Cracking the First Amendment: USG builds conspiracy into the trial of Bradley Manning

[Luminous Animal]

By Alexa O'Brien on February 23, 2013 4:15 PM |

For over a year, in a soundproofed courtroom located in the confined wasteland of Fort Meade, the U.S. Army is prosecuting the most consequential and unprecedented leak trial of the digital age in secrecy and managed obscurity. A twenty-five year old whistleblower, Private First Class Bradley Manning is charged with indirectly aiding Al Qaeda for allegedly providing information to WikiLeaks, who published the information on the Internet. Prosecutors have recommended life in prison; but the presiding military judge has the authority to impose the death penalty.

At issue in the Manning trial is the danger posed to democracy and the rule of law by the government's expanding control over information in the digital age; and the use of prejudicial prosecutions that turn whistle-blowing into treason and journalism into espionage or an act of war.

The Whistleblower Inquisition

Manning's trial extends the Obama administration's unmatched inquisition prosecuting unauthorized disclosures to the press employing a 1917 statute originally intended for spies. The Department of Justice argues that leaks to the press are a "greater threat to society" than when spies sell classified information to a foreign government, because "every foreign adversary stands to benefit," according to documents in the espionage prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA employee accused of leaking classified information to a reporter at the New York Times.

Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, began disclosing unclassified information to The Baltimore Sun in 2006, detailing billions of dollars lost to fraud and waste. He was subsequently charged with espionage. On the eve of the trial, the government dropped its case, having already stripped Drake of his job and pension. Such prosecutions, says Drake, send "the strongest possible message to those who would dare hold up the mirror from within and without regarding government misconduct, fraud, waste, abuse, war crimes, and wrongdoing, while also sending the real message to the Fourth Estate that they cannot hide behind the First Amendment as protection or refuge when printing the same."

http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/hack_the_constitution_usg_builds_conspiracy_in_the_trial_of_bradley_manning.html

Very long but an excellent overview of the Bradley Manning case.

[Luminous Animal]

1. Kick.