Welcome to Sanctimonious Sunday, a series published by members of the following groups: The Amateur Left, Team DFH and Frustrati, as a collaboration of sorts. Feel free to get your sanctimonious on. It's welcome here.
By Daniel Joseph Barnhart Clark (E-mail from Friends of Manning)
via Wikimedia Commons CC0
As if it wasn't bad enough that Bradley Manning has been denied the right to a speedy trial, has been held for nearly a year during which he has been treated inhumanely, has suffered punitative treatment before he has even been tried, has been tortured, according to experts, has not been afforded any whistleblower protections after he allegedly leaked a video which clearly documents war crimes -- now the President has publicly declared him to be guilty.
The President is the Commander in Chief. Manning will be tried by a jury of military officers who take orders from the Commander in Chief. He just told them that Manning is guilty.
How can Bradley Manning possibly get a fair trial now? He cannot. Can Manning's attorney pursue this line of reasoning?
How could a president who has experience in constitutional law have made such an egregious statement and left it uncorrected, a mistake that could have a tremendous impact on the outcome of a man's trial?
Video and Transcript
Thursday, April 21, a score of contributors at a DNC $5000/plate fundraiser at the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, staged a
musical protest against the treatment of PFC Bradley Manning, and afterward, one protester, Logan Price had a conversation with the President that was captured on video.
As the President spoke of the creative organizing that won him the 2008 election, over 10% of the attendees held up “Free Bradley Manning” signs and launched into a song entitled “Where’s our change?”
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After the song, fundraiser attendee Logan Price had an opportunity to speak to the president for a few minutes. “I explained to the president that Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks is in fact the Daniel Ellsberg and Pentagon Papers of my generation. We need to stand up for whistle blowers.
http://www.bradleymanning.org/...
This is a partial transcript from the UK Friends of Bradley Manning and some screenshots from the video above, during the conversation:
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So people can have philosophical views [about Bradley Manning] but I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]… That’s not how the world works.
And if you’re in the military… And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d be breaking the law.
We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.
[Q: Didn't he release evidence of war crimes?]
What he did was he dumped…
[Q: Isn't that just the same thing as what Daniel Ellsberg did?]
No it wasn’t the same thing. Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way.
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"He broke the law"
"Constitutional Professor President"
The oath of office of the President of the United States
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Greenwald:
It may be that Obama spoke extemporaneously and without sufficient forethought, but it is -- at best -- reckless in the extreme for him to go around decreeing people guilty who have not been tried: especially members of the military who are under his command and who will be adjudged by other members of the military under his command. Moreover, as a self-proclaimed Constitutional Law professor, he ought to have an instinctive aversion when speaking as a public official to assuming someone's guilt who has been convicted of nothing. It's little wonder that he's so comfortable with Manning's punitive detention since he already perceives Manning as a convicted criminal. "Sentence first - verdict afterward," said the Queen of Hearts to Alice in Wonderland.
http://www.salon.com/...
Emptywheel:
The way secrecy in this country works is insidious not just because the government prevents citizens from learning the things we as citizens need to know to exercise democracy, but also because the President and other classification authorities can wield secrecy as an instrument of power, choosing to release information they otherwise claim is top secret when it serves their political purpose. As I pointed out last year, this power even extends to information about whether or not the President has approved assassinating an American citizen.
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We are not, anymore, a nation of laws. The Constitutional Professor President has institutionalized the efforts W and Cheney made to make sure that remains true.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/...
Commander in Chief
As Commander in Chief, his subordinates will be the ones to decide Manning's fate. This is no small thing.
“The comment was not appropriate because it assumes that Manning is guilty,” Steven Aftergood, a classified information expert at the Federation of American Scientists, told POLITICO. “The president got carried away and misspoke. No one should mistake a charge for a conviction — especially the nation’s highest official.”
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Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice and military law expert...
“Commenting on Manning’s conditions of confinement is one thing — I would have strongly advised him to not comment about Manning’s guilt,” Fidell told POLITICO.
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http://www.politico.com/...
When Nixon did it
Something like this has happened before. Teddy Partridge wrote a fascinating piece on a situation with Nixon and Charles Manson.
[ Nixon: ]
“Here was a man who was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason.”
What I didn’t recall from that time was that John Mitchell, easily American history’s crookedest Attorney General ever, was at Nixon’s side when he made that statement in Denver. He recognized right away that there was a serious problem with Nixon’s statement:
“This has got to be clarified,” he told Presidential Aide John Ehrlichman immediately afterward."
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Jurors, already sequestered in the Los Angeles, were protected from the next day’s four-inch headlines by papering over the windows of the courthouse: “MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES.” And, it should be noted, these jurors were not in a directly subordinate relationship to the commander-in-chief, as any jurors in a possible Bradley Manning court-martial would be. Even so, the judge recognized that the influence of a direct statement of guilt by the President of the United States of America would corrupt any jury.
What has Obama's White House said in response to the outcry from the public and legal experts about his statements? Basically, they are denying and spinning it.
Greenwald:
In response to the controversy created by Obama’s declaration of Manning’s guilt, the White House now says that the President merely was "making a general statement that did not go specifically to the charges against Manning: 'The president was emphasizing that, in general, the unauthorized release of classified information is not a lawful act,' [a White House spokesman said] Friday night. 'He was not expressing a view as to the guilt or innocence of Pfc. Manning specifically'." What Obama actually said was: "He broke the law." I'll leave it to readers to determine whether the White House’s denial is reasonable, or whether it's the actions of a President constitutionally incapable of admitting error (h/t auerfeld).
http://www.salon.com/...
Daniel Ellsberg
Obama said that Ellsberg's actions were not the same as Manning's and that the material wasn't classified in the same way.
No it wasn't the same thing. Ellsberg's material wasn't classified in the same way.
Yes, that is true, but it is a bizarre truth. Ellsberg leaked material that was Top Secret while Manning allegedly leaked information that was of a lower classification level. So the things that Ellsberg gave to the media were far more dangerous. Why did the President try to characterize it as a lesser offense? At this point in history, Ellsberg is considered a hero and a whistleblower, and Ellsberg publicly states that he feels that Manning is also a hero and a whistleblower. Has the president already decided that Manning is not only guilty but that he cannot be portrayed as a discloser of war crimes? Is he trying to manage the public perception?
Unitary Executive
I would hope that in the coming days the president will further clarify his statements and admit that it was wrong to say of Manning, "he broke the law" and to influence future jurors who work for him and who have almost certainly heard about his decree. But even if he does that, I think the damage is already done.
How much does the president care about Manning's demise? It seems clear that he is already convinced he is guilty, and again, this is no small thing because Manning has been charged with, among other things, a capital crime.
Has he somehow, deep down, come to believe that he has the authority to decide that Manning is guilty? After all, he has given himself the authority to give orders to assassinate American citizens with no due process, and what higher authority could a unitary executive give himself? Saying publicly that Manning is guilty might seem a rather small thing by comparison.