Perhaps if WikiLeaks weren't so busy preening and protecting their own image, they could take time to learn what the US Government actually argued at Pvt. Manning's trial and what sort of help Chelsea might realistically expect.
In 2010, US Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning put WikiLeaks on the map by sneaking them 734,885 US government documents, mostly classified secret or confidential, including the notorious “Collateral Murder” helicopter gunship video. Three-and-a-half years later, WikiLeaks returns the favor by lying about Manning in order to hawk themselves as the greatest wellspring of worldwide revolutionary inspiration since “The Communist Manifesto.”
Manning (formerly known as Bradley) is the 25-year-old soldier now serving a 35-year sentence in military prison for, among other offenses, violating the Espionage Act. On Sept. 18, 2013—less than a month after Manning's court-martial concluded—WikiLeaks launched their latest self-promotional campaign with a broadside against the forthcoming motion picture “The Fifth Estate,” a WikiLeaks-themed dramatic thriller slated for general release on Oct. 18.
From WikiLeaks' perspective, the film is "irresponsible, counterproductive and harmful." WikiLeaks notes that it's based on two books, "both written by people who had personal and legal disputes with WikiLeaks." Those books are “Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange and the World's Most Dangerous Website” by former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg and “WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy” by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding. "These are personally biased sources," WikiLeaks charges. "They tell only one side of the story. These authors had an interest in portraying Julian Assange [founder of WikiLeaks] as dishonest or manipulative for competitive, personal and legal reasons."
One of the film's cardinal sins is slighting WikiLeaks' dumping onto the Internet of 251,287 US State Department diplomatic cables furnished by Chelsea Manning in 2010. "Cablegate," boasts WikiLeaks, "has produced more news stories than any single leak in history. For years after Cablegate, the world has been awash with revelations. The BBC, The New York Times, Amnesty International, and even the US government during the trial of Pvt. Manning, have all argued that the publication of Cablegate helped to trigger revolutions in Tunisia and across the Middle East."
That is a lie. The best record of what the US government argued during the trial of Pvt. Manning is the series of independent, fully searchable transcripts published by Freedom of the Press Foundation. These 7,197 pages (including automatically generated indexes) contain not a single instance of either "Cablegate" or "revolution." Moreover, the 12-week trial's mere four mentions of Tunisia are innocuous references, citing it as a component country of the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the location of a US Embassy.
WikiLeaks also brags, "One cable showed US troops carrying out war crimes with impunity, triggering the Iraq government's decision to remove legal immunity from prosecution for US troops in Iraq, which directly led to the US withdrawal from Iraq and therefore helped end the Iraq War."
That too is a lie. The cable in question reproduced a March 27, 2006, email from Philip Alston—then UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions—to the US Mission in Geneva, headquarters of Alston's boss, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. "Without in any way wishing to pre-judge the accuracy of the information received," Alston drew the US government's attention to reports he'd obtained about an incident 12 days earlier in the small town of Ishaqi, 60 miles north of Baghdad, where coalition forces allegedly murdered 11 Iraqi civilians, among them women and children. WikiLeaks released this cable in late August 2011.
Yet the substance of Alston's email had by then long since been published by the United Nations for all the world to see in an official March 2007 report (A/HRC/4/20/Add.1) into which all 782 words of Alston's relevant text had been copied and pasted verbatim.
Accordingly, WikiLeaks' claim that this "one cable" triggered an Iraqi government decision that "directly led to the US withdrawal from Iraq and therefore helped end the Iraq War" is absurd. By the time WikiLeaks belatedly posted that cable, its contents had been known to the Iraqi government and to everyone else for the past 4½ years.
Yet another lie is WikiLeaks' assertion that during the appeals stage and plea for presidential pardon in Chelsea Manning's "extremely important" case, "Public opinion is crucial." That is idiotic. The first step in this process is a review by the convening authority, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, commander of the Military District of Washington, who has discretion to dismiss the court's findings of guilt or reduce but not increase its sentence. Should Buchanan uphold confinement for at least a year, the case will be automatically appealed to the intermediate Army Court of Criminal Appeals. From there it could go to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and rise ultimately to the US Supreme Court. All of which would take years.
Meanwhile, Manning's Petition for Commutation of Sentence will pass from the Secretary of the Army through the US Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney and eventually reach President Obama. However, the commander-in-chief will almost certainly not interfere in the ongoing legal process to issue a presidential pardon, nor will a clemency board consider Manning until all appeals are exhausted.
And the role of public opinion in all this? Doodly-squat.
Moreover, WikiLeaks seems unaware that Manning's following is not exactly robust. Polling organization Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1,000 likely voters nationwide immediately after Manning's trial concluded but before Chelsea announced her gender re-identification. A majority (51 percent) thought Manning should serve the entire 35-year sentence; only 19 percent felt 35 years was too harsh; 74 percent considered it about right or not severe enough.
Similarly, a pro-Manning We the People petition at the White House website recently flopped. The idea is that if a petition gets enough support within 30 days, White House staff will review it, forward it to appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response. After the full 30 days online, Amnesty International's "Grant Clemency to Pvt. Bradley Manning" petition attracted less than 26 percent of the required 100,000 signatures. If "public opinion is crucial," the outlook for Chelsea Manning is grim.
Perhaps if WikiLeaks weren't so busy preening and protecting their own image, they could take time to learn what the US Government actually argued at Manning's trial and what sort of help Chelsea might realistically expect. Don't they owe their greatest sacrificial lamb at least that?
Alan Kurtz is based in Redwood City, California, United States of America, and is an Anchor for Allvoices.
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