything that he would commute Manning sentence from 35 years to 10 years which would mean three additional years in Fort Leavenworth and given that Manning has attempted suicide twice in the past 12 months It's not clear to me whether she would necessarily make it but So I welcome this as good news, even though I you know, it would be better to just let her out immediately Yeah Okay, I can screw things up now Chelsea's lawyer I forget the name now, but I think right around a year ago was on the show and Explained that she really had seven more years to go Before more or less mandatory parole, I guess is the way it worked So when we say 35, we really mean six more but still that's a lot And as you said, I mean one this is a person who's an American hero We're gonna get back to that question in a second but this is a person who has tried to kill herself twice in the last year and And You know is basically in fact, I read a statement from Chelsea Manning Saying she's in desperate need of psychiatric help and can't get it in there at all.
So This is really, you know a life-saving intervention at this point apparently Yeah, I mean given that Obama has had a Absolutely dreadful record and going after leakers and whistleblowers in there in the first place And he's the one who put her in there in the first place.
I Welcomed this act of humanity from him and I'm very pleasantly surprised It's it's true that Manning would have been eligible for the military equivalent of parole I think their term of art is good time served in a in about seven more years It's probably David Coombs who you were talking to the trial lawyer He's a great guy a great attorney and you know And I think he and Nancy Hollander and chase Strangio of the ACLU other lawyers who've represented Manning deserve a great deal of credit for the hard work.
They've done but it's paid off now It's interesting the the military justice system is in many ways more lenient and more humane than our Federal civilian justice system after all these mandatory minimums have been installed by statute and after Parole has been essentially abolished by the federal government for federal prisoners That's counterintuitive to a lot of people.
You might think the military justice system would be harsher and More stringent, but no, that's not the case well there are government employees in on it together just the same as if a cop commits a crime or a Legislator or a judge commits a crime.
They always get away with it.
It's the rest of us.
We are the public servants who serve them Yeah, yeah, so whether Chelsea would have gotten this good time served and gotten out early I think that depends on whether the military liked her or not and they Military typically is more lenient with prisoners who don't make any waves Who don't inconvenience the prison authorities in any way She's not a convenient prisoner though, I mean she's been pushing hard for transgendered dignity and justice as a prisoner and And the military does not love that.
It makes them look bad.
They've taken a few steps to accommodate her finding supplying gender transition hormones, but they're not Transferring her to the women's prison the way they should so I think they'll be happy to see her back on May 17th Because they're just not equipped To deal with the issues of a transgender prisoner and they're happy to avoid that problem.
I think yeah All right.
Now you mentioned the abuse of Chelsea Manning ever since Her arrest, I guess back in 2010 Why don't you elaborate on that a little bit for the people who aren't familiar with the story there chase?
Yes, when when Chelsea Manning was apprehended by first by military police while deployed to Iraq her first year in detention was in punitive isolation confinement and There was a suicide watch for the first month that may have had some legitimacy But after that there was no legitimacy at all.
It was just pure punishment for its own sake and in fact the Physician who would check in with Chelsea Manning from time to time at Quantico the Marine Corps prison Where Chelsea was confined for 11 months kept saying, you know This is not medical medically necessary to keep this person in punitive isolation.
In fact, it's bad You know take this prisoner out and the prison authorities would listen but what this meant is that Chelsea Manning was, you know in solitary confinement for a whole year and You know no contact with anyone having to check in with the guard every 15 minutes of her waking hours Who would ask are you?
Okay, you know, that's kind of a Chinese water torture drip drip drip.
It would drive anyone crazy And it got so bad United Nations felt compelled to intervene and declare that this to be inhumane treatment which is just one half step shy of a declaration of torture and It was particularly awful to hear Obama himself Justified his treatment at at a press conference.
I know I've talked to the authorities at Quantico Brig and they say that this is really for the prisoners own good In fact, you know to repeat the the doctor on staff there was demanding that Chelsea be released because it's of course Very damaging to put someone in solitary confinement and to put this in context This is not really unique or an aberration of American criminal justice to treat something like this we have between 70 and a hundred thousand Prisoners in our country who are doing some kind of long-term Solitary confinement and it's no longer a tool of last resort in many prisons But really a tool the first or second resort particularly in California where they really need to figure out Alternative methods of you know, keeping order in prison without torturing people Yeah, well, maybe like Shane Bauer Chelsea Manning can become a prison reform Activists now after suffering this and and having that level of fame Bauer's done great Yeah, you know the results of his imprisonment in Iran there because boy what a comparison to make, you know Yeah All right.
So now Well, we're going back in time on the thing here but I want to get back to the original leak and Chelsea Manning and you know, you've mentioned in context here the gender identity crisis and all of this kind of stuff and You know, I guess the common narrative the most common narrative about Manning is if it's not, you know the right-wing narrative is a treason, but I guess the most common sort of center narrative is Personality crisis this wasn't, you know any kind of politics or heroism or anything?
This is just a person who couldn't hack it in the army and so in during some kind of breakdown gave this leak to WikiLeaks and they kind of yeah, you know, they starved the the political motive out of the act chase Yeah, I mean that's exactly it.
We live in a very deep politicized society.
So When a whistleblower does something heroic like this We can't understand the political motive or I should say the mainstream media You know and often much of the public just can't grip it and they pathologize it This is pretty common in the way whistleblowers are received and not just in the United States and the Soviet Union Political dissidents were often put in what's called see push cuss which are like some Russian neologism for like psychiatric chicken coop and because their descent from the Soviet regime was seen as what must be a mental health issue and You had that the United States with Daniel Ellsberg.
That's why Nixon's Plumbers were breaking into Ellsberg psychiatrist's office They were hoping hoping to find dirt in the files that could pathologize Daniel Ellsberg and here too very often Chelsea Manning's very political motives have been dismissed as just merely Psychiatric or crazy or related to the turbulence of gender transition.
I Don't think that's right at all and Chelsea Manning is very clear about her political motives in the chat logs that we have Manning's dialogues online with a computer hacker a former computer hacker named Adrian Lamo who unknown to Chelsea Manning was working as a federal informant and who then turned Chelsea Manning in It's a remarkable document these chat logs between Chelsea Manning and Adrian Lamo and it reads like some kind of tragic 21st century one-act play highly recommend finding it easily found online I think wired has it in its entirety But Manning and these discussion is saying that you know She wants people to see the truth about American foreign policy because without facts without knowledge You can't have informed discussion and debate and this is by the way Coming from a soldier who made the choice to enlist in Iraq someone who's seeing a lot of things firsthand Seeing other things other atrocities being committed as an army intelligence officer seeing for instance That it's official u.s.
Policy to allow Iraqi authorities to torture suspects And that's in direct contradiction to what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is saying back home But no torture is alive and well and happening You know with the complicity of American occupying authorities People don't know about this back over the US and maybe we don't want to know about it But thanks to Chelsea Manning we know about that and really hundreds of other incidents of abuse and violence and a full accurate unfiltered picture of a savage counterinsurgency war that we're waging there and in a way are Continuing to wage and I think that's a good thing We have to face the truth about what we are doing abroad Even if it's not flattering to us.
I love Bitcoin, but there's just something incredibly satisfying about having real fine Silver in your pocket.
That's why commodity discs are so neat They're one ounce rounds of fine silver with a QR code on the back just grab your smartphones QR reader scan the coin and you'll instantly get the silver spot price in Federal Reserve notes and Bitcoin and if you donate a hundred bucks to the Scott Horton show He'll send you one learn more at facebook.com slash commodity discs commodity discs calm Yeah, well, you know something that's really important.
I think About this story and I forget now if this is all just detail I think you know, he talks about she talks about all this with Lambo in the chat logs that what had happened was Manning was made to participate in the torture of an innocent man Who had simply written an article criticizing Nouriel Maliki who by the way now is considered to have always been a terrible terrible choice of George W Bush to be the Prime Minister of Iraq, but anyway Or president of Iraq so What had happened was this guy had written an essay in the newspaper saying where's the money?
It's just just exactly the kind of thing that a right-winger might write about Barack Obama's Administration on the Solyndra case or something like that and they arrested this guy and they said hey Manning help us process this guy We're gonna turn him over to the bottom brigade to you know presumably be tortured to death with power drills or whatever and and Manning said oh my god, I had my translator You know look at this and all it is is a plain old op-ed in the First Amendment kind of addition commanding officer And so you've got to do something to stop this terrible arrest and abuse of this man And the commanding officer said get back to work Manning And that was why Chelsea Manning said well screw this if you're gonna make me a torturer Then I'm gonna get you and I'm gonna go ahead and reveal what's going on here to the people of the world here That's huge that's not oh was so sad because he wasn't a woman that he made a big leak It's a very honorable motive for doing what she did and it's a motive that's been canceled out and so many media accounts of this not here with you, of course, but it's it's just a denial of the real politics and And again, that's another reason why I am delighted that Manning has clemency Manning has clemency now, of course the reasons that the Obama administration gave for issuing clemency I don't think have anything to do with the merits of the real case Manning issued some kind of pro forma Apology during her court-martial and fine, you know, that's not the first or the last time someone's thrown themselves on the mercy of the court But that's something that the Obama administration really latched on to in Justifying their decision to commute Chelsea Manning sentence also, unfortunately, the Obama administration is kind of Bigging up Chelsea Manning at the expense of Edward Snowden, you know making a goofus out of Edward Snowden in order to make a gallant out of Chelsea Manning a good leaker who faced the consequences of her action Unlike that horrid Edward Snowden.
I I think that's unfortunate I think Snowden is also a great patriot who's done a great service to its country the world It's a really stand-up guy who's you know, very clear that he thought Clemency for Chelsea Manning should take priority over a pardon for himself But that's the way the Obama administration is playing it and you know, whatever Yeah, well and now so what about a song saying?
Hey, if you let Manning go I'll let myself be extradited to the USA to be prosecuted He's gonna live up to that now where he's gonna say.
Hey, hey clemency doesn't count as a pardon.
I Would be surprised if he follows through with that but you know that his calculus is Might have changed with Donald Trump coming in now that Julian Assange is a darling of Fox News and Of Infowars for now it it for now.
I Don't see that as a long-term relationship or a very stable relationship The like so many political relationships in the u.s.
Right now, so, you know, maybe he will I would be surprised They'll just say that Yeah, it's funny man, I keep seeing on Twitter liberals and conservatives and other people they all say the same thing over and over again Geez guys, I'm losing track of when I'm supposed to like Julian Assange and when I'm supposed to be against it Well, I always liked him.
I always thought he is a little scummy, but I don't care about that, dude public dot or he has leaked and And he posts public documents and if he's ruining George Bush or he's ruining Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump What difference does that make to me?
The state is the enemy everybody.
Guess what?
You know, it's not just a matter of Political parties and even if you're looking for heroes in politics It ain't Hillary and it ain't Trump, you know Give me a kusinage here or Ron Paul there maybe but not these guys Yeah, yeah Yeah, I just think that's funny how people really do react that way Oh, I'm so mad at Julian Assange for publishing Hillary Clinton's emails You really are I mean how the State Department was publishing them all at the same time, you know, I Know I mean this is I think liberals are just having a hard time Taking any responsibility for the failure of Hillary and they want to blame it on a foreigner something outside The United States whether it's Putin or whether it's Assange rather than look at you know The very real domestic politics, which I think 99 out of 100 people based their votes on anyway But no can't do that Well, I admit I didn't see it But I was talking on the phone with Eric Garris last night from the you know The boss at anti-war comm and he goes, oh my god You should have seen it on all the cable news channels CNN MSNBC and Fox just Savaging Obama for this clemency and And in fact as we were talking There's Tapper in the background saying this is a betrayal of everything Obama has ever claimed to stand for This is after eight years.
They finally found something to hate Obama for and it's letting Manning go Can you believe that?
III mean, of course you and I have the opposite reaction.
We're not saying what a horrid betrayal we're thinking Well, this is partial redemption.
Finally, maybe he's seen the error in his ways Persecuting whistleblowers.
I have a project for a college student listening to the show Here's a paper that you could do you find all the news stories that are not about the WikiLeaks themselves but just news stories that cite either the State Department cables the Iraq Warlogs or the Afghan war logs as the basis for part of the reporting of the story and in fact do yourself a favor can find your search to the New York Times the Washington Post the AP and Reuters and See how many hundreds of thousands of times that?
Regular reporters doing their very mainstream job have said Actually, there's important, you know information to be referenced in the State Department cables that provide context here back in 2005 they decided that you know, whatever whoever was gonna have to die or whatever it is.
It's in there I mean this is for for the reporters to be leading the lynch mob Against Manning who's the source of?
Okay, maybe tens of thousands of hard news stories I mean including release the Glassby memos that everybody wanted since 1990, you know Oh, yeah, I mean and and on and on and on including stuff from the 70s and all kinds of stuff For them to be leading the lynch mob against this person who again has been in prison for seven years almost seven years already and as you say has been abused and humiliated and Driven to suicide attempts twice and Then Jake Tapper and all the rest of them to get up there.
They just can't stand it.
But what about the secrecy?
You're supposed to honor the secrecy cry the journalists I mean, it's just so pathetic the way so many journalists and intellectuals in general instead of You know taking on their role Being leaders of a well-informed robust public debate they see themselves as little deputies little cops for the state and Who are eager to maintain and enforce the secrecy of the state?
The exact opposite of what journalists should be doing and you know, I have about as much respect for that as you do Yeah, it's really the same thing going on with the Putin scare now, too Mm-hmm, you know little deputies.
I like that.
You just you just made yourself a new quotable there And now so wait, I want to go back to one thing too man that I'm sorry I'm skipping around about that But Adrian Lambo you mentioned the rat that Manning was talking to on the chat logs who then turned to the federal government and said Hey, let's get this guy in trouble and how not he wasn't just satisfied I don't know if this was at the direction of the cops or not probably But he wasn't just satisfied to Bust Manning on the leak.
He tried and trapped Manning into treason and said, you know what you should do Manning you should sell these secrets to the Russians or the Chinese or the Iranians or something and make a bunch of money and Manning said no.
No, no stupid.
Don't you understand?
I tried to explain to you a bunch of times that that's not what I'm doing I want the people to make good informed democratic decisions and all this Jeffersonian language as you were paraphrasing earlier But the rat tried to get Manning to commit treason for all those who have accused Manning of treason because that's your right-wing Talking point in your email this morning or whatever it is The rat tried to lure Manning into treason and Manning was like no That's not what's going on here, man.
I want you know Mom and pop to discuss this stuff over the kitchen table.
That's what this is about democracy Yeah, I mean poor Adrian Leno I what a scuzzy character He was involuntarily committed just a month or so before he made contact Manning I don't think he has the real stature to be cast as an Iago type figure in this drama He's just too pathetic and yeah, he did try to entrap Manning But At least we could see very clearly from those chat logs what Manning's motives were.
Yeah, they're very pure Yeah, it's a good thing yeah, and then I bet the FBI probably told Lambo to try it too, you know Yeah, but I mean, it's a good thing because it just gave Manning the the Another opportunity to make himself Herself, whatever more explicit or you know about the motive there So, yeah, yeah and for anybody who whoever you know repeated the talking point that Oh blood on their hands and all this stuff back when this happened You know take a moment to stop and reflect how different the talking points are from the real reality here You know even Robert Gates admitted that no one was compromised No spies were rolled up in any enemy state or any kind of thing like this happened at all Not even Afghan informants whose names were published in there were later lynched or anything That to make it clear was just their first names it was like saying John or Ted or Bill I mean, it's not very actionable intelligence that was leaked there and throughout the very long court-martial of Chelsea Manning the Prosecution the government of course had every opportunity to provide evidence of people actually being harmed they came up with nothing absolutely nothing and That that's not what the the convictions were based on the impact the the convictions For the other various events were based purely on the formal offense And people are still of course mouthing the same stale talking points of you know it first went to actually having blood on his hands to Put people at risk to maybe people put people at risk of harm this kind of double subjunctive removed from actual harm And you know the same people who are going ooga-booga over this Hypothetical maybe harm that these leaks could have caused these are the same people who were flexibly champion the Iraq invasion the Afghan Escalation now the longest war in US history and every other foolish war we are into But they love pointing the finger and start gushing with sympathy when it comes to these imaginary hypothetical victims Which they can try to pin on a young soldier of conscience who actually was there was that boots on the ground?
And that of course is Chelsea Manning right and of course You know there's no real logic behind it.
I mean if you framed it right that hey Here's this person is exposing Hillary Clinton.
Are you really saying that Hillary Clinton's horrible corruption?
Should never be exposed if there's even a point zero one percent chance of any Collateral damage whatsoever coming from the reactions to the truth being made no we already know They don't believe that they've been the champion of WikiLeaks leaking Hillary Clinton's secrets all for this last season and Of course the reason why is politics, but why is that different than in 2010 when it's Manning leaking the State Department cables on?
Hillary Clinton You know a year worth of her her reign in that position Well we know that people's opinions about these things just turn on a dime Depending on which party is involved to them which side of it so Anyway, I I think we can at least be very happy with this result I think it was a long shot that made it Yeah, a full pardon with restitution would be better but a commutation is something that I'm sure Chelsea Manning is very happy to accept and So fingers crossed to May 17th, let's hope President Donald J. Trump doesn't find a way to screw it up I don't think he will but at least this is some kind of partial justice and in the sphere of leaks and whistleblowers That's that's the best we've had for a long time And it's a shot in the arm for truth tellers all over the United States we're going to need them of course in the next presidential administration just as much as we've needed them now and Well, we'll see it's a it's good news for once and I'm glad that a real hero of freedom a real martyr of the Enlightenment Chelsea Manning will be getting freed me too.
And yeah, I'm glad to just have something To celebrate on the show for a change to yes.
This is pretty nice, you know, finally Well, thank you very much.
Thank you for your work on this issue for your great book It's the passion of Bradley Manning is what it's called everybody and And thanks for doing the show again and and being here to celebrate with us Hey great talking with you as always and as you say for once for good news, you know, take care everybody all right, y'all that is chase Madar and he is the author again of the passion of Bradley Manning and That's the Scott Horton show, thanks very much for listening Scott Horton org and Libertarian Institute org Scott Horton show for the archives there patronize my sponsors, please Thanks.
See ya This part of the Scott Horton show is sponsored by audible.com and right now if you go to audible trial Calm slash Scott Horton show you can get your first audio book for free Of course, I'm recommending Michael Swanson's book the war state the Cold War origins of the military industrial complex in the power elite Maybe you've already bought the war state and paperback, but you just can't find the time to read it Well now you can listen while you're out marching around Get the free audio book of the war state by Michael Swanson produced by listen and think audio at audible trial.com Scott Horton show Hey, I'll Scott here If you've got a band a business a cause or campaign and you need stickers to help promote Check out the bumper sticker comm at the bumper sticker comm they digitally print with solvent ink So you get the photo quality results of digital with the strength and durability of old-style screen printing I'm sure glad I sold the bumper sticker comm to Rick back when he's made a hell of a great company out of it There are thousands of satisfied customers who agree with me to let the bumper sticker comm help you get the word out That's the bumper sticker comm at the bumper sticker comm
