In a RealNews interview with Daniel Ellsberg today on Bradley Manning, Dr. Ellsberg said:
Every administration hates leaks that they haven't made themselves, that haven't actually been authorized by their own high officials, which is the greater part of leaks...Every administration, really, would like to close all of those off, and when they talk about there being too many leaks, they mean too many of the kind we didn't want, that we didn't make.
Transcript: "Ellsberg: We Need Whistleblowers to Stop Murder". Video below.
Ellsberg goes on to note the quandry in which the Obama administration finds itself in trying to prosecute Bradley Manning: that the kind of information which Manning allegedly leaked to Wikileaks is in fact covered under the First Amendment and the public's right to know, unlike the clear violation of the Covert Agents Identity Act which was violated when the Bush administration leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. WaPo's Walter Pincus reported:
A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said...that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities.
Special Forces Colonel Patrick Lang said that as a result of the Plame exposure:
"the very kinds of people you need to get into the heart of this galaxy of jihadi groups and people like this will make a judgment that they are not going to trust you in this way. And once that happens, then the possibility of penetrating these groups, the possibility of knowing that they're going to carry 10-pound bags of explosive in the subway stations, will go right down the drain."
Ellsberg said in the interview:
We have some very narrowly defined official secrets act that proscribe giving out, for example, nuclear weapons data or communications intelligence or the identities of intelligence agents, covert agents, like Valerie Plame--that was wrongly and unlawfully leaked,
As a prisoner in the military justice system Manning and all officers are subject to the orders of the Commander-in-Chief. All military judges, attorneys, and commanders are under the chain of command. Obama can order Manning released and charges dismissed just as he can fire any general for any reason whatsoever.
Perhaps most importantly, Ellsberg dispels the notion, disseminated by the government and right-wing mouthpieces for the national security state that the leaker (allegedly Manning) had indiscriminately posted a "dump" of classified documents onto the Internet. The leaker gave the documents to Wikileaks, which then only actually released a tiny fraction of what it had received, after enlisting the help of major news organizations and the Pentagon in vetting them for harm. The Pentagon says it was never consulted, but Glenn Greenwald confirmed that the Pentagon lied.
In the case of the diplomatic cables Ellsberg says Wikileaks released only one percent of the cables it received.
The Wikileaks philosophy has been consistent: with few exceptions, with which it agrees, such as nuclear information and covert agents, more information is better for a democracy than less. Without information, citizens' decisions are based only on information which the government and a tightly controlled media wants you to hear. More information results in better decisions, in the waging and conduct of wars which have hideous daily costs in the blood of children and other civilians, most of whom, as we have found in the case of Afghanistan, don't even know why we are there.
We now know that the Pentagon has been misrepresenting the Taliban's capabilities for shooting down American aircraft with surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), and war crimes such as an Apache helicopter gunship crew killing wounded and those attempting to evacuate them in Baghdad in 2007.
The British people have been giving Tony Blair a piece of reality as he is shunned and shouted down wherever he goes, such as by the mother who yelled tearfully at him at last week's Chilcot Inquiry: "Your lies killed my son.!" Brit George Monboit has launched a website dedicated to raising money to offer a bounty for a citizen's arrest of Tony Blair. It has been amply funded. Monboit is not worried that the government will make a big deal, saying "Looking into the legality of the war is the last thing the government wants."
Will this awakening cross the Atlantic and result in more calls for justice here?
I know where we can start. They say Bradley Manning's prison wing at Quantico Marine base is nearly empty. Let's take Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney, strip them down to their boxer shorts under "suicide watch" and put them in nearby 6 ft. x12 ft. cells, and let them sit for eight months until we feel good and goddamned ready to bring them to trial for the leaking of classified information.
White House:
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
The Quantico commandant's name is General James F. Amos