Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Janine Jackson from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
And she is a producer of their radio show, Counterspin, as well.
Welcome to the show, Janine.
How are you doing?
I'm doing just fine.
Happy to be here.
Great.
Happy to have you on the show.
And if you're the lady from Counterspin, then that means I've heard you on the radio a lot of times before.
Happy to finally make your acquaintance here.
Chelsea Manning again takes fall for defending public's right to know.
Now, you wrote this article, of course, before the latest developments and the arrest of Julian Assange yesterday.
But let's start with Manning.
It's the same case here that we're talking about, of course.
And Manning, too, is under arrest right now.
So you know what?
Time flies.
And it's been almost a decade since all this broke out.
Why don't you remind the good people, who is Chelsea Manning?
What's so important about what Chelsea Manning did way back in 2010 anyway?
Well, Chelsea Manning was a U.S. Army soldier who released two WikiLeaks to Julian Assange's association, war logs that she had access to as an analyst, war logs from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
And they had all kinds of really devastating information amounting to war crimes, essentially.
There was information in that leak about attacks on Afghan civilians that the U.S. government was denying, about the U.S. government stymying investigations into torture, about an airstrike that in fact killed two journalists, two Reuters journalists.
And there were also some cables, for example, that revealed not just a deal between the United States and Yemen, which a lot of folks did talk about, the fact that there was a deal in which the U.S. would bomb Yemen and the Yemeni government would say that it was Yemeni forces that had done it.
Also, though, at the time, we were denying that we were even carrying out airstrikes in Yemen.
So Chelsea Manning revealed a lot of information that the public needed to know, but the government wanted to keep secret.
And she said at the time that she hoped that this release would spark worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.
And you know what?
It actually did.
It actually did inspire a lot of reporting, a lot of shock and dismay on the part of the public and calls for reforms.
Meanwhile, the military went after her.
She was court-martialed.
And she was sentenced by a military judge to 35 years, which was an incredible blow.
But then, surprisingly, in 2017, Barack Obama commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence when she had served seven years, which is still the longest time that anybody has ever served for disclosing classified information to the media.
So what's happening now, Scott, is that in putting together their case against Julian Assange, a grand jury has subpoenaed Chelsea Manning again to ask her to again talk about what she talked about in 2010.
It's widely seen as a kind of fishing expedition to find a way to get at Assange.
So Manning refused to testify.
She objected that this process was so secretive.
And also she said, you know, I've testified fully about these disclosures.
I'm not going to now suddenly say, oh, yes, Julian Assange solicited this information, and that's why I gave it up.
You know, I've already explained why I revealed this information.
I thought that people should know what the government was doing in their name.
So what's happened is, as happened before, even during her pretrial detention, and certainly while she was in prison, Manning has been very much abused by the prison system for a time, even though she was supposedly just being held to compel her testimony.
You know, she was supposedly just being held because she refused to testify.
She was put in solitary confinement, you know, which is lots of folks, including from the U.N., think is tantamount to torture.
You know, and they claimed that this was, you know, for her protection and that sort of thing.
But it seemed very clear that it was punitive for her refusing to help the government make its case.
So now we come up to the present day.
And I will say that as a media critic, you know, whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning are so critical.
And I am so dismayed and disheartened at elite media's failure to rally around her.
You know, there were no editorials complaining about her being essentially rearrested.
There was no saying this is an attack on a whistleblower who was trying to get information out to the public.
That's what we as journalists are in favor of.
There was nothing like that.
It was just editorial silence, you know.
Isn't this funny?
You know, when I was a kid, this is why I believed in like Freemason conspiracies and stuff.
Because it was like, how else do you explain this?
Where everyone's just going to pretend that McVeigh had no help.
Okay, McVeigh did it all by himself, guys.
Okay, on with the next one.
Or like this, where you have, you know, Manning and Assange who, however polarizing these figures are, where's the poll where people favor them?
Right?
Only at FAIR?
Only at antiwar.com?
And only in the alternative media?
How come out of the Miami Herald and the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle and the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego whatever the hell and whatever they publish there in Salt Lake City, how come nobody cares about this?
How come no one is willing to take the right position on this?
It's so, it really shows you the point, the difference between journalism and the media that we've got.
You know, there really is something different because they haven't only not supported Chelsea Manning.
In some cases they have, you know, actually attacked her and other whistleblowers.
You know, the Washington Post called for Ed Snowden to go to jail, you know, even as they're collecting their Pulitzer Prize that they got out of stories that they got from Ed Snowden.
You know, so there's a hypocrisy here also in addition to the kind of anemic defense.
That is part of it, right, is they're terrified because Julian Assange shuttles them up.
And the New York Times is 20th century technology, 19th.
And Julian Assange, even though you can't really argue that it's, you know, you can argue distinctions, but you can't argue a real difference between what he's doing and what they're doing in terms of publishing classified information.
Just because they have paragraphs about what those documents say and he just gives you the raw document, that's kind of a distinction without a difference really.
And yet in terms of whether it's journalism or not, that kind of thing.
And yet it sure is an entirely different way of going about things compared to the New York Times way, which is to always call the White House and check and make sure if it's okay if they publish this first and this kind of thing.
And so, you know, the two of these people together here, Manning and Assange, just absolutely have shown up the entire media.
And then as you say, all they can do then is try to play catch up and then try to say, oh yeah, look at all our stories that we wrote based on what these guys did.
And then try to take credit for it while throwing them under the bus.
You know, Daniel Ellsberg just reminded recently that although the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, they didn't give him any help with his defense either.
They were happy to hang him out to dry and they somehow made this distinction saying, well, you know, when we take a leak from the government and put out something that they want put out, but without their name attached to it, that's one thing.
But when you as a whistleblower put out information that the powerful don't want to get out, well, you know, that's criminal and we can't really defend you on that.
Although we certainly will, you know, dust off space on the shelf for all the prizes we're going to win for it.
You know, what I really want to say, Scott, is whistleblowers are brave people who reveal information of public importance at tremendous personal risk sometimes.
And they need and deserve brave journalistic partners.
It doesn't work without the journalism.
So for media outlets to take information, turn it into stories, win prizes for it, and then call, as The Washington Post did with Snowden, for the source of the stories to go to jail, that really is a special kind of cowardice and hypocrisy.
We don't have a First Amendment so you can get a Pulitzer.
You know, we have a First Amendment because there's a recognition that exposing information that powerful people don't want to get out is dangerous and the people who do it have to be protected.
And we protect them with our numbers, you know, with all of us rallying to their defense.
And then they are supported.
You can't simply take advantage of them and then hang them out to dry.
Hey, everybody, you know what's a great book?
The War State by my friend Mike Swanson.
It's a great history of the rise of the military-industrial complex after World War II, the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations.
You'll learn so much and love it.
And check out his great investment advice at WallStreetWindow.com, a very successful hedge fund manager turned market explainer to the masses.
Check him out.
Great stuff.
WallStreetWindow.com.
Well, and also, we're not talking about a big tough guy like John Kiriakou here.
We're talking about Chelsea Manning, who has had some problems in the past, including two suicide attempts, who was essentially tortured, held in solitary confinement for years previously under military custody, was forced to remain naked in the name of suicide precautions for weeks at a time, humiliated, of course, in the prison, and all of this stuff.
And, you know, two suicide attempts.
That's the bottom line here.
And then what they do, they throw in solitary confinement for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury.
I mean, you can hold—I understand how contempt of court works and all this.
I don't agree with the rules, but they are what they are.
But why is Manning not in the regular county lockup with everybody else?
Why is she being treated this way?
I mean, that's a hell of an extortion to lock someone.
And you say, you know, it's called torture.
Even I just said, oh, kind of amounts to torture sort of thing.
What would happen if you were locked in a room the size of a parking space for weeks, never mind months or something like that?
Sounds like torture to me.
Open and shut case right there.
And, you know, the conditions that you're talking about, there was a moment there during the trial in 2012 when those pretrial conditions, the solitary confinement, the forced nudity, sleep deprivation, they actually came up in the trial.
And Chelsea Manning talked about her treatment for the first time.
Who was not interested?
Well, the New York Times ran a little AP story, and that was pretty much it.
You know, and even later, I think Margaret Sullivan, when they had an ombudsperson said, you know, we really missed the boat on this story.
The Times was not interested in the conditions that Chelsea Manning was was being charged with aiding the enemy.
You know, this this terribly chilling accusation.
And mainstream media just did not take an interest either in the charges and their severity and their implications for the press or just the cruelty and obvious punitive nature of the way that Manning was treated in prison.
It was just a non story.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post had a space for three columns calling for clemency for Roman Polanski.
So, you know, make of that what you will.
Right.
You know, this whole thing, all of this media stuff, it reminds me of junior high school here, except sometimes the jocks are supposed to stick up for the computer nerds and stuff.
Not always just pick on them, but maybe defend them from another jock or something like that.
That's supposed to be part of how this works.
Right.
But where are any of the cool kids sticking up for these people?
You know, you know, I think there's a I think what's happening is that whistleblowers undermine media's gatekeeping role.
You know, this is something that Jim Noriquez had mentioned that elite media see their job as, you know, we're going to learn what powerful people are doing and then we're going to decide what you the public deserve to know.
We're going to be the ones who say, you know, we can we're going to protect these secrets and share these.
And whistleblowers undermine that by simply, as you put it earlier, by just putting that information out there and allowing people to see it with their own eyes, not not curating it.
Whistleblowers interfere with that economy of and that's how many journalists define their power.
Whistleblowers aren't going to get you into a party, you know, with with high up officials.
You know, you and I say, golly, isn't that why you would go into journalism to get a story that powerful people don't want out and to get it out?
Like, isn't that what it's all about?
But for the elite media we have today, it seems that that's not really what it's about.
And so how they react to folks like Manning and Assange is to is to police their profession, is to say, well, you're not really a journalist.
You're not really journalists.
We are the journalists.
And what we decide people can know is what people can know.
That's dangerous for democracy.
I'm going to ask you about Assange's plight, the updated version here in just a moment.
But I just remembered I have this list here that I had kept of Manning's greatest hits.
And I just wanted to mention a few of these.
I won't go down the whole list, but I think, you know, people might not remember the importance here.
I would assert that there are thousands, maybe more than 10,000 news stories published around the world that at least cite the WikiLeaks, the State Department cables.
That means Manning's leak.
Huge stories, either major stories based on these documents or at least part of a story corroborated whatever.
Paragraph 23 says, as WikiLeaks remind us back in 2006, et cetera, et cetera.
And there are there is no limit to this stuff.
But so I just want to mention real quick on Iraq.
There was the war crime where they had executed the baby and called in the airstrike and all this.
And this helped change the politics in Iraq to prevent the status of forces agreement from being updated and allowing the U.S. to stay, which was huge.
And there's truth, of course, about the higher death toll, about America and the Wolf Brigade, the division of the Bata Brigade on the Shiite side leading the torture regime there.
Of course, the collateral murder video and the plans to rile up the Syrian Sunnis for a sectarian war there in Afghanistan.
You mentioned civilian casualties and cover ups there.
And of course, our ally Pakistan's role in backing our enemy, the Afghan Taliban and and legendary corruption in the Afghan government that was preventing it from being anything like a legitimate government all in there.
And then there's stuff about Gaza in Israel where the Israelis were saying, well, we're trying to keep them on a diet.
We want them to be hungry, but not starving and all this kind of thing that was in the WikiLeaks, as well as the head of Mossad attempting essentially to blackmail the United States into attacking Iran back in 2007.
If you don't start it, we will.
And this kind of thing.
And then there's the Guantanamo files, of course, and all this information about the people being held at Guantanamo that have been kept secret, including just their identities and their histories.
And I think in some cases, at least the very thin charges and cases against them, that kind of deal.
And then in the State Department files, there's no end to the scandals.
But lies about Yemeni airstrikes, Irish priest rape coverups, corruption in Tunisia that helped spark the Arab Spring there, Yukiya Amano, the new head of the IAEA, signing up to be America's tool there against Iran.
The coup in Honduras that Obama originally objected to until Hillary overruled him and endorsed back in 2009 and on and on and on.
I'm sorry.
I'm going.
This list is about double that length and I'll quit now.
Shell in Nigeria.
OK, so this is the kind of thing this is journalism, like the journalism gods dream come true.
This is the best thing that ever happened to anyone who thinks that journalism is like what you said about exposing the powerful, exposing the truth about what they do.
Can I just add one more that was on my list?
The U.S. had a secret agreement, WikiLeaks revealed, with Britain that allowed U.S. bases on British soil to stockpile cluster bombs as a way of getting around the treaty that Britain had signed.
That to me just leaps out.
Is this not something that you want to know?
Is this not something that, you know, every time a politician gets up and says, oh, yeah, no, we don't use cluster bombs.
You have this information.
You have something.
You have hard information to at least get into this story.
No way, Janine.
I had no right to know those things.
That's right.
I'm so mad at these people for telling me the truth.
Exactly.
Right.
And listen, I'm sorry.
Just real quick here, because I talked over all your time.
But tell me a little bit, just kind of basic thing.
What do you think people really need to understand about the now arrest and apparently soon extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face charges in this case?
What you should notice is that while folks are going to say, hey, wait, it's actually about some kind of computer hacking, it's not about reporting.
That looks very much like a cover.
And when you read the actual charges, they are, as it turns out, very much about getting information out, revealing information that the state doesn't want revealed.
So you can't find cover in, wait, maybe he did commit this other sort of crime, you know.
And the idea that it also says that he doesn't, Assange couldn't do this because he didn't have a security clearance.
So every reporter and editor, your ears need to lift up at that.
Everyone who relies on media needs to recognize that reporters don't always have security clearance.
We want reporters who don't have security clearance to be digging out stories.
So however you see it kind of massaged in the media, this is absolutely an unprecedented, unconstitutional and very, very dangerous attack on the free press and free expression.
Yeah.
And all those media cool kids, they better get it in their head that they are on trial, too, right here.
There is no difference in law or in whatever the jury decides here between what Assange is doing, what they're doing.
You know, I was laughing earlier when you were talking about the New York Times saying, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But when we're stenographers for official leaks, that's different.
You know, it's really funny.
But the point being, though, that sometimes the New York Times gets real scoops and publishes classified stuff that we weren't really supposed to know that.
And they weren't supposed to tell us that, but they decided to anyway kind of thing.
So this very well could apply to them just as well as any other paper or any other journalistic endeavor, mainstream or alternative in this country.
If you think it's going to stop with Julian Assange, if you think it's going to stop with Ed Snowden or Chelsea Manning, you are seriously deluded.
And we need to look to people who have a clearer vision on what's actually going on here and can help us defend ourselves against it.
Yeah.
All right.
Listen, I can't tell you how much I love fairness and accuracy in reporting.
You guys do such great work.
And I love your great article here.
And I appreciate your time on the show so much.
Well, thank you.
And back at you.
All right, you guys.
That is Janine Jackson.
She's at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
That's fair.org.
The article is called Chelsea Manning Again Takes the Fall for Defending the Public's Right to Know.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
