Beyond Manning:
Rights under siege by dying breed
Editing, end comment by
Carolyn Bennett
Denial of access
According to the Washington Post, the judge in the Bradley
Manning case “wrote her (master’s) thesis on what was to prove a remarkably
prescient topic: the media’s right of access to military cases. In a published
version” of the thesis, Denise Lind “indicated that she supported opening up military
justice to scrutiny, arguing that existing restrictions on access to
proceedings ‘violate the media First Amendment right of access.’”
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| Lind-Manning court |
Fourteen years later
Journalist Alexa O’Brien reported today in a Democracy Now discussion that
in the military court-martial of Pvt. Bradley Manning, Judge Colonel Denise
Lind has contended that “there was no First Amendment legal precedent for
public access to the court documents.”
In lieu of First Amendment rights of free press, O’Brien
said, Judge Lind “would read these really long, mile-a-minute recitations of
the motions into the court record,” depriving direct access; “so that we in the
media operations center had to actually scribble these things down in our
notebooks.”
This breach and its consequences are enormous and far-reaching,
O’Brien said, We are talking about setting legal precedent for the future of national security reporting and also whistleblowers;
More than that: this judge’s contention contains a threat to
people who are simply using the Internet, communicating in legally protected
speech (First Amendment rights)
…because the government in this case
is essentially asserting that (since) the enemy uses the Internet and you
publish intelligence or you aid the enemy with whatever is classified as
intelligence, which in this case only has to be true and useful to the enemy
(the government’s definition), if it doesn’t have anything to do with
classified information — you
could be brought up on the charge of aiding the enemy.
O’Brien emphasizes that the press should have had access to public
records in the Manning case; and it “tells you (the court's ruling: restricting access, re-interpreting the Bill of Rights) leans
more toward a long record of Colonel Denise Lind’s deference (obsequiousness) to the
government, the prosecution, and doing whatever she can to help them manage
this trial and the public perception about it.”
Conflict or appearance of conflict of interest
Corruption, Kickback?
Associate dean for academic affairs at the George Washington
University Law School Lisa Schenck told the Washington Post she met Judge
Denise Lind in 1999 when the two women “shared an office in the criminal law
division at JAG’s (Judge Advocate General’s Corps) Rosslyn (Virginia) headquarters.” At
the same time Judge Lind is presiding over the Manning trial, she is teaching
part time at GW. Schenck also revealed that Lind, according to the Post
article, “has already been informed that she will take up a new position as a
judge on the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, when the Manning trial ends”;
however, Schenck assures the Post that Lind, reportedly a registered Democrat, “will
not be swayed by the politics of the case.”
It smells, Michael Ratner said today on Democracy Now.
The offer of the higher-court position Ratner said he “found
pretty extraordinary.… (though) not necessarily
illegal; but … it’s interesting to me that she’s going upstairs during the very
trial that’s going on, given that promotion.
“It reminded me,” he said, “when… the judge in Daniel
Ellsberg’s case, the federal judge during Ellsberg’s trial on espionage was
offered to be the head of the FBI, secretly, by the Nixon administration. And, of course, there was a huge stink.” Now Judge (Col.) Denise Lind on the Manning case is being offered a higher position but there is no outrage from media..
“Think about the higher position: she’s sitting up
there on the higher court when the Bradley Manning conviction is going to be (assuming
there’s a conviction because he’s already pleaded to 10 counts) reviewed.
She won’t sit on it, but her fellow judges are going to be sitting there, and are they going to want to reverse one of their fellow judges? (he asks rhetorically)
So, basically, it stinks.
Indeed
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W
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hen an inordinately powerful, incestuous cabal destroys the bedrock ─ constitutional law, human rights conventions ─ the great challenge to be faced by later, able generations, if their minds have not been further compromised by the gadgetry
they consume, will be to reconstruct, to reestablish the “good” before moving forward.
I expect the powerful and selfish are keenly aware of this. By
the time their waste has run its course; when the corrupt have laid waste to all
they can, taken from the land, its people, its principles ─ they will necessarily die off.
Sources and notes
“Bradley Manning Awaits Verdict after Trial Ends with
Prosecution ‘Smears’ and Harsh Gov’t Secrecy,” July 29, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/29/bradley_manning_awaits_verdict_after_trial
“In Bradley Manning case, Judge Lind prefers to keep low
profile but ruling may have big Impact” (Billy Kenber, Washington Post published:
July 24), http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/more-than-bradley-mannings-fate-lies-with-judge-denise-lind-in-case-about-leaking-info/2013/07/24/fb546d14-f496-11e2-aa2e-4088616498b4_story.html
“A letter to my family and friends about the NDAA and me” by
Alexa O'Brien on October 3, 2012 12:00 AM, http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/ndaa_hedges_et/ndaa_letter_to_my_friends_and_family.html
Journalist Alexa O’Brien
Since January 2011, Alexa O’Brien has covered the WikiLeaks
release of U.S. State Department Cables, JTF memoranda known as the ‘GTMO files’,
and revolutions across Egypt, Bahrain, Iran, and Yemen, as well as the
prosecution of Bradley Manning and the U.S. investigation into WikiLeaks. She
has interviewed a preeminent U.S. foreign policy expert on the Cambodia cables,
and published hours of interviews with former GTMO guards, detainees, defense
lawyers, and human rights activists, as well as WikiLeaks media partners Andy
Worthington, a GTMO historian and author; and Atanas Tchobanov, the Balkanleaks’
spokesman and co-editor of Bivol.bg.
As a result of her work covering the Global War on Terror;
the 2011 revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa; and her
extramural activities helping to organize the original occupation of Wall
Street in New York and five other American cities on September 17, 2011, the
U.S. Government and private security contractors attempted to falsely link her
and a campaign finance reform group, which she helped found, to Al Qaeda and ‘cyber-terrorists’.
She subsequently became party to a lawsuit brought against
the Obama administration for Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense
Authorization Act FY2012 with author Chris Hedges and five other plaintiffs.
Section 1021(b)(2) allows for the indefinite detention without trial or charges
of anyone, who by mere suspicion alone are deemed by the Executive (branch of U.S.
government) to be terrorist sympathizers.
Her testimony and submissions were central to U.S. District
Judge Katherine Forrest’s ruling granting a permanent injunction on Section
1021(b)(2). In June, the 2nd Circuit (was) expected to rule on the Department
of Justice’s midnight appeal of Forrest’s September 2012 injunction.
For a year and a half, Alexa O’Brien has produced the only
available pre-trial transcripts of Bradley Manning’s secret prosecution. She
has provided (a) some of the only analysis available on his case, (b) a
forensically reconstructed appellate exhibit list, (c) witness profiles, and (d)
a searchable database of the available court record.
Because of her familiarity with the proceedings and investigative
work, she has been able to ‘un-redact’ a selection of court documents.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation awarded her a generous
grant for her work covering the Bradley Manning trial. Her work was shortlisted
for the 2013 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
With a background in political philosophy, Alexa O’Brien began
her professional life as a stringer in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for a company that
produced segments for the Asian Economic Channel. She went on to light motion
picture film and television in the United States and internationally: in
countries such as Haiti. Her work for the United Nations Population Fund ‘Worldwide
Information Campaign’ was shown at The Hague International Forum; and she has
lit numerous television shows and segments for CNN, the BBC, Arts & Entertainment,
and the History Channel; as well as stills for photographer Steven Klein in
American Vogue. http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/about.html
JTF: Joint Task Force
A joint task force is a multi-service ad-hoc military
formation. The task force concept originated with the United States Navy around
the beginning of the Second World War in the Pacific.
‘Combined’ is the British-American military term for
multi-national formations.
CTF - Commander Task Force,
sometimes Combined Task Force
CCTF - Commander Combined Task
Force
CJTF - Combined Joint Task Force
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Task_Force
“Transcript |U.S. v Pfc. Manning, Table of Contents” by
Alexa O'Brien on April 10, 2013 11:59 PM, http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_manning/transcripts/us_v_pfc_bradley_manning_transcripts.html
Human rights attorney Michael Ratner
Michael Ratner is “known for human rights activism” and he
and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) are currently attorneys in the
United States for publishers Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Ratner was co-counsel
in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees before the United States Supreme
Court, where, in June 2004, the court decided his clients have the right to
test the legality of their detentions in court.
An attorney and President Emeritus of the non-profit human
rights litigation organization (CCR) based in New York City, Ratner is also
president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
based in Berlin. He is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and author
of many books and articles including a textbook on international human rights; The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution
by Book; Against War with Iraq; Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ratner
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