Bradley Manning Court-Martial, Day One: Attacks on the Media Are the Extension of the Battlefield

By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News

04 June 13

t was quite a first day at the Bradley Manning court-martial. For one thing, his defense team ate the government prosecutors for lunch. That part was no contest. For example, the prosecution tried to coax Bradley's former roommate to run him down. Although the two were not friends, the roommate was not about to snitch on him. That went nowhere. But other things did.

During his opening statement, the prosecutor displayed on a video screen the chat logs of Bradley Manning with Julian Assange. You get the feeling that the government would still like to find a way to bring down the journalist Assange, not just Manning. All of a sudden, this government exhibit was remarkably blurry - much of it could not be read, for some strange reason. But a key sentence could be read. The prosecutor invited the judge to read what the chat log said, but refrained from reading it out loud.

Manning's lawyer David Coombs picked right up on it, and made that chat log item a key part of his argument. Manning was telling Assange that the government documents that he was releasing about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would result in "removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st Century asymmetrical warfare." Manning's goal was to inspire the American people to act.

Is it any surprise that the judge and the Army press office managed to scare off 250 media organizations from covering the first day of trial? Only seventy media credentials were issued in a non-transparent process that demanded submitting previous articles for vetting by the Army media corps. Nonetheless, more than a hundred reporters managed to claw their way into the media center, perching on every spare patch of carpet and clutching their laptops. No cell phones allowed - that might aid the process of reporting. No access to copies of the video or audio feed in the hands of the government - that might enable fact-checking.

The rest of us had to lock our laptops with our cellphones and our food, stand in the pouring rain, submit to invasive searches, and lots more. The two hundred and fifty media people that were not issued credentials were told that they were welcome to stand in line and see if they could get a seat in the Army's handpicked courtroom, which holds approximately fifty spectators. Quite naturally, these organizations decided not to show up and stand in the rain all day. They were not told that an entire theater had been opened up for overflow spectators, after repeated complaints and lawsuits. The role of the military media corps, as they will tell you after a couple of drinks, is the extension of the battlefield by other means.

A seasoned court-watcher knows that the key dates to attend a trial are for the opening statements on day one, for the defendant's testimony on day whatever, and for closing arguments on the last day. Colonel Denise Lind, the veteran military judge presiding over the Manning court-martial, wrote the leading law review article on how to handle the media at a military trial thirteen years ago. She is the leading expert on how to feed and water them, how to give them everything that they don't need, and how to deny them everything of substance - transcripts, documents, and access. If, as she admits in her state-of-the-art analysis, the "right of access is the right to attend a proceeding and to hear, see, and communicate observations about it," how can you deny reporters and the public the right to their cellphones and their laptops in an overflow room where the courtroom is far, far away? Is it any wonder that she was chosen by the Army for this trial?

To beat back this kind of repression, we have to tell the story of Bradley Manning at every dinner table in this land. We have to demand that our news outlets run the Manning story every day. We are going to federal court to make sure that all three hundred and fifty news teams are able to see the key testimony and hear the closing arguments. We have about eight to twelve weeks before the judge hands down her verdict. There is no other way.