Collateral Murder in Military Court: Bradley Manning’s Story

by Debra Sweet                   More than 60 of us filled the courtroom, and spilled into the overflow trailer, at Ft. Meade last Thursday (July 25).  The chief prosecutor for the government, a sneering Major Fein, in closing argument called Bradley Manning a “traitor” for the first time, and also a “hacker,” an “anarchist,” and a “humanist who does not care about humans.”

The government’s claim is that when Manning was sent to Baghdad in fall 2009 as a 22 year old Army intelligence specialist, he went to work “for Wikileaks,” digging through classified documents to supply material for Wikileaks’ “Most Wanted” List for 2009.  Fein claimed that Manning “chatted” with Julian Assange about what he could supply Wikileaks, and that both Wikileaks and Manning intended to make the material available to “the enemy,” specifically, Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula via the internet

The danger in this characterization of Manning and Wikileaks’s actions or intentions, beyond itbeing clearly false and unsupported by any evidence, is that any information posted on the internet, or in print, could be argued, under the same logic to be intentionally directed at “the enemy.”  The government claims that information from Wikileaks was found in possession of Osama bin Laden when he was executed in 2011.  They do not say if information from any other news sources were also found.  The chilling prospect, of treason charges against journalists, is not so remote,        

                                                                           Original Artwork from inside courtroom by Debra Van Poolen 

                                                                                                                           Glen Greenwald write:                                                                                             “Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler explained in the New Republic in March why this theory poses such a profound threat to basic press freedoms as itessentially converts all leaks, no matter the intent, into a form of treason.”

Sitting about ten feet behind Bradley — who is not allowed any contact, eyes or otherwise, with supporters — we ached with anger and sorrow.  His last few weeks in a room with people besides other prisoners and guards are passing, with the threat of life + 154 years in prison hanging heavy.

 On Friday, we rushed to get one of the 36 passes to be inside the courtroom for  Defense Attorney David Coombs’ closing argument.  We were buoyed by the appearance on Thursday of a full-page ad “We Are Bradley Manning” in the New York Times, tangible evidence of the millions supporting Bradley worldwide.

The drama of Coombs’ conversation with the judge — which is how he approached his closing argument —  surpassed that of July 8, when he opened the defense case by showing the footage from Collateral Murder, or the Apache video, as it’s called in the government’s exhibit.  I’ve showed this video dozens of times to audiences from middle-school to churches, and to people on the street who wanted to watch it, to learn.  Coombs chose the three excerpts to show that always get people the most upset, directing the judge to try and see the scene as Bradley first saw it in fall 2009.  At that time Reuters, for whom two of the men killed on screen worked, had still not been allowed to know what happened, though they had gone through “proper channels” for two years in a Freedom of Information Act request.

Bradley learned that, saw the footage, and decided that the public, particularly those of us in the U.S., needed to see it too.  I’ll turn the story over to Kevin Gosztola, who has covered this story diligently, and cogently, for years. Read Through Clips from ‘Collateral Murder’ Video, Defense Attempts to Show ‘Truth’ About Bradley Manning, and watch the three clips that Coombs showed and the significant parts of Coombs' explanation to the judge about what the clips represent.