Introducing Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Good to talk to you, Scott.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
A very important piece that you wrote in The Guardian, Bradley Manning, a show trial of state secrecy.
I guess, first of all, let's talk about the show trial part.
Is it the secrecy that makes it a show trial or are there other aspects you're referring to there in the title?
Well, the central aspect, I think, of Bradley Manning's trial is they have the wrong person on trial.
Even assuming Bradley Manning did what they alleged he did, which was to take documents in some way and upload them or somehow get them out to the world through WikiLeaks and other places, what those documents illustrate is massive crimes by the United States.
I mean, tens of thousands of more civilians killed in Iraq, video in which a helicopter, it's called collateral murder video, which U.S. soldiers have shown, really, in my view, attacking both the Reuters journalists and particularly kids afterwards, that's unacceptable.
It shows a variety of massive war crimes by the United States and massive illicit deals by the United States.
And so the people who should be on trial are not the people who expose those crimes, as I think there's an obligation to expose criminality when you see it, but it should be the people who committed those crimes.
So the first thing with the show trial about it is here they're putting up the person who's trying to expose criminality.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is, look, this is a court-martial, so it already has less of the attributes of a justice system that we have in our federal courts.
Not that that's perfect, but it has even less than that.
And then you put on top of it some reason, and the main thrust of the article I wrote, they are trying Bradley Manning roughly in secret.
Two things happen when you go to that trial, and I've attended it.
One is none of the court orders that the judge issues, none of the motions or papers filed by the federal government, the prosecutor, and finally, because of a good defense counsel, some of those are coming out, but none of the prosecution materials and none of the court orders.
So I sit in court, I'm a lawyer, and I can't understand the proceedings because I can't read any of the papers in advance.
And so if this was a regular federal court, you would be able to keep up with all of that stuff?
Oh, every single document, unless it's classified, would be given to us, and we could get it from a filing, we could get the docket sheet and everything.
Well, now, is that just because it's a military court-martial, or they've really changed the rules for this particular case?
You know, I think it's both.
I think they're being tougher because it's this case.
I think in a normal case, first of all, they don't get many requests in a normal case.
Hardly any press goes to a normal court-martial.
But this is the biggest court-martial they've probably had in 100 years in the United States.
And to not give the media and the public access to the documents on which they plan to convict Bradley Manning is incredible.
And it's not that they're classified.
The claim is not that they're classified.
The claim is that simply there's no right to get them, which is dead wrong.
I have cases that I can make a list as long as my arm, where it's required that the media and the public, the public is really the same as the media, has the same right, to get access to the court orders.
How can a judge issue a court order on pretrial publicity, and then none of us can see it?
I mean, it's absurd.
And this is a case which you have to understand the implications, Scott, here.
Here's a man who allegedly gave up secrets or classified material or information about what the government was doing.
And he did it in part because what our government has been doing is hiding its own misconduct in various wars throughout the world.
So he's doing that, and they're actually demonstrating the government by its position here.
And the judge is demonstrating that his position is absolutely justified, because the U.S. hides everything.
So here you have a guy saying, I had to give this up because it's hidden, and now they're just continuing to hide stuff.
So Manning's not getting a fair trial.
The public isn't getting a real sense of what's going on at the trial.
The media isn't able to report on it.
It's in some courtroom at Fort Meade that's very hard to get to to begin with.
But the secrecy part is really appalling.
I mean, I've never been to a trial at all like this in my life.
Wow, that's quite a statement.
I'm sure you've been to a lot of trials.
Again, it's Michael Ratner from the Center for Constitutional Rights.
And now all of this is because basically they're trying to flip him, right?
They're trying to get him to make a deal and testify against Julian Assange that Assange put him up to it.
That way Assange is not a journalist protected by the First Amendment.
Assange is a co-conspirator in a foreign plot to steal information, which would make Manning not a whistleblower anymore, right?
But the dupe of this terrible James Bond villain, Assange.
But that would be okay because then they'd give him a lesser sentence.
That's basically what they're pushing for, and that's why they're treating him this way.
Is that correct?
Well, I think two things really, Scott.
I think one is if you talk to military people or even people who are somewhat sympathetic are upset that he, quote, broke his military oath and did what he did, speaking of Bradley Manning.
But I agree with you.
I think the driving force, not that I agree with you, is that even David Coombs, his lawyer, that's the main position of the lawyer here.
And he said it in what's called the Article 32 proceeding, which is the pretrial.
He went into court and he said, look, they've even charged this guy with this aiding the enemy charge, which is ridiculous.
There's no way.
What Bradley Manning was trying to do, allegedly trying to do, was really expose what he had seen on this computer and said, how can we be doing this kind of thing?
But when Coombs gets into court, Bradley Manning's defense counsel, what he says is they've charged him with something that has a potential death penalty.
They've said they're only going to try for life imprisonment, and they're not willing to make any kind of a deal with him.
And what they're trying to do, and he said it in court, they're trying to bludgeon Bradley Manning, assuming he knows anything about a relationship to WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.
They're trying to bludgeon him into getting Julian Assange.
That's the big fish here.
And, of course, if they can do that, they would probably then begin to negotiate with Bradley Manning on a sentence, assuming Bradley Manning knows anything.
We don't know that.
And I think your characterization is right.
That is what the defense lawyer is trying to say, is saying, that all of this stuff.
And you look at the treatment.
He had nine months of torture where he was stripped naked, stuck into an underground cell, never seen the light of day, 23 hours of solitary a day.
And that, of course, was another attempt to bludgeon Bradley Manning.
It's terrible.
I mean, his conditions are better now.
And they took this young man, 22 years old, who apparently had some conscience that a lot of other people don't have, who took a risk, allegedly.
And they're trying to get him, use him as really essentially a pawn in their greater efforts to get Julian Assange.
Well, and also back to your original point about what's the show trial about.
It's a show for other potential whistleblowers that you better not because, boy, will we ruin this one life you've got.
But I wonder when it comes to piling on these charges like aiding the enemy, does that ever work?
Or traditionally, I guess it must have worked sometimes here or there.
But do they ever really get away with blaming a whistleblower for a terrible truth getting into the hands of the enemy, even if it benefits the enemy?
If it was really for whistleblower purposes, then it's whistleblower purposes, right?
Can they really charge you with basically treason for that?
Yeah, well, you're making an interesting point, and it's an important one.
I mean, the government or the prosecutor's argument here is that Al-Qaeda, who is a, quote, enemy here, reads WikiLeaks.
Bradley Manning knew they read WikiLeaks or certainly would have thought they read WikiLeaks.
And therefore, he somehow is aiding Al-Qaeda because this material is, quote, going to help Al-Qaeda, although we don't know exactly how.
Now, why is that different than The New York Times aiding the enemy?
When The New York Times reveals the fact that Bush, which they did, was warrantlessly wiretapping, you know, anybody, all kinds of people in the United States in contact with people all over the world, yes, Al-Qaeda is going to read The New York Times.
Of course they are.
So why isn't The New York Times guilty of aiding the enemy?
Why isn't the soldier who said to Rumsfeld, we're not getting enough armor for our vehicles, and that speech, that talk is read by Al-Qaeda.
Why isn't that soldier, why isn't Rumsfeld, accused of aiding the enemy?
So it's an absurd, a completely absurd claim.
The only way you could say that is if Bradley Manning, which is completely crazy, specifically intended to want to aid Al-Qaeda.
Now, we know that's not true.
There's not a shred of evidence to support that.
The evidence is, if you read any of the chat logs or any of that, it's completely the other way.
He was upset by what he saw in these videos.
He wanted to expose it to the American public.
He was a whistleblower.
So this is really a pile-on charge in the context that we said earlier, Scott, a pile-on charge in which they're trying to get him to bend and plead guilty to something, and hopefully, in their view, have information that can somehow get WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
All right, now, real quick, I know you've got to go, but Richard Nixon, he wasn't in any direct chain of command having anything to do with the prosecution of Charles Manson.
But he kind of had accidentally pronounced Manson guilty and then said, whoa, sorry, I take that back, and I never should have said that.
And he tried to be real careful after that because he didn't want for Manson to actually get off because the president had pronounced him guilty before and made it impossible for him to get a fair trial.
In this case, Obama and Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, have both pronounced him guilty publicly, and they are both directly in the chain of command, the two highest men in the chain of command over the judge and the entire jury and everybody running the entire court.
How can they get away with that?
Two really strong points.
One is when Nixon did it, Nixon was not directly in the chain of command that appoints the federal judges for the particular trial that appoints the jury and that the highest appeal is due to.
Our judges are federal.
Well, that was even a state court, right, the Manson trial?
Manson was a state court.
He has not even nothing to do with it.
So Nixon's statement just pales in comparison to what Panetta and Obama did because they actually have ultimate control over the military, quote, justice system in this country.
So they are really command influence, and that's what it's called.
That's what the lawyer David Coombs argued for Bradley Manning but, of course, has been unsuccessful so far, but it's clearly an issue of serious command influence.
And what's also interesting in your example is Nixon, even though he wasn't in the chain of command for a state court, he actually took back the statement because he was very nervous about making it, even when he wasn't in control of the system.
You don't hear either Leon Panetta or Barack Obama saying, I take it back.
We have to judge him first.
So it's really an off-the-wall statement.
Well, and now – but I guess because it's such a high-profile thing, it's not like his lawyers can walk in there and say, Your Honor, you have to dismiss this charge because the president and secretary of defense have already botched it.
And if they don't like it, tough.
It's their fault for blabbing their mouth because the politics of the situation require that this process continue no matter what.
No, that's right.
I mean, that's the problem.
I mean, right now, you know, they're on a certain road, and they've dug themselves – the State Department and others have dug themselves pretty deeply because their first reactions were so outrageous to this, which is normal.
You know, unfortunately, it's normal when you expose – when truth-tellers expose secrets that are secrets of crimes in particular.
It has consequences, unfortunately, and they're heroes.
Those people who do that are heroes.
Let's be straight about it, but unfortunately, they will suffer the burden of the state coming down on them for a period of time.
Eventually, whether it's the Daniel Ellsbergs of the world or the others, they will be recognized for the heroes they are.
But there's a period, and we're in it now, when, you know, a truth-teller, a whistleblower really suffers.
I mean, one problem for me here has been that, you know, the media is not covering Bradley Manning in the way they used to.
One is – of course, you are – but one is that one reason, I think, is the secrecy of the trial, and they can't get much.
But for some reason, he's faded off, and he needs support.
I mean, we need to be out there politically supporting him.
Well, I'll tell you what it was.
It was the two-minutes hate.
It couldn't last more than two minutes.
By the third minute, people started saying, well, wait a minute, he seems like a decent kid.
You know?
That's a good point.
That was why they dropped it.
Yeah, I think you're probably right, because when you go to court and you realize who he is, I mean, he seems – I mean, this is not some incarnate evil, you know?
Yeah, I mean, they started out going blood on his hands, blood on his hands in a way to just get everybody chanting, and that will work for a little while, as we saw.
But apparently, you know, I think that's why they dropped it.
No, and I think what people have an obligation to do is you – people should – there are evaluations of what was released, and it's extraordinary.
I mean, there are people from various more progressive periodicals that talked about what was released in the Cablegate, talked about what was released in the Afghanistan papers and the Iraq papers, and it's amazing stuff, and it's remarkable.
And that's what the press ought to be focused on, what this guy was able to say about America.
Right.
I mean, the list is almost endless.
The most important, probably, is the story that – where it was verified about the Americans that murdered the family and then called in an airstrike to cover up the evidence in Iraq, and that story came out in the last batch of the WikiLeaks just in time to completely scotch Obama's attempt to try to get immunity for our soldiers to stay in Iraq beyond 2011.
Very crucial.
And forced a real end to that war that Obama was trying to back out of his promise on.
And then you look at the consequences for American soldiers who kill lots of people, like the Haditha massacre, and they get a slap on the wrist, essentially, and now they're trying to put Bradley Manning away for life.
Right.
I forgot if it was Glenn Greenwald or who it was that wrote about how Bales, the accused in the Afghan Kandahar massacre there, is actually being held at Fort Leavenworth, maybe just on the other side of the wall from Bradley Manning right now, and is probably being treated better.
No, I think that's probably right.
I'm sure that's the case.
I'm sure that's the case.
All right.
I'm sorry.
Listen, I've kept you way over time.
It's great to have you.
Great to talk to you, Scott.
I appreciate your time on the show very much.
I just want to encourage your listeners to go to the Bradley Manning Support Network.
Support Bradley.
He wants letters right now.
I don't have the address here, but it'll be on the Bradley Manning Support Network, and people should do that.
Yep.
BradleyManning.org there.
Great.
All right.
Thanks very much for your time, Michael.
Appreciate it.
Michael Ratner, everybody, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Bradley Manning, a show trial of state secrecy, is the piece at the Guardian.
