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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest today is Kevin Zeese.
He's a lawyer and an activist, voters for peace.
And BradleyManning.org, that's the Bradley Manning Support Network.
And you're on the board or you're a legal advisor to them, some kind of thing, right?
Yeah, I'm on the steering committee.
On the steering committee.
Okay, great.
And thanks very much for joining us.
Good to have you back on the show, Kevin.
Glad to talk to you.
All right.
So, geez, where to start?
I guess let's just start with the most recent news here.
I guess last time we spoke, the military court was having all these hearings about the treatment of Bradley Manning while he was held at Quantico.
And then yesterday, the judge issued her ruling, correct?
That's right.
She basically did two things.
In her ruling first, she said that, yes, Bradley Manning was mistreated.
But she found that there was no intent to punish.
And as a result, she only gave Bradley Manning credit toward his sentence for some specific parts of the nine months of solitary, the parts where essentially the brig commanders ignored the views of psychiatrists.
And so Bradley will get 112 days off of whatever sentence he ends up with, assuming he's found guilty in a sentence.
He'll get 112 days less from that.
So it's about a third of a year off.
The defense had been seeking either dismissal of charges for the outrageous solitary confinement and mistreatment of Manning, or a 10-to-1 ratio for the full nine months, which would have been seven years off.
So it was kind of a symbolic victory in that the judge acknowledged he was mistreated.
But the symbolic victory ended at the practical impact, which only resulted in 112 days off.
So it's really not what we were hoping.
Well now, did everybody in the courtroom break out laughing when she said there was no intent to punish?
That's the whole point of this thing, is obviously it was the intent to punish.
Well, I mean, is she just contradicting herself, saying that?
Well, you know, the government put on its case.
And during the two weeks of pretty intense hearings, what they put forward was enough for the judge to hear a different view, which was that Brigg had had a suicide at the Brigg prior to Manning getting there, and that their top priority was to make sure Manning was able to go to trial.
Because he had threatened suicide in the Middle East when he was held there, and they used that as their excuse to over-confine him, to make sure he didn't commit suicide here.
I didn't find their arguments credible at all.
I thought that the government really put forward some pretty hard-to-keep-a-straight-face-when-you-hear type arguments.
But the judge heard them and took it differently.
And I disagree with that view, but that was her view.
And that's the unfortunate reality of her ruling.
Well, now, okay, I ain't no expert in this, but you're the lawyer.
So good thing I have you here.
Is it not the case that if a prison psychiatrist says he's not a risk and he should not be on these precautions, these so-called suicide precautions, because they are abusive when they are applied unnecessarily, doesn't he have authority?
Don't they have to abide by that?
And isn't that the betrayal that they did intend, in fact, to abuse him by pretending that they were just trying to protect him when, really, they had found their loophole?
Yeah, and that's why I think the 112 days was given off, was because that was the time period where it was very clear that the psychiatrists were on Bradley's side, so he didn't need to be in there.
And, again, I think the judge really didn't come out with the right decision here.
I think it's very disappointing.
Well, it doesn't even sound like a rational one at all, or, you know.
Well, the psychiatrist, when the psychiatrist specifically said, no, he shouldn't be there, she gave the time.
Now, she only gave him one day for, you know, an extra day for each day that that was true.
So it's 112 days, but it could have been, it should have been a lot longer.
But so the people who were in charge there, would they be, I guess, if she had found otherwise, that they really were breaking the rules and they knew it or whatever, would they be in trouble for that, for disobeying the recommendation?
Was it just a recommendation from the psychiatrist, or how does that work, as far as the psychiatrist's authority?
Well, it depends on the type of situation.
If he's put on prevention of suicide, that requires a psychiatrist.
If he's a prevention of injury, then the break can overrule a psychiatrist.
So there's kind of a, there's not much difference between prevention of injury and prevention of suicide.
Prevention of suicide part, that's where the judge, you know, gave Manning credit for his time.
You know, it's a, this is a, to me, it's a typical and sad situation in how often the rule of law ends up perverting the outcome.
You know, slavery was against, was supported by law, and police were used to track down slaves.
That's a perversion of human rights.
And I think the same thing's happening here.
You have all sorts of military regulations, the marine regulations, the brig regulations that allow certain things, but the end result is Manning was mistreated.
And the judge didn't even find a problem with the U.N. reporter on drug torture not being allowed to visit the prison, because there's nothing in the regs requiring it.
You know, so to me, that's the rule of law getting in the way of common sense, and I think that's what happened in this case.
Manning was mistreated for nine months.
She read the rules very narrowly, and only the time period that they clearly violated them did she give Manning any credit, and then she only gave him not much credit.
You know, she, rather than giving him 10 days for every 112 days, she just gave him 112 days.
And so that's a real shame, and I wish, I would love to have seen a different result.
I think that Manning put on the best case he could, but this is a very tough system we're in, a very high-profile case, and you know, it's a tough courtroom to get justice in.
Well, now, I think we all know, and I don't remember how we all know, other than, you know, we know they want to build a case against Assange, but I think there had been some detailed journalism about the fact that they were really trying to flip Bradley Manning.
They were trying to get him to say that Assange, that he was already in contact with Assange, and Assange told him to get the documents, which would then make them part of a conspiracy to commit espionage instead of a leaker and a journalist, which is what they are in real life.
But so did they, I guess, first of all, do I have that right?
And then secondly, did Bradley Manning's defense team, did they try to make that argument in court that, Judge, this wasn't prevention of injury or suicide.
They were pressuring him because they were trying to get him to testify against somebody else, and that's why they were breaking the rules.
There is nothing in the email documentation, there's thousands of pages of email documentation about Manning's confinement that really indicated that, and so it would have been tough for the lawyer to make that case.
You know, there's a lot of talk about that in the media and those of us who monitor this case that this was really about two things, trying to break Manning so he would plead guilty and secondly so he would implicate Assange, but nothing like that was written down in the emails or documents related to Manning's confinement, so it's a tough one to prove.
And so that did not come up in court, there's nothing said in court about Julian Assange and the relationship between that and Manning's confinement.
So we can suppose that, but we can't prove that, and that's the challenge of course in the courtroom is you have to prove what you claim and you can't just make guesses.
And so...
Well, but they could have talked about, you know, this was always the line of questioning, was they were clearly trying to get him to implicate Assange and get him to turn state's witness.
There was no evidence of any line of questioning along those lines.
Maybe that's really just not right, they never really did try to get Manning to turn state's witness.
Well, they didn't yet.
I mean, you know, often in these kinds of situations in criminal cases, the time that the real pressure gets put on the defendant is at the time of sentencing or even after sentencing.
When the person's faced with life in prison or 30 years in prison or, you know, a lengthy prison time, that's when you have the best leverage to say to that person, look, we can reduce your sentence if...
And so that's often the time when it comes, it may come later, we don't know, you know, we'll see.
But at this point, there's nothing that we can say to point to, to really prove that this was about Julian Assange.
And there's a lot to point to in their email documentation.
Of course, they're writing their own emails, and so they have a, I'm sure they have in mind that they may be in court someday.
So you know, this paper trail just may be a paper trail for the purpose of court.
We don't know what's really going on, but we do have indications that their intent was to not have another suicide break.
And they use that as their excuse.
And of course, Manning did indicate some suicidal intentions when he was in the Middle East.
And also, when he came to Quantico, he had a very, you know, he had a really vague, common detail.
He was forced to say something about suicide.
They said, look, you were suicidal before.
What's your comment on that?
And on his intake form, he said, on suicide, something along the lines of always thinking but never acting on suicide.
And so they used that as an excuse to detain him more aggressively.
So everything was used against him, no matter what he said or didn't say.
If he didn't say anything, they'd use that against him.
If he did say something, they'd find some way to turn that against him.
So it was really a really tough situation Manning was in.
And unfortunately, the judge, you know, listened to the government and took their side as far as their intention was not to punish, but to make sure he was alive for court.
That's why he ended up the way it did.
But she did say that he was mistreated.
And unfortunately, I think the punishment she gave the government for that mistreatment was not going to be sufficient to prevent it in the future.
I think that we needed to have more of a deterrence here for this kind of treatment to occur in the future.
And I don't think Judge Lynn gave any kind of deterrence at all.
I think the government will see in the future, if anything like this happens again, that they can get away with it.
Okay.
And now, I guess I'm just thinking back to maybe when I was a kid or something like that, just, you know, before I really knew anything about how stuff works, but just my basic impressions from school and that kind of thing.
I would think that if somebody got tortured by the cops, or, you know, in this case, the military police or whatever, or abused in this kind of way, that then, you know, because of the rule of law and all that, the judge would always just have to rule that you've done your time, right?
And if the people are angry that the person didn't, you know, have to go to trial and serve the whole sentence, well, they should be mad at the cops for abusing them then, because you have to have some kind of exclusionary rule in order to, you know, disincentivize the authorities from beating confessions out of people, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, that's right.
There was, you know, we have come a long way since those days.
You know, you can just see it in the nomination of John Brennan to be the head of the CIA, how long we've come, and it's a very short time.
Just a few years ago, Brennan was not perceived as being acceptable to be CIA head because of his approval of torture, because of his involvement with the wiretapping of the phones, the NSA wiretapping program, because of so much that, you know, he stood for.
And now, here we are a few years later, and he's acceptable.
Well, you're talking about stuff even a longer time period, exclusionary rule, which essentially said, you know, that it's more important for the police to behave within the framework of the law, and even that means that some guilty go free, because we don't want to have police, you know, violating people's Fourth Amendment right to be free from illegal searches, violating people's rights to not incriminate themselves, and now we've come a long way from that.
You know, I remember when I was in law school, and then after I left law school, how much of things have changed.
We have really become a system of, I guess the word's justice, a system of justice that is one we can't be that proud of anymore, that really has undermined the rule of law as traditionally it has been thought of, and we've become a country that, you know, routinely violates rights, and it's approved by the courts, and this is very much what happened in the Manning case here.
Yes, his rights were violated, but the court said, not significant, and only 112 days off his sentence, and of course, Manning is facing potential life imprisonment, certainly potentially a decade or more in prison, and so a third of a year off is not all that significant in the scheme of things of his potential sentence.
All right, and now, on a couple of other issues here, it's been, I forget how long now, almost three years, right, since he was arrested?
That's right.
And has been held without a trial.
So of course, there's the constitutional right to a speedy trial, but then again, you sign a lot of that away, you sign a lot of something away when you join up the military.
Well, that's the next big fight, is the violation of meaning speedy trial rights.
You do have a speedy trial right in the military court system as well.
It's different than the civilian court system, or not?
Well, you have them both, the military and civilian, you have speedy trial rights.
But I mean, is it the same?
Yeah.
The same standard?
It's basically the same.
It's basically the same, and you can see in the court now, the prosecutors are trying to start to blame the lack of a speedy trial on the defense, which I just find laughable.
They're blaming the defense for raising these pretrial motions that are taking so long to be heard, which is just a joke, because what really has delayed the trial has been the government not disclosing evidence, and not disclosing documents that are required by the discovery rules, really forcing the defense to push and push and push through motions to get basic information about Manning's treatment and the investigation, and documents relevant to the defense.
So that's when the real cause of the delay, and we'll see how the judge rules on that.
Again, this is a very high-profile case, and a very complicated one, and so it's a tough argument.
And then we'll go to, if that doesn't succeed, the next big fight, of course, will be the court-martial itself, which will begin in March.
And that court-martial could take months for us to try, so this is a long road ahead still, and every step of the way, Manning's defense is fighting as hard as they can for justice for Manning.
Well, that's the one good thing out of all of this that I keep hearing, is nobody complains that his defense isn't doing a good enough job.
I haven't heard a single complaint like that yet.
I think David Coombs is doing a great job in a very tough case, and so you can have a great defense and still not get a great result, but I think Coombs is doing an excellent job in this case, and I'm really confident that Manning will get a good defense.
So he's pushing the speedy trial issue hard right now?
Oh yeah, definitely.
He's raised that, and you can see the motion for a speedy trial on David Coombs' website.
It's a very detailed description of all the delays caused by the government.
I think it's a very solid motion, and one that should result in the dismissal of charges in my view, but I'm not the judge, and that's why I don't have the power to make that decision, but I hope that Judge Lind will put aside the pressure she must be under in this very high-profile case and give us a just result, which will hopefully be dismissal of charges.
He'll have served almost a thousand days in jail already, so it's time for us to move on here.
It's a very well-punished morning.
It should have been.
All right, and then one more thing is the command influence.
Now who all in the rank, because of course in a military court-martial, the judge and the jury are all officers under the Pentagon, under the Army, or the Navy, whatever forces, so I know that off the top of my head, I know the President and the Secretary of Defense or former Secretary of Defense had already declared Manning guilty, but there was somebody else too.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President have both declared Manning guilty.
And the Secretary of Defense, yeah.
We also know that the pretrial confinement was being controlled by a Lieutenant General at the Pentagon, and so there's been heavy involvement of command influence in this case.
Manning's defense, David Coombs, has chosen not to go with a jury trial, but to go with a judge trial.
And, you know, I don't know what went into that, thinking he keeps a bit of a link between us and the advocacy group and the court work, but he, you know, it could have been the command influence, maybe one factor in making a decision, but I think he also has a lot of faith in Judge Linda.
I hope he's right about that.
So far, I'm not happy with a lot of her rulings, but Coombs has chosen to go with a non-jury trial, but to go with a judge trial.
The judge will be not only the sentencer, but also the person who finds Manning guilty or innocent.
So that's the direction it's going, is a judge trial, with Judge Linda deciding everything.
Yeah.
Well, see, that's a real hard one, right, is to tell the judge who's going to be doing the deciding that, yeah, we can't leave it to you to decide, especially, I guess he's already made the choice, like you're saying, to not even have a jury.
Well, you know, the jury is picked in these cases by the convener, which is the general in charge of the district.
So I'm not a big fan of the military justice system, the court-martial system.
Coombs is.
Coombs thinks it's a better system than the civilian system.
He feels much better operating in the military court-martial than he does in the federal criminal prosecution, so he has a lot of confidence in that system.
But he's chosen, he's a wise guy, and he has chosen a bench trial with the judge rather than a jury trial.
So that's where it's heading.
And, you know, it's still worth kind of going back over, though, just how absolutely outrageous it is that the president and the SecDef and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have already pronounced this guy guilty.
They're not allowed to do that.
Exactly right.
And the command influence is very powerful in the military, it operates under a chain of command, and that's the reality.
They'll get away with it, but they shouldn't.
The Bradley Manning Support Network, which, you know, is following us closely, if you want to read what's happened in every hearing, go to bradleymanning.org, and you can stay up to date on every detail, and you can get involved, and we really are planning demonstrations where our court will be in court monitoring each hearing, reporting on it, so all people will get involved with the Bradley Manning Support Network at bradleymanning.org, get involved, donate, participate, show up at Fort Meade for the hearings, because we need people out there showing that we're disgusted with the way this case is going down.
Yeah.
Very good.
Again, that's bradleymanning.org.
Thanks so much for your time, Kevin.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
Good to talk to you again.
That's Kevin Zeese, everybody.
We'll be right back after this.
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