All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show is Kevin Zeese from Voters for Peace.
He's an American attorney, writer and political activist who's been a leader in drug policy reform and peace movements.
He was on the ballot as a nominee of the Maryland Green Party for the U.S.
Senate seat back in 2006.
He's one of the organizers of the Bradley Manning Support Network at BradleyManning.org and also the Come Home America project that ComeHomeAmerica.us.
Welcome back to the show, Kevin.
How are you?
Good to hear your voice, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Good to have you back.
And especially in defense of the American hero, Bradley Manning, alleged American hero, Bradley Manning.
Let's talk about the time you spent in the courtroom watching his pretrial hearings in his military kangaroo thing going on here.
Yeah, well, last week, there were two days of motions hearings in Fort Meade, Maryland, where Bradley is being prosecuted.
And it was kind of a trip through the looking glass.
It was very much a reminder of the Alice in Wonderland when Alice was being tried by the Queen and she said sentence first, trial later.
Well, that's pretty much how I've been going for Bradley Manning throughout this process since he was arrested.
And the good news, I'll tell you first, though, is that Bradley Manning is looking very healthy.
He's looking emotionally healthy as well as physically healthy.
He's got a very good rapport with his attorney, David Coombs, who's doing a great job.
And, you know, you can see them talking, you can see them smiling and occasionally even lightly laughing in the courtroom.
So that was a very optimistic thing for me to see that Manning has recovered from his yearlong solitary confinement.
That's probably the best news of the event.
I guess the other news was that after battling for about an hour over discovery and discovery where the in the U.S. law discovery, if there's something that is supposed to help the defendant or give assistance to the defense, it's supposed to be disclosed by the government to the defense.
So give the documents over to the government.
And one of the areas that would be very helpful would be the five different reviews that were done by the CIA, FBI, State Department, Department of Defense, Department of Justice over the national security impact of the documents that Manning's alleged to have leaked.
You know, we've heard statements from Secretary of State Clinton and from former Secretary of State Gates, Secretary of Defense Gates, that the impact was minimal.
And this is important for a number of reasons.
Because the underlying offense, the most serious one, is aiding the enemy.
Any kind of review done by the government would show us whether or not, in fact, there's any evidence that the documents aid the enemy.
The enemy, by the way, is al-Qaeda.
They disclosed that before.
And the government's been fighting to release these five reviews to the defense since October when they first asked for them.
And they've really been fighting tooth and nail to prevent the defense from seeing this.
When I practiced law, when the government tried to hide things, they usually meant there was a potential winning case there.
When they had open discovery, said, here's the file, take what you want, then I knew I had no case at all.
So the fact that they're fighting so hard to hide lots of information really shows us that there's something there and they're hiding it for a reason.
So at the end of an hour of fighting this, and Coombs really being very aggressive in describing the government lawyers as not understanding their responsibility under the law regarding discovery, how they were doing the opposite was required.
The Coombs submitted a motion to dismiss the case, saying that the damage done by the government and not providing discovery really made a fair trial impossible.
And that, so therefore he submitted this motion to dismiss and asking for the case to be over.
And the court didn't rule on that yet, but that was a very strongly put forward motion.
It's a very hard motion to win, no doubt.
I think he's laying important groundwork in this case to show the kangaroo court nature of it.
Well, I mean, obviously you have two very strong reasons, you would think, you know, all things being equal, if Matlock was running things here or whatever, that, hey, if there's undue command influence on the jury, for one thing, if there's discrepancies in the discovery and the sharing of evidence by the prosecutors under the law with the defense, that kind of thing, then if the law is the law, that ought to be it.
And especially if Coombs is as good as you say he is, and he's issued this extremely, you know, strongly well-prepared document making this case.
I guess really the only thing that could happen in this situation is that they'll just set a worse precedent for what they can get away with, because the politics of the situation are that they are bringing this thing to trial no matter what.
Well, in fact, the undue command influence issue is another one that's had some developments.
We, you know, your listeners probably know that President Obama almost a year ago said Manning was guilty on videotape.
And, of course, that got press coverage and is known by a lot of people, including those in the military.
And he's, of course, the commander in chief, the top ranking military official, everybody in the military, the judge, the jury, the prosecutors, they all work under his command.
But making that worse last week was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second ranking military officer in the country, said also Manning is guilty.
And that, to make that even worse, they reported that in Stars and Stripes, which is kind of the official newspaper of the Department of Defense.
So they're doing their best to let the officers in the military know that their commanders, two top commanders, the commander in chief and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, both think this case is already decided before the trial, Manning is guilty.
And that any officer, you know, who gets involved in this case and is in a position of deciding guilt or innocence will be, you know, their career will be over.
There's no way to go against the top two commanders like that.
Yeah, well, and yeah, they don't seem to be too worried that the case will be thrown out because of their interference.
Well, you know, I think they're, they're, they're pushing the line.
I really think there's also a sense to me that the government wants to show any other potential whistleblowers in the future, that if you do what Manning did, we will torture you before trial.
We will have a kangaroo court that will deny you any basic rules of evidence.
We'll have the commanders make it clear to the jury how the results are going to come out.
We'll put you away for life after that.
They want to send that message of total power and prevent future war crimes from being disclosed.
So I think that, you know, that could be what's going on.
They may just be pushing the envelope to make that point that they have total power and can abuse people who tell the truth and let the information of that war crime be exposed.
Right.
It's like they have such a good enemy in Manning from their point of view that they can go ahead and bend and break as many rules as they can just to set the precedent, because they know that there's no way that the military judges are going to dismiss the case, even if that's what the law demands.
Now, the military judge who's handling this case is a senior military official.
She's a colonel and she's on the very close to the mandatory retirement.
And so she may be less controlled by threats to her career.
We'll see.
Maybe they can promise her something.
A lot of this reminds me of the Daniel Ellsberg case.
You know, Ellsberg was facing 115 years in jail for releasing the Pentagon Papers and he started trial and went to trial for four months.
During the trial, it was disclosed that the White House had broken into his psychiatrist's office, that the FBI had wiretapped him, and that the judge had met twice with John Ehrlichman and been offered the job of FBI director.
And all that added up in the end for the judge to be a government abuse that was so severe that as the case was going to trial, the judge decided to dismiss all the charges.
I think we're in a very similar situation with the Manning case.
We've seen such abuse of power.
Butcher, before he was obviously even charged formally, the commander in chief and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman saying he's guilty before trial.
Discovery being denied.
You know, one of the really interesting things through the looking glass moment that kind of gave me some doubts about the judge was one of the issues that assumes he was trying to get was a bill of particulars.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry.
We've got to hold it right there, Kevin, to go out to this break.
Everybody, it's Kevin Zeese from BradleyManning.org.
He's been sitting in court, in military court, watching the pre-trial hearings in the Bradley Manning case, the Iraq and Afghan war logs, collateral murder video and State Department cables.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Kevin Zeese from Voters for Peace and ComeHomeAmerica.us and BradleyManning.org.
Kevin Zeese, he's pretty much good on a lot of stuff, as you can tell.
All right.
So where we left off, well, we're talking about the case of Bradley Manning, who allegedly heroically liberated the Iraq and Afghan war logs and the State Department cables and the collateral murder video and uploaded them to WikiLeaks, where they became the source of one million extremely important news articles that people of the world read and learned important things from.
And so now they are throwing the book at this guy.
He's facing what amounts to life in prison, I guess, in this military trial.
And Kevin Zeese is on the line and he's been sitting in the audience reporting on what's been going on at his pre-trial hearings, Bradley Manning's pre-trial hearings.
And you were saying when we got stuck up against the brick there, Kevin, that you saw reasons to believe that this judge may be fair and apply the law rather than simply just applying politics in this case.
Well, it's hard to tell.
I mean, all I said was that the colonel is reaching mandatory retirement age and therefore she is less likely to be pressured regarding her career.
But then, as I said, I was thinking of the situation that we saw in Oakworth's case where the judge was actually offered the directorship of the FBI when the trial was going on by the White House.
So who knows what they could be talking to her about behind the scenes?
But anyway, looking at her, she's certainly in a very tough situation because what the government is doing makes a fair trial almost impossible.
I'm sure she does not want to be perceived as unfair.
She really is listening to both sides, trying to find ways to move things forward.
She did rule against Manning on two of his motions, but there were rulings that could have gone either way.
Arguably, legally, she could have gone either way.
She did try with one of the motions where Manning wanted to talk to the people who classified the documents.
She did open up the possibility of that.
She said that the government should give access and help get access to those people so that Coombs could talk to them.
So she did do that.
There's one moment though that she really kind of gave me some doubts where Manning's lawyer, Coombs, had asked for a bill of particulars.
Now, a bill of particulars is to get the details of the case, the details of the charge.
And what he was looking for was the details of how Manning got the material.
Did he put something on his computer?
Did he use his passcode?
Did he use someone else's passcode?
How did he do it?
And the judge interjected and said, does the government have to prove that?
That was what she asked.
And that kind of was an all-in-one moment for me.
I mean, of course, the government has to prove how he committed the offense.
I think that seems like it's so central to the case.
And for her to ask, does the government have to prove how he did it, to me, may give me some doubt.
So, you know, it's a hard, it's a teetly reading thing.
Wait, but who was she asking that?
She was asking the prosecution if they thought they needed to prove it.
Well, Coombs raised the issue and the judge, and as Coombs is arguing it, the judge asked, Coombs, does the government have to prove that?
And I thought that was kind of a through the looking glass moment, because I think it's pretty obvious they do have to prove that kind of detail.
Right.
She was sort of asking rhetorically, it sounds like, in a way, like, well, yeah, I mean, do they have to show means?
Yeah.
Opportunity.
That was kind of a weird moment, I thought.
But, you know, I really do think the only solution in this case, because of the way the government behaved, is dismissal.
Whether it comes from this motion that Coombs made now over the lack of discovery or comes when he raises the issue of undue command influence or other issues that come up in the trial.
And there will be others, I'm sure.
I really think the only solution in this case is dismissal.
And like in Gelsberg's case that came to the totality of the circumstances, it wasn't just one abuse by the government, it was multiple abuses.
And I could see that, in the end, being what we need to push for here.
I think that's what we should all be pushing for.
I think as activists, we should go to BradleyManning.org, we should sign up and get involved.
The next round of hearings in the case in Fort Meade Mound are going to be April 24th to the 26th.
We're planning vigils outside the fort that day, those days.
We'll be on the 24th as part of the national occupation of Washington, D.C.
There'll be an occupied Department of Justice, which will include Bradley Manning as one of the issues.
And so I hope people will get involved.
And this is really a critical time.
As a rule, I think there's enough mistakes committed by the government, this is not a hopeless cause.
If we show the kind of political support that Manning deserves, we have a chance of really making a difference.
So I really urge you all not to give up hope, but to get involved and get active and go to BradleyManning.org and sign up.
And plan to come to Washington, D.C. on April 24th to 26th to join us in protesting this anger report.
Now, one thing I read at Chris Floyd's blog was that Coombs was, at least it seemed like he was considering putting forward the wimp defense.
That is, all these smears of Bradley Manning have been that, oh, well, you know, question his sexuality and question how well he fit into the army and whether he had any business there.
And people picked on him and didn't like him and he didn't fit in and all these kinds of things.
That that's why he did this, not out of any kind of, you know, higher motives, even though those higher motives are detailed in the chat logs, at least as published by Wired.com.
But the Chris Floyd piece seemed to indicate that the lawyer was considering going ahead and running with this smear and saying, yeah, you know, poor, helpless Bradley Manning broke down under all the pressure and did this terrible thing.
But we ought to go easy on him.
But conceding that it was the wrong thing to do.
That all came out of the Article 32 hearing, which is the pretrial hearing.
And the problem with the Article 32 hearing, when Coombs tried to put forward substance offenses about whether the documents should have been classified, whether there was any adverse national security effects, you know, trying to question witnesses about those kind of things, trying to question people about the undue command influence, the hearing examiner refused to do any of that.
And so none of his defenses that he wants to use were allowed by the hearing examiner, who, by the way, was a Department of Justice employee working for the division that's investigating WikiLeaks.
So Manning, Coombs raised the issue of conflict of interest at the first day of that hearing.
And in fact, the hearing is now ruled against Coombs on every issue.
Now, so out of that hearing as a result, the corporate media focused on the sexual issues, the abuse that Manning received while in the military.
And all that is true.
That did all happen.
But the only reason that got highlighted was, well, two reasons.
One, the media liked that kind of nonsense.
But second was Coombs was not allowed to raise the defense he wanted to raise.
Now, I think in the trial, the court-martial, Coombs again is pushing for those real defenses.
And so I think those will be the primary focus.
Now, one thing that's strange about military proceedings is that you go right from the trial, and if there's a finding of guilt, you go right to sentencing.
There's no separate sentencing hearing.
And so if these issues of him being abused in the military, he shouldn't have been in the position he was in, he was, you know, poorly treated, et cetera, that would need to come out because they will affect sentencing.
And so, any lawyer that doesn't raise that's not doing his job.
So they should be brought out and you have to bring them out through the process because there's no separate step between trial and sentencing.
Sure.
Yeah.
It's just ideally we want to see him prevail on the Nuremberg defense that, hey, you know, I was witness to war crimes.
I went to my superior officer and he told me to go participate in them.
And I decided that, no, I would do the right thing instead.
Well, that's not really being a lawyer, that's being a fan on the outside.
Exactly.
That's a very risky approach to take.
That is, by the way, the approach that Daniel Ellsberg took.
They still made Ellsberg still made the government prove their case, but he didn't admit guilt, but he did not shy away from acknowledging what he did.
OK, two things here real quick, Kevin.
The first thing is, is the government really shooting themselves in the foot trying to say, oh, he aided Al-Qaeda because now they're going to, you know, they threw their hat over that fence.
Now might they have to try to prove such a high standard when they didn't really need to?
And maybe you could just dismiss with that, because I really want to give you maybe, you know, 45 seconds or something to talk about the incongruity of having this guy, Bales, who is accused of this horrible massacre in Afghanistan, imprisoned right there next to Bradley Manning, who, after all, had to spend a year being tortured first before they finally sent him to court, Fort Leavenworth.
Now, that's a really good point that people who actually commit war crimes are treated better than whistleblowers are.
And I think that on your question of the Al-Qaeda, I think they did raise the standard there.
But remember, that's just one of the charges he's facing.
Others are tampering with the computer at much lower levels of proof.
And so it's a very challenging defense to make on all these different charges.
But I think that that more serious charge of aiding and abetting, I think they're overshooting there.
Yeah, it's a good chance they'll lose that one.
All right, everybody, Kevin Ziss's new piece is at Antiwar.com today.
Dismissal is the only option in the Bradley Manning case.
Bradleymanning.org.
Thank you very much, Kevin.
Thanks for having me on, Scott.
