06/25/13 – Nathan Fuller – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Wharton, scottwharton.org is the website.
You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at slash scottwhartonshow.
Also, hey, check out my written interview in the Washington Times, at least on the Washington Times website.
Libertarian America, Scott Wharton on the American Empire, that's part two.
Forgot what the first one was called.
But anyway, you can find them both there.
Just search my name in Washington Times, you might like it.
A couple of the quotes have been going around Facebook, I like that.
And yeah, okay, so, introducing our next guest, it's Nathan Fuller.
He's been covering the military court-martial of Bradley Manning for bradleymanning.org.
Welcome back to the show, how's it going?
It's going great, thanks for having me again.
Well, I really appreciate you making the time to come on the show and keep us updated, Nathan, a lot.
So, let's see, what I know is that Lamo the Rat, a couple of weeks ago, had to admit on the stand that Manning meant well, that there was no espionage here.
He even admitted that he had tried to tempt Manning into betraying his country, and Manning wouldn't hear of it.
All he wanted to do was tell the American people the truth so that they could do the right thing, and Lamo admitted there wasn't anything like a hole in that story.
He's a good kid, he meant well, that was established.
Then the government's case already was falling apart, where they tried to say, oh, oh, see, he was working with Assange to commit espionage, and the proof of that is this Excel sheet.
And then now on cross-examination, his commanding officer said, no, I ordered him to make the Excel sheet, it had nothing to do with Julian Assange.
And then there were a few more things like that.
But then something about they kind of called off the hearings for a little while or the trial appearances in the courtroom for a little while just to push papers back and forth.
I never was clear on what happened there.
And then anything else you can tell us?
I'm going to be quiet now, and you just let us know.
That's a pretty good summary, I'd say.
We have had recess for nearly the last week because, as you say, the government and defense are working on stipulations of expected testimony.
At least 17 more of the government witnesses, they're writing up stipulations for what they expect those witnesses would say, and then they're going to read them in court.
The government only has about 30 or so witnesses left.
It's already called more than 33, and they initially said they'd have 140, but we think they only have about 30 left for the merits phase, the guilt or innocence portion.
So it's possible.
Tomorrow we're going to resume with the government witnesses.
Today we just had a brief oral argument.
But tomorrow we're resuming with witnesses, and then the government's case for the merits could be over by the end of this week, by this Friday.
And so then the defense would have a brief turn to bring its witnesses, then there would be a ruling, and then we'd get into the sentencing phase.
And that's where the bulk of the defense witnesses are going to come to try to mitigate any potential sentence to talk about harm or lack thereof.
Now, I'm looking at your coverage from the 18th here.
And this is another example, this time some tweets by WikiLeaks of here's some information we're looking for or something.
And it sounds like what you're reporting here is another instance of the government's case not holding up at all under cross-examination, and in fact kind of in a ridiculous way, where, like, come on, man, you've got to be able to anticipate that the defense is going to point out that they haven't proven that Manning even ever saw these tweets.
So what does it matter what they said?
You know what I mean?
Like, this is ridiculous.
And so is it – do they even have a case at all?
Is every piece of evidence the state puts forward here just withering under Coombe's cross-examination, or what?
So far, it's been surprisingly weak.
It's been – I mean, these – not only can they not show that Manning ever saw these, which would make them totally irrelevant for the merits court, but they can't even authenticate the way that they were retrieved.
The government says that it used the Internet Archive, the Wayback Machine, and Google Cache, but then under cross-examination had trouble explaining that process, and so they might not even be admitted if they were relevant.
But, again, as you say, Bradley Manning, there's no proof that he saw these tweets, and that severely undercuts this government allegation that he was working at Bassandra's behest.
And so we have not seen any compelling evidence thus far that goes to that theory.
And so I'd be pretty surprised at this point if that theory holds up.
You know, I guess, Nathan, I've just seen too many movies, because somewhere I imagine these prosecutors actually sitting at a table and going over their own case and seeing if it holds up to the slightest bit of scrutiny before they go taking it into a courtroom, you know?
But apparently that's not how it works.
Apparently not.
I don't know.
I mean, Judge Denise Flynn does often take the government line as far as legal theories go, but she's going to have a hard time taking evidence that is not proven relevant.
All right.
So now what happened today?
So today there was this brief oral argument over the defense and government each brought items of judicial notice.
So they wanted the court to take notice of a few things.
And one important thing that the defense brought was a letter from Rear Admiral Kevin Donegan to the Secretary of the Army, and that's going to rebut testimony that the government previously brought.
The government had testimony from an Apache pilot saying that the collateral murder video revealed what are called TPPs, tactics, techniques, and procedures.
And he said that those were the piece of the puzzle, that if the enemy saw, they could put together how our Apache operations work and could then learn more and prevent against attacks and things like that.
But then we have a letter from a Rear Admiral to the Secretary of the Army saying from the defense, the defense is putting this forth, saying that no TPPs, no techniques, tactics, or procedures were in that video.
And so the government tried to object on that, and we'll hear a ruling on that later this week.
So we have testimony directly contradicting what the government says here.
Wow.
So, man, I need to open up a new – they've got these great sticky notes for Windows 7 where you just put them up on your desktop there and they stay forever.
I need to start a new one of those, which is examples of pieces of the state's case that have fallen apart already.
And it's getting too long.
The list is getting too long already for me to remember them all.
Can you give us some more, please?
This is fun, kind of.
I mean, I know they're going to convict the poor kid anyway, but still.
Well, another important one has been over the Garani airstrike video.
The government has said from the start that it can prove that Bradley Manning released – that there were two transmissions, that Manning released this video in November of 2009 and April of 2010.
And just, again, this video is – and this incident is a really horrific incident in Afghanistan.
A U.S. airstrike killed what reporters say is between 86 and 140 Afghan civilians, most of them women and children.
It's really disturbing.
But so the government says that there were two transmissions.
The defense says there's no proof of that.
There's only the April 2010 transmission.
And then when the government's witness came on the stand, he actually corroborated what the defense was saying, and that there was not evidence of a November 2009 transition.
And while it seems like a minor point, it really goes to the government's theory that as soon as he got in Iraq in November 2009, he started leaking almost right away and that he was just working for WikiLeaks and was just harvesting information.
But the evidence doesn't show that right now.
Very – okay, very, very important.
So there's this entire other video.
We're not talking about the collateral murder video from East Baghdad.
We're talking about the Garani airstrike video from Afghanistan.
And this is one that I believe you reported here at BradleyManning.org, Nathan, that when Manning testified – pleaded guilty and testified why he did it and everything and stipulated to all the facts that he specifically objected to this one charge and pleaded not guilty to this and explained that.
No, I just didn't do that.
I'd be happy to take responsibility for it if I did, but I didn't.
I don't know if he said that out loud, but that was at least in government – in his defense papers, right?
And the government decided they were going to go with this, but, again, they didn't double-check their work.
And their own witness admitted on the stand they had no evidence that he transmitted that video.
Right, and we'll see if they have any other evidence to bring forth, but thus far it is not conclusive.
And so that's going to be pretty hard for them to do.
It seems like they should have just gone ahead with the 2010 release, but they were so stubborn in trying to prove this several-month-long harvesting of information that it kind of hurt them.
They kicked themselves in the foot, essentially, by mischarging it.
Amazing.
I mean, like you're saying, I mean, it doesn't even sound like a minor footnote.
It might to somebody, but you're right.
I mean, when everything hinges on they're trying to make the case of the all-important date here, if he did upload the Garani video, it was way back before what he's admitted to doing.
And so it's a whole part of their big conspiracy theory.
In other words, it's another huge example of the government prosecutors here, the military prosecutors, having no idea what they're talking about.
It certainly seems they don't have quite the evidence to back up their theory, at least not yet.
But there's time yet.
Amazing.
I mean, and again, he's pleaded guilty to numerous facts.
Maybe you can help with the discrepancy about what he's pleaded guilty to and what he's pleaded not guilty to.
But mainly the discrepancy is he's pleaded not guilty to aiding the enemy because he sure as hell didn't do that.
Right.
He's basically pleading guilty to and taking responsibility for releasing the main WikiLeaks releases, the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, the Gitmo detainee files, the State Department cable.
And he says, yes, I did give these to – and the Apache, you know, the collateral murder video.
He says, yes, I did give them to WikiLeaks, but the way the government's charging is not accurate.
Because the government says that he stole it.
He did not have authorized access to get these information that he intended for it to harm the U.S. or that he'd do the advantage of a foreign nation.
And he says that is a completely false interpretation, and he only did it for the public good.
So he's – they kind of agree on the basic forensic fact of that, the fact that he did – except for this, you know, the state switch, that he did release the information.
And it's just going to come down to the important stuff is what that means and what the effect was and what his intentions were.
And, yeah, he certainly pled not guilty to aiding the enemy because that had – you know, there's just no basis for that.
Right.
Now, in terms of military procedure, obviously, they got – for example, they're doing – they've done trumped-up espionage cases, charges, which eventually kind of withered away against – I think Drake and Tam, the NSA whistleblowers, they're pursuing that avenue right now against Snowden, who also is just talking to newspapers and not, you know, committing espionage.
But I wonder, in the context of a military court, is it customary at all, or is this also kind of a pretty unprecedented application of aiding the enemy/espionage charges against someone who leaks a classified document for what are obviously pure whistleblower reasons rather than any kind of Jonathan Pollard-type treason?
Yeah, no, this is an unprecedented interpretation.
It seems the Espionage Act in particular is a favored tactic by the Obama administration if you use it for leakers more than any other president combined.
But you're saying under military law, too, in the military court setting, it's also unprecedented.
It's not only just in the federal court system.
Well, the aiding the enemy is unprecedented.
I mean, when the government says that they do have a precedent, they go back to the Civil War and sometime around, I'm not sure exactly the year, but Civil War era, one soldier gave a roster of military information to a newspaper, and they printed that.
And apparently he was convicted of aiding the enemy, and he got four months of just work labor.
And that's the only precedent they have for aiding the enemy, for leaking information.
So that's really the only precedent that they have to set, and nothing in our modern era.
Well, and even that precedent is directly doing exactly what Manning did not do, which is put people in danger by revealing sources and methods and names and locations, et cetera.
Exactly.
And it was also revealed that the government loves to say that the releasing of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs put sources at risk.
But we learned that the names and the people in the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs were actually identified by number and not by name.
So he was not revealing U.S. source names.
So, I mean, you know, I think that's an important point and one that maybe I already knew that, but I hadn't really focused on it.
You know, obviously we have this unprecedented crusade against whistleblowers and the journalists who would report on the facts that they bring to us going on.
But most of it is really, you know, separate from this court system entirely, right?
It's all in the civilian court system, its own set of problems and charges and whatever.
But Manning, so, you know, and I think you had already told me that in the past too, but I hadn't gotten through my thick skull yet, that really the only precedent they have for this, even in the military court system, they have to go back to the Civil War.
And then even then it's not even an applicable type of, you know, case history anyway.
It doesn't seem like it.
And that, I would say, should just prove how ridiculous and overbroad their charges are.
But when you look at the specifics, the government has to prove their burden of proof that Manning had, quote, actual knowledge that giving information to WikiLeaks meant giving it to Al-Qaeda.
And I just don't see how that's going to hold up.
But I guess we'll see in court.
Well, you know, I mean, I don't know if they can prove this, but it seems a reasonable assumption that anyone could imagine that something published in The Guardian or The New York Times by word of mouth or somehow would end up in, you know, Zawahiri's basement where he's hiding in Pakistan somewhere or whatever, that that knowledge could eventually get to them.
But just as long as that's not the point, just as long as it's not some secret code to let Zawahiri know what he needs to know or something like that, then that doesn't matter.
Right?
Right.
That should be the real line of argument because, you know, I don't think anybody could say that he thought that Al-Qaeda has never heard of a newspaper or Internet before and that they would never be able to learn anything from this.
That wouldn't be the line of argument.
It would just be that, you know what, that's, you know, they're in 10th place on the list and they're not what's important here.
What's important is the American people have the information that they can decide whether they think these are wise policies or not because that's what's first and foremost here.
Right.
And that's what Manning has said all along.
And people like to say that he contrived to this motive after the fact and that he was only saying that in his statement in February just to make himself look better.
But it actually tracks really well with the chat that he gave in private to Adrian Lamo.
He says information deserves to be free and that's why information should be public and without it we can't make informed decisions.
And that's been his motive all along.
Right.
And then I don't know if anybody's done the comparison on the timeline or if we even know exactly at what point Lama went to the military or I guess went to the FBI or whoever and was reporting to them, began reporting to them what was going on in his chat with Manning.
I think it was probably after that.
But he attempted to tempt Manning with the dark side.
Right.
He said, hey, why don't you make some money?
Sell these secrets to the Russians or the Chinese.
And Manning says, no way.
And he admitted that on the stand that Manning was like, no, no, no, no, no.
That is not what this is about at all.
You know, I get it.
We think that Lama went to the authorities within one or two days of talking to Manning.
So it's unclear if on the second day of chat he was under the direction of some FBI agent or something like that.
But we think he probably just tempted him on his own, Manning, quickly and necessarily refuted that because that was in no way his intention.
Yeah.
I mean, he really does elaborate.
He talks about the state.
He talks about war crimes in Iraq that he was even ordered to participate in.
He talks about what he considers to be near criminal behavior, at least by the State Department in their dealings with every other country in the world.
He's basically just shocked and amazed and astounded at this other reality at the secret level in the documents that, jeez, I think the American people might need to know this stuff.
You couldn't make up a story for pure whistleblower motives displayed better than the way they came across in those chat logs.
You just read them.
There's no doubt who you're dealing with there and that he means what he says about that.
Exactly.
It's pure whistleblower motive.
People like to say that he's not a whistleblower because it's so much more information.
But the fact is he just saw so much more abusive and corrupt activity than he was complicit in and decided that people had to know about it.
All right.
So now are there any more examples of the state trying to make a case and then Coombs whoops them on the cross?
I think we reviewed the major ones, although I'm kind of interested to see what comes of the Guantanamo detainee assessment briefs.
The government has to prove that releasing those was revealing closely held national defense information.
But as the defense established, the enemy already knew all that information.
They knew which detainees that we had and were keeping.
That was not exactly secret.
These assessment briefs were just biographical information.
Manning thought that they would be useful for getting the lawyers.
And I'm going to be interested to see if the government has anything to show that these revealed anything more than just basic biographical info.
Now it's the one that's coming up.
So then the question will be, oh, yeah, well, can you show us where any jihadists anywhere said, hey, look, see, they do have my cousin Tim or whatever?
No, probably not.
I don't expect that.
I don't know.
But that might come out again.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, and, you know, I'm sorry to say this.
You know, I know you know I am bearing bad news to you, but it's just such a bummer that none of this matters.
They're going to lock this guy up forever and ever.
I always call him a kid just because he's younger me and I like to pretend I'm still young, even though I'm not.
But this young man, they're going to lock him up for decades.
They're not going to give him points off for holding him for three years without trial or for abusing him or for all the command influence over his officer judge.
And they're not going to I mean, I don't want to be too pessimistic about the possibility of the defense putting on a great mitigating circumstances case during sentencing and what have you.
But it's almost a foregone conclusion.
It's much a foregone conclusion because there's this is really a political case.
It's not a legal case.
That's why the command influence doesn't matter.
That's why the three years without trial doesn't matter is because it's a foregone conclusion here.
Like the 9-11 commission.
We're not here to place blame.
We just want you to recommend a Department of Homeland Security at the end.
I mean, it's already decided.
Well, that's generally how the state works.
Yeah.
But I'm holding out hope.
With international protests, we did get Manning out of abusive detention in Quantico.
And we're going to be holding a protest, an emergency protest upon conviction.
And there's going to be an appeals process.
So I'm not giving up yet.
I'm going to try to get him at least a reduced sentence if not something better.
Yeah, never mind my pessimism.
If anything, that should just make everybody angry and want to fight back against the bogus non-truth that I just thought was true out loud.
I mean, come on.
Fight back and win.
This guy, it ought to be 300 million Americans.
Well, I guess, what are there, 10 million government employees?
It ought to be 290 million Americans versus the state on this one.
This guy's a hero, what he's done for us.
I think so.
And I think if people do come out, if people do come to an emergency protest, we can make a difference a little bit.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, listen, you're doing a great job, man.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate the work that you do at BradleyManning.org and your time that you continue to provide for us on the show updating us on this story, Nathan.
It's great stuff.
No problem.
Happy to.
Appreciate you having me.
Great.
Everybody, that is the heroic Nathan Fuller.
And I would like you to look at BradleyManning.org and then courtroom notes.
If you just look right there on the front page, you'll find the link courtroom notes.
And this is Nathan Fuller, his day-by-day coverage of the military court-martial of the American hero Bradley Manning.
And you just can't do better than that.
And also, and I admit I'm really behind on this, but you should know that at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, at PressFreedomFoundation.com, I know that's frustrating.
But anyway, go there, and they have the transcripts.
And people have donated a lot of money so that those transcripts are available to journalists.
In fact, if you know a journalist, why not spam them with the transcripts and challenge them to get to work on reporting this story?
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