Manning trial shines light on a culture of secrecy
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The low-key coverage the US media seems to have given to the Bradley Manning case suggests the country that holds itself up as a beacon of democracy is struggling to come to terms with what the trial reveals about America itself, writes Jane Cowan.
For a case centred on the biggest leak of secrets in American history, a massive data dump that sent the US government into a tailspin, the Manning court martial has a remarkably anticlimactic sense of going through the motions. As far as courtroom drama goes, the first week saw hardly a flourish.There's no shortage, though, of dramatic characterisations of how damaging Bradley Manning's leaks were. Hillary Clinton has described a kind of diplomatic Armageddon, saying "disclosures like these tear at the fabric of responsible government."
Barack Obama's highest ranking military commander, the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen suggested Bradley Manning might have "blood on his hands".
But by some calculations what Private Manning leaked was less than 1 per cent of what the US government classifies every year.
"If you have a government like our government that is radically over-classifying secrets then occasionally you're going to have a radical counterforce - which is a massive leak of those secrets."
That quote comes from Alex Gibney. The Academy award-winning director created the new documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks which casts Bradley Manning as the moral centre of the tale.
Gibney recalls being at Guantanamo Bay filming some establishing shots when a minder stopped them, saying, "You can't shoot that mountain, that mountain is classified."
Says Gibney: "When we start classifying Mother Earth you know we've got a problem."
Private Manning and WikiLeaks have shown up the dilemma of managing sensitive material: classify too much and you run the risk that those who work day in day out with this information see so many innocuous documents stamped secret that they lose respect for the system.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks there was a move to improve information sharing and get rid of the "silos" that had meant one hand of the vast American intelligence network didn't always know what the other was up to.
These days some 4 million Americans have a security clearance that lets them access classified material. As a lowly Private First Class Bradley Manning had apparent free rein to roam around inside confidential databases from his work station in dusty Fort Hammer, Iraq, download hundreds of thousands of files and copy them onto discs labelled as Lady Gaga songs. Private Manning's abuse of his security clearance could well bias the system against further information sharing.
Then there's the question of where leaks fit in the workings of a democracy. Journalism arguably relies on people who know something the public doesn't speaking out of turn to reporters - often about things the powers that be would prefer people didn't know. As documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney puts it, "There are times when leaking secrets are important as a kind of pressure valve so we can hold the government to account."
At worst the Manning case threatens to criminalise public criticism of the government. At the same time a grand jury has been examining whether the US government can go after the big fish in this equation, the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as the publisher of the leaked material.
All this unfolds under a president who campaigned as the whistleblower's best friend and promised to usher in a "new era of open government". In reality, the Obama administration has gone after leakers with a vengeance. His attorney-general Eric Holder has pursued six government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act - more than all his predecessors put together.
There have been six prosecutions of leakers but this is the first of the cases to reach trial. In tandem, unprecedented scrutiny of reporters has provoked outcry across the political spectrum. Obama's Justice Department secretly obtained two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a probe investigating who told AP about a plot by an Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen to bomb an airliner.
In a separate case, investigators seized two days worth of Fox reporter James Rosen's personal emails and electronically tracked his movements at the State Department to see who his source was. Most troublesome to journalists - an FBI agent reportedly claimed there was evidence Rosen broke the law as an aider and abettor or a co-conspirator over his discussions with the alleged leaker.
The Obama White House defends the prosecutions on national security grounds but has been accused of brandishing the spy law "like a club" to silence the squeaky wheels inside government.
"What's astonishing here is that never before has the government argued that newsgathering... asking a source to provide sensitive information, is itself illegal," legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union Gabe Rottman told Fox News.com.
Diplomacy is surely difficult without the ability to operate with a degree of secrecy, but there is still such a thing as the public interest.
As for the aiding the enemy charge - even Manning's critics have begun to say it's a bridge too far, especially when Private Manning has already offered to plead guilty to charges that would keep him behind bars for two decades. The prosecution argues the 25-year-old put intelligence into the hands of Al Qaeda; that material he leaked was found inside Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It's unclear so far whether prosecutors are saying he intended to help America's enemies. They do say he was driven by arrogance, that he was seeking personal notoriety.
The judge has ruled Bradley Manning only had to have reason to believe the leaks would hurt national security. She's indicated his motivations will only be considered in the sentencing phase not in finding innocence or guilt. But it has to be said that the evidence heard in the space of a few days has shown a distinct lack of any hatred of America or sympathy for its adversaries. The defence argues PFC Manning knew the material he leaked was embarrassing but deliberately selected things he didn't believe the enemy could use.
Think of the Abu Ghraib revelations - you could argue the release of the photos of detainee abuse aided the enemy at least in the propaganda sense. But does that justify keeping the citizenry in the dark? Private Manning's critics say he broke the law - and he acknowledges that. But his supporters, and his lawyers, say he was answering to a higher cause - the public good.
Ironically - or perhaps not - for a case about leaking, the Manning court martial has been shrouded in secrecy to the point where some reporters are writing about a "cloak and dagger" feel. On the first day, Manning supporters in the courtroom were forced to turn their t-shirts inside out so the word 'truth' emblazoned in white letters couldn't be seen. The next day a military spokesman briefing reporters at Fort Meade conceded that may have been overly zealous.
As many as one third of the government's 141 witnesses are expected to give testimony in secret, meaning journalists and the public won't hear it. Many court filings are impossible to view and there has been no access to court orders and motions filed. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has resorted to crowd funding to pay for a transcriber so records of the proceedings can be available in something like real time.
Lawyer Michael Ratner from the Centre for Constitutional Rights has said "I sit in that courtroom and it seems like a completely secret proceeding to me". His organisation, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and a collection of reporters are challenging the lack of public access. The military did release more than 500 documents as the trial began this week - including a photo of a noose Private Manning made from a bed sheet while he was being detained in Kuwait, something that was presented in evidence six months ago.
The Army says there's "no specific trigger" for the release of documents and the military has been working to process as many records as possible. In February the military began releasing Judge Denise Lind's older rulings amid numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. Eugene Fidell, a military law teacher Yale has described the Manning trial as "a train that's run badly off the tracks". It plays out at what he says could be a tipping point for the military justice system, with dismay over its handling of sexual assaults.
Perhaps this muddy terrain accounts for the once-over-lightly treatment the Manning case has so often received from much of the US media. Even on the first day of the long-awaited trial it was hard to find meaningful coverage of it on network TV and it didn't make the front page of either the New York Times or the Washington Post. There's every sign a country that holds itself up as a beacon of democracy around the world is struggling to come to terms with Bradley Manning and what he's shown America about itself.
Jane Cowan is an ABC correspondent based in Washington. View her full profile here.
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