07/31/13 – Greg Mitchell – The Scott Horton Show

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Welcome back to the show.
Greg Mitchell, everybody.
You know him.
He writes for The Nation.
And his own personal blog is called Pressing Issues.
He's the author of Atomic Cover-Up, which you and I are going to be talking about that, I guess, next week.
Atomic Cover-Up, the campaign of the century, tricks, lies, and videotape.
What's the age of WikiLeaks, right?
Right.
And then the new book with Kevin Gostola, The Great Kevin Gostola, Truth and Consequences, the U.S. versus Bradley Manning.
Right.
Yes, The Great Kevin Gostola.
That's very well said there.
I agree.
Truth and Consequences.
Okay.
So, thank you very much for joining us on the show today, Greg.
The reason that I wanted you here was because, well, you're really good at counting Bradley Manning's good deeds and the wonderful effect that, well, the good and the bad and the crazy and the upside down and all that's happened as the result of his leak of the Iraq and Afghan war logs and the State Department cables.
And I was speaking with Dan Ellsberg yesterday on the show, and he reminded us that one of the cables, specifically from the Iraq war logs, which detailed an American massacre of an Iraqi family and execution, including of a five-month-old infant baby.
And then they called in the airstrike to try to cover up the evidence, but that didn't work.
And then they admitted the whole thing in the cables.
That created the political climate in Iraq in November of 2011 to give Nouri al-Maliki all the cover he needed to tell Obama, you can't have immunity.
Your troops have to finally leave, even as Obama was trying to continue the occupation of Iraq.
And I think that probably is the single most important result of the Bradley Manning leak, I guess you could call it.
But there are so many others.
It's almost impossible to conceive of them all, but you can probably do it better than anybody, so go ahead and tell us your favorites, Greg.
Well, as you mentioned in our book, we list about a hundred of them, I think.
And you know, the problem is that so many people have said in sort of downplaying what Manning did, you know, that he didn't release anything new or whatever.
And of course, then the flip side is he's just been convicted of 20 charges, so I guess it had some effect.
But you know, it's true that a lot of the things that he released did not lead to anything.
You know, we see this so much in other coverage and investigative revelations and so forth about, let's just say, Wall Street and bankers, where you see the claims that come out, the charges and the evidence, and then nothing happens.
And we've seen that certainly in spades with all the Manning revelations.
Just to use one example, one of the major, besides the one you mentioned, just looking at Iraq, and of course the Iraq revelations were just one part.
He also had the Afghan, the Stan Warlogs, you had the Cablegate, you had the two videos, you had the Gitmo revelations, and on and on.
But just to focus on one aspect, which was the Iraq Warlogs, and just one aspect of the Iraq Warlogs, you had the, what was focused on the first day of the revelations was the evidence that the U.S. had looked the other way while our allies, the Iraqis, tortured prisoners left and right.
We may not have taken part in that all the time, or any of the time even, but we basically handed over numerous prisoners who were then tortured, and we knew they'd be tortured.
And in fact, this type of thing was later cited by Bradley Manning, both in his chat with Adrian Lemel, and also when Manning did get a chance to speak in court, as one of the motivating factors that led him to make the massive leak, the WikiLeak.
So we can't, I hate to focus on one thing, but it's so classic and important and basic, just one of the hundreds of revelations about the U.S. looking the other way, knowing the Iraqis were going to torture people.
No one paid for it, no one was penalized, and you can't point and say that led to the conviction of 29 U.S. soldiers and court-martials and so forth, but it's the kind of thing Americans should have known about that Americans didn't know about, there was a cover-up about it, and we still wouldn't know about it today without the leaks.
Yeah, well, and you know, compared to the CIA, these guys make the CIA look like the Children's Hospital or something, they torture people to death with power drills, and they are monsters.
I hate to laugh about it, but it's true, yeah.
In fact, a lot of what he released, when you look at it, had to do with torture and corruption of allies, but in the Afghan war logs you had, again, I shouldn't have been a shocker, but firm evidence of massive corruption by Afghan leaders, the U.S. knowing about it and letting it go on, of course, the tale of the guy who walked away with millions in a suitcase, and then you had massive corruption with our allies in Pakistan, corruption in the U.S., you know, sending money for one thing there and it going for something else, and then you had, you know, U.S. involvement with torture in Egypt, knowing that torture was going on, continuing to fund them, you know, and then we go into Tunisia, which the cables, you know, some people have said the single most important or dramatic effect of the leaks was Tunisia overthrowing their government, but the cables also showed the U.S. knew about the corruptions and abuses of that government beforehand and didn't do anything about it, and the list goes on and on, you know, Yemen, where we, you know, with Frank, the discussion between Petraeus and the leader there, where we okayed them lying about who was carrying out the airstrikes there, and this is just the global thing, this doesn't even get into anything that touches on, you know, Americans at home or, you know, how people were affected here by various actions.
Right.
Now, well, and we could get into that, some of the more domestic stuff, but, you know, it's funny because I guess, like you're saying, it's not like, you know, once these revelations came out, then, oh, all of a sudden, everything was fine, and everybody who ever tortured anybody in Iraq was then indicted for it and that kind of thing, but then again, and really, you know, I think maybe because of TV and the way things are set up here in the U.S., most Americans didn't care much about all this, they're just happy to not have to think about Iraq anymore at all.
Well, the other thing was that, you know, even the revelations that did get a lot of attention early on, when they emerged, we still didn't see what was being reported abroad, and there were so many of the revelations that were, as months passed, were, you know, front-page stories and did have huge effects abroad, just, I mean, for one example was details on the Vatican hiding sex abuse cases in Ireland.
Well, I mean, Americans here, I mean, this is sort of a hot issue here, I'm not saying Americans don't care about that, but they would have no idea what a big effect that had in Ireland, and, you know, you can go on and on with things, you know, around the globe that would probably bore people to tears, but...
No way, I don't think so, I think it's exciting, and it goes right to the whole point of why he did this in the first place, and there just, I guess, is no end to the maligning of Manning, and they got nothing to make fun of, I mean, if you call him short, that's not really good for anything, so all they can do is question his sexuality and say, well, you know, he was having a crisis of, you know, personality, this, that at the time that he leaked this, yeah, so that might have meant that he was kind of in the frame of mind where he would do something that could have severe consequences, but that doesn't detract at all from his very explicitly stated, in English, reasons for doing what he did, which was exposing wrongdoing, so that people out there in the world, particularly Americans, but around the world, could, in his words, do reforms, so that we could do the right thing.
Well, what's amazing, and in fact, I think you and I have talked about this in the past, is the media, a little less lately, but certainly for two or three years, was picturing him mainly in what you just described, having sexual problems, identity problems, and also wanting to get back at people, and so on and so forth, when, from the get-go, from the Lamo chat logs, right there in black and white, he over and over talks about things he's seen in Iraq, things that disturb him, wanting to give the public information, being disturbed by things he saw in the cables, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the cables, and wanting to get that information out, and yet, people, the media, ignored that, then when he finally was allowed to make his statement in court, after he pleaded guilty to a number of charges, and he detailed, step-by-step, his motivation, and why he did what he did, and so forth, there was a few more people in the media believed him, I think, but they acted as if, oh, how could we have known that, when there it was in black and white, two years earlier.
Right.
Hey, did you see, I'm sure you must have seen Glenn Greenwald arguing with Jeffrey Toobin on CNN last night?
Yeah, actually, I tweeted earlier, I caught Toobin on the tube earlier in the day, where he came on by himself, and said what Manning done was appalling, and disgusting, and everything else, so I sort of figured the debate with Greenwald would be pretty heated.
Yeah, well, it turned into a real good time, and I like how, you know, Greenwald pointed out that, you know, one of Toobin's denunciations of Manning is centered around, well, he just leaked thousands, hundreds of thousands of documents that he couldn't have possibly read, it's such an indiscriminate leak, and Greenwald says, yeah, well, I guarantee you, Snowden read each and every document very carefully, and we went over them all together, etc. etc., but I don't hear you saying that you like Snowden now, just because of that, when really, the truth is, you'll just glom onto any excuse to denounce somebody who tells the truth about your horrid regime you worship so bad, and of course, I'm putting words in Greenwald's mouth, but it was pretty close to that, and humiliating for the entire Toobin family, I'm sure.
Well, I guess we'll need a follow-up on that, but...
I was laughing out loud, I mean, it was really funny, because really, what kind of, I mean, if you were trying, Greg, let's say I was paying you to be an actor, and you had to come up with ways to condemn Bradley Manning, the American hero, what could you do?
Well, the common line, which you've heard a lot, is that, you know, he leaked indiscriminately, he didn't read the documents, he turned them all over, and so forth.
Now, of course, one problem with that is he did, even in the limo chats, was citing specific things he saw in them, and the other thing was that even Wikileaks, which is condemned for being fast and loose with the documents, actually, after a couple missteps, did hold back many, many documents, and did not indiscriminately post them, so that doesn't work.
And he had access to top-secret stuff, right?
Right, right.
He didn't even leak a lot.
He deliberately chose to leak only this medium-level stuff.
That's right.
And then, I think the final point, and maybe you've covered this today or not, or yesterday, I'm not sure, but, you know, the sentencing process is beginning today, has begun this morning, and what's important with that, with the Manning defense, is that, you know, they felt, at the trial, they were denied a chance to have a full defense by the judge, the same judge who, you know, was getting some praise for at least letting him off on aiding the enemy.
But in the trial, they were not allowed to fully explore his motivations and his idealism, and why he did what he did, and they also were not allowed to introduce much evidence on the positive effect of the leaks and the lack of negative effects.
And as you know, there's much, even many in government, right up to Pentagon Chief Robert Gates, have testified that there was very little negative effect that you can describe.
So in this, the sentencing, which is going to go on for a couple weeks, they've called, they're calling numerous witnesses, and they're going to be hitting hard on both of those angles and a chance to, you know, make Manning, you know, have a real human element of someone who tried to do the right thing, and also that when the dust settled, there's very little negative result and only positive results of what he released.
So they're certainly hoping that will cut his sentence down way, you know, way, way down.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it's interesting.
I think Dan was saying that they're going to have, or, I'm sorry, maybe it was Chase Medar was saying, they're going to have a, or maybe it was Kevin Zeese, I can't keep all my Manning guests straight in my head anymore.
Somebody was saying that they're going to have a lot of secret testimony against him though, where, oh, well, we can tell you about how much Osama benefited from the leak, but we can only tell the judge in secret and, and not any way for at least the public to know what it is.
But it seems to me that, well, I'll turn it over to you in just a sec, but I was going to say real quick.
It seems to me like the only harm that they could point to, and maybe this is the reason for the secrecy would be the temporary loss of their sock puppet military dictatorship in Egypt, which they can't quite claim as harm to the American people.
It's a, it's harm to their evil empire that they deny having.
Right.
And so they can't really say we lost Mubarak.
He, he heard our strategery because we got no right to have a Mubarak.
And so they have to say, well, I guess no harm was done really.
Well, I think they're going to say a couple of things, and I think even Toobin mentioned these, uh, you might call them fallback claims.
One is that, you know, now our, our diplomats can't do anything in secret because they, you know, that our, uh, allies and other people we're dealing with, they're going to think, uh, you know, they're, whatever they talk about is going to come out, you know, it's going to emerge.
Now that's not a threat or a danger to someone's health, but they're going to say, this is going to put a crimp in us foreign policy.
That's going to last for years.
And then the second thing they're going to claim is there, and I'm sure this happened, they're going to say, look, we had to take extraordinary measures after some of the names of our informants came out and other people, we had to move, you know, several dozen people around.
We had to find them new homes.
We had to protect them.
Uh, now at the same time, none of these people were armed.
Uh, there's no documented case of attacks or deaths or anything, but they will say it threw them into a, you know, an uproar for weeks where they had to protect people.
And you know, Manning couldn't have known that no one would, you know, would die.
Uh, and so his intent, uh, was, well, whether it was intent or not, the effect could have been worse and, and maybe still will happen.
We don't know.
No.
If someone's going to get bumped off tomorrow.
So I would presume those are at least two things they're going to bring up.
I don't, I'm not sure that they're going to mention, you know, dictatorships abroad or that they, uh, that Osama, you know, you know, as Amy Davidson of the New York New Yorker who's usually very good, uh, was on Charlie Rose last night and she, she said, you know, what, what if we'd raided Osama's, uh, headquarters and we, you know, we found copies of the New York times lying around when we'd said, you know, the New York times was aiding the enemy cause he was getting information from them.
So, um, you know, that's, I'm not sure what they're going to do with Osama in this, in this hearing.
Yeah.
I mean, they are claiming, I guess, that he's got the WikiLeaks, but I think Nathan Fuller explained that it, they had to admit at the trial that there's no evidence that, or in fact, I guess there was evidence of when Osama asked his people to bring him some of these WikiLeaks and it was only after everybody had said that Bradley Manning ought to be publicly executed for his treason because of how important these documents were.
Then that was what made Osama want him in the first place was all Joe Biden's hot air, you know?
Well, you know, we'll, we'll see what comes out.
I hope, uh, I hope there's, can be reporting on it.
Um, you know, there's been so little media coverage except for big days like yesterday.
Uh, you know, if the sentencing was going to be carried out over two days, let's say, uh, probably a lot of the media would have stuck around and we'd see, you know, maybe some intense reporting on the sentencing hearings and results and so forth.
But since this is going to be spread out and, um, a lot of it's going to be in secret or at least some of it's going to be in secret, uh, I would suspect this, the media, uh, if they haven't left already or will leave very soon and then they'll come back when the actual day of sentencing arrives.
Yeah.
I just saw a tweet by Nathan Fuller saying, uh, the CNN guy was saying, oh man, I wish I had my phone so I could play solitaire during the boring parts of this stupid thing.
That's the media in America.
That's the TV reporters for it.
But again, I, when we talked about Kevin Gustola, who's the coauthor of our book on the Manning case, uh, you know, he's one of, I think, I don't know what the number is, about four, I think people you can legitimately say that this is someone who's been there for a year and a half, almost every hearing, every day of the trial, uh, you know, and none of the others are mainstream journalists and Kevin is, you know, had been there, you know, uh, with like I said, maybe two or three others and that's it.
You really can't go any further than that.
And uh, so these are the real journalistic heroes of this who've kept this going and they even arranged, you know, they arranged to have, there was no, um, transcripts, you know, it's not like it hasn't been like a regular trial or you can get the daily transcripts.
They had to hire someone who's done it, uh, and posted these sort of official unofficial transcripts.
Uh, so it's, it's been a Herculean effort to, you know, bring some transparency to this, uh, this whole process.
Well, and you know, it's funny, I tried to arrange an interview with Kevin a few times and it just never worked out and I sort of quit trying, uh, but I, I read him off and he does absolutely great work.
And then of course there's Nathan Fuller I mentioned and obviously, uh, Alexa O'Brien.
That's with a E, O'Brien with a E. Um, and uh, who else are we leaving out as long as we're getting close to him?
Well, the guy who drives the WikiLeaks truck.
It's been there probably, he'd be next in line after those three.
He's been there and I had also done, done drawings for a vast number of days.
Uh, again, this goes back to the hearings, you know, even the trial itself was barely covered, but the, the, the, the many important hearings over the many months, uh, were, uh, also covered by most of these people.
So it's, it's really quite amazing.
Yeah.
And it's not exactly near, it's not like you have these people living in New York and Washington and the hearings right downtown, you know, this has taken tremendous effort and expense and fundraising and everything else to get the, get the Fort Meade.
Right.
And you know, yesterday, uh, I had a, the live feed here was on RT and they were the only, as far as I could tell, anyway, I didn't have every channel open or whatever on six TVs here, but as far as I can tell, RT was the only TV station in America that was there covering it.
Well, I have to say that Democracy Now went live.
I was on with Jeremy, Jeremy Scahill right about five minutes after the verdict and they did the two hours of, of live coverage with some, some people from the site, some people phoning in, but it was, it was very much a live, uh, live thing.
Oh, okay.
That's good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They, that counts too, for sure.
Uh, but as far as CNN, MSNBC, they're just mailing it in.
Oh yeah, that kid.
Yeah.
They mostly convicted him.
All right.
Back to train crash in Switzerland two days ago, because that's the biggest news of the hour on CNN international all day yesterday.
Well, you know that the, uh, the, the main reason that we did see the, the media coverage we did see was that, uh, with this aid in the enemy charge, uh, it became, uh, an important issue for the mainstream media themselves because it was seen that that if convicted on that would have a real chilling effect on reporters and on whistleblowers.
So they, they were very interested in that and I think once they breathed a sigh of relief over that, uh, they'll move on.
But as others have pointed out, the, just the espionage charges, uh, convicted of five of them, I believe that's unprecedented and that would be, it's almost as if the government knew they were overcharging.
They knew they weren't going to get the one big charge and counting on people to then say, oh, that's good.
Uh, they get all the other convictions and uh, and uh, and the media in fact seems to be missing the point that the espionage charges are also unprecedented and it's no small thing.
You say, well, you're, if you write something or leak something or you publish something, you could get, you know, 50 years for espionage instead of life in prison for, you know, uh, aiding the enemy.
So by the way, I'm not sure, not sure that's a, that's a soft message going out there, right?
Yeah, no, it is.
It is absolutely horrible.
Although, uh, Dan clarified yesterday on the show that it's actually charges under the espionage, but not under the espionage act, but not specifically espionage charges.
Right.
Okay.
But still though, espionage act sounds, sounds pretty bad though.
Yeah, yeah, it certainly does.
And again, for simply doing journalism and like Greenwald was saying on the CNN show last night, the government deliberately leaks to, uh, the media all the time, classified information.
They don't declassify it to leak it.
They just leak classified information all the time.
And as long as it's more or less in line with the agenda of the government, uh, at any given time, it's perfectly fine.
Yeah.
Well, it's, you know, they, the, the, the other point they make, and again, I guess Toobin made this again himself was, was that, you know, Manning was in the military.
He wasn't just the average whistleblower in the federal bureaucracy and he had signed various oaths and so forth.
Uh, and so it's a little different situation.
And of course he's been tried in a military court, so you know right away that it is a different situation.
Um, and you know, whether they, the judge ends up, um, softening the blow somewhat.
Um, we'll see.
Who knows?
I, no way of telling what, what's come through to her.
She could be a hard liner where she just says, look, this is a, this is open and shut.
This guy's in the military.
He signed this oath.
He leaked like crazy and he's going up the river for, you know, 50 years, uh, and she's, you know, here's everything.
Here's the pros and cons and everything else.
And so, and you know, or she may even say, yeah, this Manning is kind of screwed up.
Uh, I screwed up kid and I'll take some pity on him and you know, he's still a young man and he, maybe he'll do something good in 20 years.
So we'll give him a reasonable sentence.
Yeah.
I wish you could cite all the important journalism that has come from his leaks and say, you know what?
I think, uh, you'd done your time, especially considering all the abuse at Quantico and the three years you're held without trial and just think of how thankful the people of Honduras are to know what the American state department weenies had to say about their coup d'etat.
You know?
I'd be surprised if she says that, uh, I, I, it's too much to expect, I think.
But he is getting 121 days off for, for the treatment that, uh, Quantico already been determined that then that's in itself is a, you know, is, is a scandal, you know, that they eventually admitted that his treatment there was so horrendous.
They already took 121 days off, whatever he does get.
I say calling the judge from night court, $50 time, sir.
Free to go young man.
And then we're going to cast your statue out of bronze.
Uh, well, I'm not sure that will happen either, but, um, well, that's if I was in charge.
Yeah.
Well, we'll, we'll, we'll see what happens.
I, I have a feeling there, the bottom line is going to be lucky.
Maybe good things came of it or even certainly good things came of it.
But, uh, you know, Manning couldn't have known that either for sure.
And basically we're going to punish the, the act, you know, he didn't know what was going to happen when he released this stuff.
He could have brought down every dictatorship around the world or he could have made, made things worse in every country he couldn't have known.
So, uh, we have to, uh, punish him for the act and not, not what good or bad happened afterwards.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm sure that'll be whatever excuse they need, whatever way they have to phrase it, I'm sure they'll come up with the worst sentence possible.
I don't know.
I wish that I didn't think that, but I do.
But anyway, um, I sure appreciate all your journalism on this and especially cause you've got so many other journalists who slack, you got to pick up, you know, it's good that you do the work that you do.
Good.
Well, I appreciate it.
It's been, uh, it's been a long process now and it, uh, never seems to end.
So.
Right.
Okay.
Uh, we'll talk next week about Nuke in Japan.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
That is the heroic Greg Mitchell, the great Greg Mitchell, a former editor of editor and publisher.
Uh, my back a few years ago, he's at the nation and his own blog is pressing issues.
He's the author of so wrong for so long.
The atomic coverup, the campaign of the century, et cetera, there is at the nation.com/author slash Greg Mitchell.
See you tomorrow.
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