Update from Bradley Manning's attorney By David Coombs. June 28, 2011 It has been a little over two months since PFC Manning was moved from Quantico to the Joint Regional Corrections Facility (JRCF) at Fort Leavenworth. Since being moved to the JRCF, PFC Manning's overall mood and demeanor has greatly improved. PFC Manning is able to maintain regular contact with his defense team. He receives weekly written updates, phone calls and visits from defense counsel. In addition, he receives regular visits from family. Finally, PFC Manning also receives hundreds of letters from supporters every week. He wishes to extend his sincere appreciation to those who have taken the time to send along their thoughts and well-wishes. Why Bradley Manning is fighting for his sanity Coercion and humiliation seep through American culture, writes Alexander Cockburn By Alexander Cockburn January 6, 2011--For the past seven months, 22-year-old US Army Private Bradley Manning, first in an army prison in Kuwait, now in the brig in Quantico, Virginia, has been held 23 hours out of 24 in solitary confinement in his cell, under constant harassment. If his eyes close between 5am and 8pm he is jolted awake. In daylight hours he has to respond "yes" to guards every five minutes. For an hour a day he is taken to another cell where he walks figures of eight. If he stops he is taken back to his other cell. Manning is accused of giving documents to Julian Assange at WikiLeaks. He has not been tried or convicted. Visitors report that Manning is going downhill mentally as well as physically. His lawyer's efforts to improve his condition have been rebuffed by the Army. Accusations that his treatment amounts to torture have been indignantly denounced by prominent conservatives calling for him to be summarily executed. After the columnist Glenn Greenwald publicised Manning's treatment in mid-December, there was a moderate commotion. The UN's top monitor of torture is investigating his case. Meanwhile Manning faces months, if not years, of the same. Will he end up like accused Chicagoan Jose Padilla, four years in total isolation and silence before his trial in 2007? Padilla was convicted as a terrorist and given 17 years, but only after his lawyer had been informed by prison staff that he had become docile and inactive to the point that he resembled "a piece of furniture". Just over the edge of 2011, torture is now solidly installed in America's repressive arsenal. Not in the shadows where it used to lurk, but up front and central, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians. Coercion and humiliation seep through the culture, to the extent that before Christmas American travelers began to rebel at the invasive pat-down searches, conducted by the TSA's airport security teams. They complained of being groped around bosoms and crotches. Covertly, there was always plenty of torture, just as there were assassinations. After World War Two, the CIA's predecessor, OSS, imported Nazi experts in interrogation techniques. But this was the era of Cold War competition: Uncle Sam the Good against the dirty Russians and Chinese. The US government would go to desperate lengths to counter accusations that its agents in the CIA or USAID practised torture. One famous case was that of Dan Mitrione, working for the US Agency for International Development, teaching refinements in torture techniques to Brazilian and Uruguayan interrogators. Mitrione was ultimately kidnapped by the Tupamaro guerillas and executed, becoming the subject of Costa Gavras's movie State of Siege. The CIA mounted major cover-up operations to try to discredit the accusations against Mitrione, quoted as having once told his students: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." The American liberal conscience began to make its accommodation with torture in June 1977, which was the month the London Sunday Times published a major expose of the torture of Palestinians by the Israeli armed forces and the security agency, Shin Bet. Suddenly American supporters of Israel were arguing that certain techniques--sensory deprivation, prolonged stress positions while hooded, incarceration in cells the size of packing crates, etc.--somehow weren't really torture, or were morally justifiable torture under the "ticking time bomb" theory. Ahead lay the spectacle of Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School, a supposed liberal defender of civil rights, recommending to Israel the notion of "torture warrants". The targets of the warrants would be "subjected to judicially monitored physical measures designed to cause excruciating pain without leaving any lasting damage". One form of torture recommended by the Harvard professor was "the sterilised needle being shoved under the fingernails". With the Great War on Terror, launched after the 9/11 World Trade Center attack in 2001, torture made its march into the full light of day. Presiding over this journey was George Bush's secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld. At Guantanamo Bay, it was Rumsfeld who gave verbal and subsequently written approval to torture suspects, using the notorious techniques of isolation, sleep deprivation and psychic degradation, with the Defence Secretary himself micro-managing the humiliations, some of them involving women's underwear. In the case of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, there is again a trail of evidence showing it was Rumsfeld who personally decreed and monitored stress positions, individual phobias, such as fear of dogs, sleep deprivation and waterboarding. One US army officer, Janis Karpinski, has described finding in Abu Ghraib a piece of paper stuck on a pole outside a little office used by the interrogators. It was a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld, authorising techniques such as use of dogs, stress positions, starvation. On the paper, in Rumsfeld's handwriting, was the terse instruction, "Make sure this happens!!" On the home front, torture as a drastic mode of social control flowered luxuriantly in the American prison system, whose population began to rocket in the 1970s to its present 2.5 million total. Informally, licensed male rape went hand in hand with increasingly sadistic solitary confinement and prolonged sensory deprivation--a condition in which some 25,000 prisoners are currently being driven mad. As the Bush years drew to a close, liberals dared hope that the rule of law would return and with it respect for internationally agreed prohibitions on torture and treatment of combatants. Anticipation grew that the torturers, with the Bush high command at the apex, would face formal charges. Candidate Obama fanned that hope. On January 21, 1977, on his first day in office, President Jimmy Carter fulfilled his campaign pledge, issuing a pardon to those who avoided serving in the Vietnam war by fleeing the US or not registering. If he'd waited a month or two, the honeymoon was already turning tepid and he might well have lost his nerve. On his second full day in office, President Obama signed a series of executive orders to close the Guantanamo detention centre within a year, ban the harshest interrogation methods and review military war crimes trials. In his first State of the Union address a week later, Obama declared to the joint session of Congress: "I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture. We can make that commitment here tonight." Within days of this false guarantee, Obama's Justice Department lawyers were telling US judges in explicit terms that the new administration would not be moving on from Bush's policies on the legal status of renditions and of supposed enemy combatants. Lawyers from Obama's Department of Justice emphasised to judges that they, like the DoJ lawyers instructed by Bush's men, held that captives seized by the US government and conveyed to secret prisons to be tortured had no standing in US courts and that the Obama regime had no legal obligations to defend or even admit its actions in any US courtroom. "Enemy combatants" would not be afforded international legal protections, whether on the field of battle in Afghanistan or, if kidnapped by US personnel, anywhere in the world. The torture system is flourishing, and the boundaries of the American empire are marked by overseas torture centres such as Bagram. There are still detainees in Guantanamo as of November last year, 174 of them. They are supposedly destined for a Supermax in Illinois. Manning fights for his sanity in Quantico. Memo to David Cameron. Resist all extradition requests by the US government, on the grounds that those accused of terrorism cannot possibly expect anything but torture and a kangaroo trial. <darkerbullet.gif> Bradley Manning's health deteriorating in jail, supporters say The intelligence analyst suspected of leaking US diplomatic cables is being held in solitary confinement December 16, 2010--As Julian Assange emerged from his nine-day imprisonment, there were renewed concerns about the physical and psychological health of Bradley Manning, the former US intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the diplomatic cables at the centre of the storm. Manning, who was arrested seven months ago, is being held at a military base in Virginia and faces a court martial and up to 52 years in prison for his alleged role in copying the cables. His friends and supporters also claim they have been the target of extra-judicial harassment, intimidation and outright bribery by US government agents. According to David House, a computer researcher from Boston who visits Manning twice a month, he is starting to deteriorate. "Over the last few weeks I have noticed a steady decline in his mental and physical wellbeing," he said. "His prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect; his inability to exercise due to [prison] regulations has affected his physical appearance in a manner that suggests physical weakness." Manning, House added, was no longer the characteristically brilliant man he had been, despite efforts to keep him intellectually engaged. He also disputed the authorities' claims that Manning was being kept in solitary for his own good. "I initially believed that his time in solitary confinement was a decision made in the interests of his safety," he said. "As time passed and his suicide watch was lifted, to no effect, it became clear that his time in solitary -- and his lack of a pillow, sheets, the freedom to exercise, or the ability to view televised current events -- were enacted as a means of punishment rather than a means of safety." House said many people were reluctant to talk about Manning's condition because of government harassment, including surveillance, warrantless computer seizures, and even bribes. "This has had such an intimidating effect that many are afraid to speak out on his behalf," House said. Some friends report being followed extensively. Another computer expert said the army offered him cash to -- in his words -- "infiltrate" the WikiLeaks website. He said: "I turned them down. I don't want anything to do with this cloak and dagger stuff." When the Washington Post tried to investigate the claim, an army criminal investigation division spokesman refused to comment. "We've got an ongoing investigation," he said. "We don't discuss our techniques and tactics." On 3 November, House, 23, said he found customs agents waiting for him when he and his girlfriend returned to the US after a short holiday in Mexico. His bags were searched and two men identifying themselves as Homeland Security officials said they were being detained for questioning and would miss their connecting flight. The men seized all his electronic items and he was told to hand over all passwords and encryption keys, which he refused. The items have yet to be returned, said House. He added: "If Manning is convicted, it will be because his individual dedication to human ethics far surpasses that of the US government." House, who met Manning through friends but came to know him only after his detention, said he was committed to his cause. "Like many computer scientists, I identify with the open government issues at the core of this case." In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. ===== Alleged Military "Whistleblower" PFC Brad Manning Named as Culprit by Top Pentagon Officials PFC Brad Manning, from Rockville, MD has been charged with illegally releasing classified military video to Wikileaks, a web based group, about a 2007 massacre in which a US Army helicopter is seen firing on Iraqi civilians, killing twelve, including two employees of the Reuters news agency (see video at www.collateralmurder.com). The twenty-two year old worked in intelligence operations at a US military base in Baghdad. Defense officials charge that he used his "Top Secret/SCI" clearance to tap into secret documents around the world. Manning is currently being held in pre-trial confinement at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia. He has also being investigated for allegedly releasing 76,000 classified reports about US military operations in Afghanistan to Wikileaks. These reports provide wide ranging accounts of military operations, including "after action" reports, which often provide critiques of combat operations and related failures. On July 29, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held a Washington press conference where they both condemned the release of these documents. Gates stated that their release potentially harmed our relations with Pakistan and other nations. "This is one of the worst aspects of this; will people trust us in the future?" Gates asked. According to the Wall Street Journal (July 30, 2010) childhood friends of PFC Manning from his hometown of Crescent, OK (pop.1281) describe him as "smart, interested in current affairs, proficient with computers and not shy about sharing his opinions which were often at odds with those who lived around him in his hometown." The Journal goes on to report that PFC Manning's parents separated before he entered high school and after another year in Oklahoma he moved with his mother to her home in Wales. He eventually moved to Potomac MD to live with an aunt. In 2007 he enlisted in the Army. After training he was deployed to Iraq where he was demoted from Specialist to Private First Class for an incident unrelated to his alleged leaking of documents. Near the end of August, Manning and his family retained David E. Coombs of Rhode Island to serve as lead civilian defense lawyer. A former JAG lawyer and prosecutor, Coombs' website states that he has defended numerous military defendants in recent years. Citizen Soldier has offered to provide assistance to Mr. Coombs both in the developing of legal defenses under international law and on the issue of Manning's current mental status. [return to top]