A day after the US Army announced Bradley Manning’s first court hearing, after a year and half in pre-trial confinement, the Bradley Manning Support Network hosted a well attended conference call with dozens of media outlets. Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, and Support Network steering committee members Kevin Zeese and Jeff Paterson spoke on behalf of the network.

Press Call Audio File (full transcript provided below).

November 22, 2011, 11:00 AM

Moderator: Good day everyone and welcome to today’s program. At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. Later you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing the star and one on your touchtone phone. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. Please note this call may be recorded. I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Jeff Paterson, co-founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network. Please go ahead, sir.

Jeff Paterson: Well hello. And thank you for joining us, those of us today from the Bradley Manning Support Network. We’re here to provide members of the press the opportunity to get some insight into our plans and the defense team’s legal plans in light of yesterday’s announcement of pre-trial dates of Private First Class Bradley Manning. I’ll provide a brief introduction for our speakers. We’ll get some remarks from them, and then we’ll get your questions. Our first speaker this morning is Daniel Ellsberg. Dan is a former defense department employee who’s probably best known for releasing the Pentagon Papers, that I believe helped end the Vietnam War. Today Dan is an advisory board member of the Bradley Manning Support Network. Thanks for joining us, Dan.

Daniel Ellsberg: Thank you Jefferey. This is Dan Ellsberg. It’s an honor for me to be able to speak here today in support of Bradley Manning. I haven’t been able to be in direct communication with him ever and no journalist, as I understand it, has been able to hear from him directly in the eighteen months that he’s been confined. And nevertheless, I, from the moment his name came up, I felt a great identification with Bradley Manning on several counts. First of all, in the charges that have [inaudible] that have been released and are going to be released in detail now for the first time, among them are some thirteen counts of violations of the so-called Espionage Act, 18 USC 793 paragraphs A and E, and I happen to know without being a lawyer those charges very well because I was the first to be charged in this country with those charges for having released information to the American public. The act was called the espionage act because for the first half century of its existence it was used only against espionage, which is what it was intended for. And mine was the first experiment to see whether it could be used against people who had given information to the American public in order to reveal wrongdoing or shorten a war or reveal unconstitutional practices. Since then, by the way, it was used before Obama, President Obama, by two other Presidents, three cases in all. I’m the first. Those charges have been made now by President Obama against five people, including Bradley Manning, five cases, almost twice as many as all previous Presidents. And it’s a kind of assault on whistleblowers of a kind we simply have never seen before.

Now, the other identification I have, the orders revealed in what we have heard, the chat logs of him and the man who informed on him, Adrian Lamo, it’s not clear whether those chat logs will be usable in the court as hearsay, I don’t know how that will come out. But based on those, as I say, I identified very much with the motives that were described very much. On the one hand he said, the person who’s been identified as Bradley manning said, “I’m ready to go to prison for life or even be executed to get this information to the American public.” And I recognize that attitude very well because that’s what I felt forty years ago, and I’ve really waited forty years for someone else to say to, make that appropriate judgment, in my opinion, talking about a war, several wars in this case, hopelessly being prolonged to no benefit to U.S. security or to anybody else. And what could be more appropriate than someone should take the risks in their own life that we’re asking thousands of Americans to take in these wars. Or to be willing to save lives and to save our democracy seems to me the appropriate, and I just haven’t heard it that much. I must say that I hold myself accountable for not having taken the opportunity to put out the information that I did – the seven thousand pages of top secret documents about our decision- making – much earlier than I did.

I think my material was top secret and sensitively held in many cases. The material we’re talking about here in Wikileaks is a much lower level of, quite low level of secrecy, not only secret rather than top secret, but not eyes only, not limited distribution as most of my material was. In fact when I was in the Defense Department I found I didn’t have time to read material at this low level of classification. I just put it aside, thinking it was much less important. I must say given what’s come out I realize now that I may have missed, missed some stuff at the time of significant because what we have learned from this is a very, among other things, a very systematic pattern of law breaking in Iraq, for example, turning people over to be tortured, and refusing to investigate precisely the information in these Wikileaks documents, which are illegal on both counts, both turning people over and their refusal to investigate, are illegal order. And if Bradley Manning is the man who revealed this material he’s the one who obeyed the oath, his oath of office to uphold the Constitution refusing those illegal orders. And it does seem that in some cases, just in terms of the fact, on the one hand the Tunisian non-violent resistance, too, which got rid of the dictator we had been supporting for years, Ben Ali, was due in large part to revelations in these Wikileaks documents of the U.S. knowledge of corruption in that country. And that in turn led to the uprising – non- violent – in Egypt. So enormous impacts, of course, from that. But on the American side, the revelation of a U.S. awareness of apparent, very serious violations, war crimes, in Iraq, by American soldiers which had not been invest-, which had been denied, in fact, falsely, led to demands by that government of jurisdiction over American soldiers in these cases, if they were not going to be tried. That in turn was unsatis- was unacceptable to our Pentagon to have our soldiers here who in any way accountable for the legal of the country of which they’re supposedly defending, has led, apparently, to the decision to remove all troops from Iraq, which I think is a very good thing, and that seems to be directly [inaudible] this revelation. We already have then major benefits, we have zero evidence of what was warned earlier, that such revelations could cause the deaths of Americans or serious harm. They’ve had to admit there was no evidence. We do have the evidence [inaudible]. So I think Bradley Manning, if he is found to have been the source of this, will deserve our thanks and certainly has my admiration. He’s unreservedly a hero.

Jeff Paterson: Thank you Dan. That was Dan Ellseberg, who released the Pentagon Papers, who helped end the Vietnam War. A reminder to our speakers we have a noisy situation and please mute your phones so we can have some sound quality this morning. Next I’d like to introduce Kevin Zeese. Kevin is the director of Voters for Peace. He’s currently involved with the Occupy Movement, and he’s been a legal advisor to the Bradley Manning Support Network for over a year now. Mr. Zeese.

Kevin Zeese: Thank you very much Jeff. I share a lot of Dan’s views. I don’t see Bradley as a criminal. If he’s guilty of what he did I see him as someone who actually lived up to his oath of office. What we’re gonna do now is give you an overview of the next steps in the legal process as well as the legal team’s efforts, and then Jeff and I will be happy to take questions on the legal issues in the question and answer session. Yesterday the U.S. Army scheduled the Article 32 hearing, as the pre-triel hearing for PFC Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst who’s accused of leaking these classified materials to Wikileaks. The pre-trial hearing is set to begin on December 16th at Fort Meade, Maryland, which is just outside of Washington, DC, and it’ll be held on auspices of the military district of Washington. This will be Private First Class Manning’s first appearance before a court, and the first time we will face his accusers after eighteen months of confinement. Sometimes rather brutal confinement, in fact most of that time in solitary confinement. He’s represented by a legal team that’s headed up by David Coombs, the hearings will last approximately five days. Officials have said the hearing will be open to the public. This is required in military proceedings, but there’s an exception and that’s when there’s classified information being discussed. We don’t know yet the extent that that provision will be invoked to prevent journalists or the public from monitoring the hearing and reporting on the story. We really need journalists in that courtroom. They need to be able to see what’s going on, hear what’s going on, report on what’s happening. The defense team will open, offer a number of witnesses as well as a series of motions, and the hearing will take a recess from the 23rd December to January 2nd or 3rd, if it’s not completed by December 22nd. If the hearing officer takes a more obstructive stance towards the defense team’s motion, then very likely the Article 32 could conclude for the break. On the other hand, the prosecution may also allow time to consider the defense’s motion, in which case the pre-trial phase could go longer. The timeline for the actual court martial is hard to predict right now, they’ll be a lot of motions in-between the pre-trial and the trial and the court martial, so it’s anywhere from April to August of 2012. By January of February we should have a good idea about what the timing will be for the court martial dates if in fact we do get to a court martial. Thanks very much, I’m looking forward to your questions.

Jeff Paterson: Thanks Mr. Zeese. Ann Wright is not available to join us this morning because she’s abroad and couldn’t get a connection to the phone. I’m gonna give a brief overview of what she was gonna tell us. My name’s Jeff Patterson, I’m the project director for Courage to Resist, a co-founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network. My organization encourages resistance, supported conscientious objectors, and other military war resisters since 2005. We handled the defense of First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first officer to refuse to fight in Iraq. The Fort Lewis area in Washington State in 2006, and Ehren Watada never spent a day in jail. We’ve done twenty-four other financial defense funds for objectors over the five or six years now, and we have a pretty good track record of supporting those who come into conflict with military law based on their conscience. However, I will acknowledge that this is the most challenging, and the hardest with the highest stakes that we’ve ever dealt will and probably will ever deal with. I’ll give you a brief update of our campaign leading up to the pre-trial hearing. We wanna have a public presence for Bradley outside of Fort Meade when he arrives on Dec. 16 for his first date, that pre-trial hearing. And we’ll have a larger gathering, a rally and a march, through the north, the public street, north side, of Fort Meade, the following day, December 17th, which is also his 24th birthday. And also on December 17th, we have commitments from fifty organizers around the United States and throughout the world, to have a international day of action to support Bradley. As you may know we held a call last week that tied up the phone lines. A number have targeted state and administrative military officers [inaudible] we directly attributed to this pre-trial hearing finally being set, but we were very, we are very concerned about the legal limbo that has gone on for a year and a half in Bradley’s case. The White House recently, in the past 48 to 72 hours, finally made no comment to our petition on their website that they come out and articulate their position on Bradley Manning. This somewhat amused us, as President Barack Obama has already gone on the record to say Bradley Manning is guilty of dumping the information involved. As Commander in Chief my position is this truly is an issue of undue command influence that does challenge Bradley’s ability to get a fair trial even in a military court. Today in San Francisco, where I’m at, we’re gonna be holding an emergency response to the pre-trial hearing going forward with a five PM Pacific Time march and rally at Powell and Market Street in San Francisco to support Bradley Manning. We do hope to have nice homemade vigils at all these events, and we did a pretty good job of turning out hundreds of people when Bradley first arrived at Fort Leavenworth, and we expect gather our supporters in the Washington, DC/New York/Baltimore area for these events at Fort Meade coming up. We’ll get Fort Meade main gate on the north side at Maryland 175 at Reese Road. We’ll be out there beginning at eight AM on Friday, December 16th, and at noon to three we’ll have our rally and march at that same location. Our supporters will be carpooled from the nearby march, and we hope to see some of you there. At this point I’m gonna open up for questions for myself, for Mr. Ellsberg or for Mr. Zeese.

Moderator: At this time if you would like to ask a question please press the star and one on your touchtone telephone. You may withdraw your question at any time by pressing the pound key. Once again, to ask a question please press the star and one on your touchtone phone. And we’ll take our first question from David Dishneau with the Associated Press. Please go ahead, your line is open.

David Dishneau: Hi, good morning everybody. Kevin, you, I wondered if your information about what the defense will be doing at the Article 32 hearing comes from your conversations with Mr. Coombs.

Kevin Zeese: It comes from conversations with Mr. Coombs by people who rallied the Bradley Manning Support Network. Jeff, you wanna add more to that?

Jeff Paterson: I’ve been in contact with Mr. Coombs since he came on board. I obviously do not speak for Mr. Coombs, but I can say that, you know mainly he has a list a 50 witness that he wants to call during this Article 32. It’s very unlikely that the military will allow all 50 of those witness, all 50 defense witnesses, to participate. So if no, if none of those witnesses are allowed to participate, then the Article 32 is gonna go very quickly. If all of them are able to participate, we’re gonna be here well into January. However, how long the Article 32 takes, I think, in some part has lots to do with the investigating officer’s position towards the relevancy of the witnesses and how many relevant.

David Dishneau: Can you characterize who those witnesses will be?

A: You know I think they probably range the spectrum from people like Dan Ellsberg, who could speak to the public benefits of whistleblowers, to more technical experts that have to deal with the actual evidence at hand. Mr. Coombs does expect to release that list of witnesses if a large amount of it will not be testifying. And that’s really all I know at this point.

Divid Dishneau: Mr. Ellsberg, have you been summoned as a witness?

Daniel Ellsberg: I’ve been listening with interest because I was gonna ask afterwards. I haven’t been told yet and I was gonna ask afterwards, if I wanna make plans, of course, to come. If I’m called I’ll be happy to be called but I haven’t heard about it yet.

David Dishneau: And finally can you tell us about, Jeff, about what motions you know that Mr. Coombs is planning, would illegal command influence be one of them?

Jeff Paterson: I cannot speak to that directly. My personal opinion is that illegal command influence certainly has happened. But I’ll be there finding out along with you guys.

DE: If I could make a comment as somebody who, when I was in the marines I was involved as a defense generally, or sometimes sat on the court of a special court martial. I was, I was astonished by the Commander in Chief virtually giving a command directive to whoever will sit on that court that their careers are at stake here if they contradict their Commander in Chief and find this person not guilty. The same conversation, when he said that he had broken that law, by the way, does not reveal a very impressive knowledge for a constitutional lawyer here, for the President who said that. The fact is, apart from whatever military regulations that he may be found or charged with violating, which don’t apply to civilians and which I was not facing, the espionage act charges are very questionably constitutional in this case. And to say he broke a law that is constitutional is something the Supreme Court has never addressed. And if there was a conviction in this case I would hope it would go up to the Supreme Court and I would hope they would find that this restriction on informing the public or using that act would be unconstitutional. One last point, once more in the conversation someone asked him, President Obama, isn’t this exactly what Daniel Ellsberg is accused of having done, and his answer was, Ellsberg’s material was classified at a different, in a different basis. Well that’s technically true, this material is secret, or less, so unclassified, and all of the pages that I released were top secret.

Jeff Paterson: Try to get the next call. Thank you.

Moderator: And our next question comes from Brian Bennett with the Los Angeles times. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Brian Bennett: Hi this is Brian Bennett. This is a question for probably Jeff Patterson and Mr. Zeese, about any other aspects of the discovery. I mean, will there be a order of the judge. Do you have any speculation on what kinds of questions might come up in that or what other kinds of questions might come up in this hearing.

Jeff Paterson: Well the defense is, the prosecution’s position is that this process has taken a year and a half in large part because there’s secret information involved, all of the defense team members had to get appropriate security clearances, and the State Department, the Defense Department had to work together to figure out how and when to release the discovery information to the defense team. And no doubt that was part this long, drawn out process. But I would also point out that Bradley Manning was held for the first year of his confinement in conditions that are, that were clearly illegal pre-trial, punishment conditions, and that the military was in no hurry to move this process along as long as they’re already extracting that mount of punishment from Bradley, in order to continue making an example out of him. And now Bradley faces, as the military said the press release a press release yesterday, life in prison, and I have no doubt the prosecution will argue for the maximum. We…Brian, I forgot your question. What is it?

Brian Bennett: The other speculation, based on your conversations with the defense over the past few months, what would be brought up during the pre-trial hearings. And also could you speak a little more about the maximum sentence that’s being pursued here?

Jeff Paterson: Well I think we’re gonna get, you know the key thing for these Article 32 hearings, is that the defense gets to have a preview of the prosecution’s case for the first time. And also, you know the defense will simply not offer any type of defense at these Article 32’s because that would sort of tip off the prosecution to what the defense strategy is. We know that, my understanding is that that’s not going to happen. David Coombs hopes to present a pretty vigorous defense, from, you know, the fifty different angles, on the charges against Bradley Manning. You know it’s a…all of it is basically sort of an interesting preview and can be new to, I think, the prosecution and the defense, and to supporters like myself who hope to be in that courtroom. On the logistics, like I say, is the military recently [inaudible] set up a remote viewing area, closed-circuit TV, where they set up a hundred viewing slots for overflow for supporters and reporters. And we expect them to do the same in this case as we expect actual space in the courtroom will be limited access to a half dozen, seven or eight. So we hope to make sure that we’ve got the remote viewing area next to the courtroom, so people can view by closed-circuit TV all the proceedings.

Moderator: And our next question comes from the site of Chris Johnson with the Washington Blade. Please go ahead, your the line is open.

Chris Johnson: Thanks for taking my question. I’m just wondering if the – this is a question for Kevin – if the fact that Bradley Manning is gay and may have been struggling under don’t ask don’t tell, if that’s going to be a factor at all in the legal defense at the pre-trial.

Kevin Zeese: I’m not really, I’m not really into that. You know I’ve been living on freedom plaza at 13th and Pennsylvania for the last two months and so I’ve been focused on that much more than I usually focus on this so, maybe Jeff again, I have to pass to you to see if anything’s come up with David Coombs about that. So I apologize for kind of being focused on living in a tent on freedom plaza.

Jeff Paterson: Well Chris, obviously what’s happened while Bradley Manning has been
incarcerated is pretty historic. Gay and lesbian soldiers, marines, airmen can now serve openly. And that’s happened in the year and a half that Bradley Manning has been in solitary confinement at Fort Leavenworth. You know I just don’t see that being relevant to the legal issues at hand. From what I’ve seen, all the other chat logs and things that have been attributed to Bradley, I don’t, I think, to me…I just don’t see that as applicable, for motive or anything else revolving around this case. That’s my two cents on that.

Moderator: The next question comes from Steve Kingstone with BBC. Please go ahead sir, line
is open.

Steve Kingstone: Just going back to the first question really, I wonder whether you could clarify a little bit more the precise relationship between the support network and David Coombs and Bradley Manning. Are you providing legal advice? Are you providing money? Are you happy that his representation in this case is competent? And I’d also be interested to know if David Coombs is on this call listening to it.

Jeff Paterson: Jeff Paterson – David Coombs is not on this call. He’s been invited to do so and he has a standing initiation to participate in our calls. He promised that he may may take us up on that at a future time but that is not now. Our relationship with David, Mr. Coombs, goes back to May 2010. Bradley Manning was arrested in Iraq. A few days later he was transferred to Kuwait where he was held in confinement for a couple weeks before being transferred stateside. My primary concern was that Bradley Manning would be railroaded in a quick court martial in Kuwait before there was an opportunity for him to select and establish a relationship with a civilian legal attorney, and that he’d pressured to go with a military JAG only with them. I expressed those concerns to Bradley’s family stateside, I was able to communicate with the military JAGs in Kuwait to convince them that they needed to basically let Bradley know that there was a group of people who’d be willing to wholly fund any civilian legal effort that he can select. You know there’s saying, you know, defense is based on how much money you can spend. And my concern is that with a case like this, he really did need a legal defense and that that would be hundreds of thousands of dollars possibly, and his family, you know, the concern was you’d forgo spending that money because it might mean a family member having to sel their house or something like that. In short, we were able to get that message to Bradley through the JAG attorney, that whatever legal team he selected, we would step up and raise the money to pay those legal fees. Bradley, after having a list of defense attorneys from myself and others in the support network, him and his family chose David Coombs for representation. The defense network has raised every penny of the money that’s been given to David Coombs, currently about a hundred thirty odd, a hundred forty odd thousand. Probably if those goes to appeal it’ll probably be, you know, a hundred thousand more in additional funds. But we’re confident that there are enough people around the world who are gonna step up and meet that need, whatever that need may be, to give Bradley the best chance.

Steve Kingstone: Just to clarify, having made the offer of civilian representation, are you now satisfied that Davd Coombs is doing the best and most professional job that he can, that this is competent representation for Bradley Manning?

Jeff Paterson: I’ve been in a good six, seven military courts, court martials now, including my own for refusing to fight in Iraq when I was a conscientious objector in 1990. I’ve seen a lot of different styles of representation. You know I am most familiar with the more activist style from an anti-war, free speech civil liberties style. David Coombs is not that person. However I would say that I’ve had a good working relationship with Mr. Coombs, and he is, he is carrying out a defense plan that has Bradley Manning’s buy-in. That Bradley Manning and his family selected an attorney that, you know, would basically represent Mr. Manning as he, you know, sort of as he envisioned being represented, and that’s exactly what’s happening. So Bradley Manning is happy with David Coombs, so I think the defense team is happy with David Coombs.

Steve Kingstone: Right, thanks.

Moderator: And we’ll take the next question from Kim Zetter with Wired. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Kim Zetter: Thanks for your time. I wanted to go back to the issue about the defense witnesses.
You mentioned that, you characterized some of them as technical experts. I was wondering if
you could expand on that a bit in terms of what kind of expertise would they be offering. Would
this be expertise about the lack of security at the system or about the lack of forensic evidence
against Manning?

Jeff Paterson: Well I don’t have all the specifics. All I could say is the initial military charge back in May, 2010. And those charges have been dismissed. And the new, the most recent charge from this March are now the actual charges that the military intends to move forward from here on. You know the initial charges were based on, from my understanding, on the chat logs with Adrian Lamo. All of that is very suspect as far as actual evidence in a military court. My understanding is the military will probably have to rely on some, you know, forensic evidence, and that forensic evidence within computer networks, databases and that kind of thing, takes a specific skill set to present in front of the court on that.

Kim Zetter: and in terms of the witnesses that the prosecution is bringing. Do you have any idea who those will entail?

Jeff Paterson: Unfortunately they have not told me that.

Kim Zetter: Okay. And you mentioned that this is the first time that the defense is getting a peek at the prosecution’s case. Does that mean that the defense has not received any discovery up to this point?

Jeff Paterson: All I can say is that David Coombs, he has received the vast majority of the discovery that’s needed to move forward on this case. There is some, I guess, more sensitive information that is still being withheld from the defense, that is expected to be released at some point soon, and it’s been determined that that’s not in itself a reason to hold up the current proceedings. So discovery hasn’t been completely solved but it’s been resolved up till the point where the process can move forward at this time.

Kim Zetter: Okay, thank you very much.

Moderator: And once again if you’d like to ask a question please press star one. And we’ll take our next question from Ed Pilkington with the Guardian. Please go ahead, line is open.

Q: Ya I just wanted to confirm a point that was said earlier. You mentioned that the fact that President Obama had commented on Bradley Manning, and you said that that would make it difficult to get a fair military trial for Bradley. Can you confirm that this is a different argument that Coombs is actively considering presenting to the court, to the hearing?

Jeff Paterson: I cannot confirm…

Daniel Ellsberg: …I was the one who said that, but I don’t’ know about the defense case. Kevin or Jeff?

Jeff Paterson: No, I can’t confirm that either. All I could say is that I’ve had discussions with David Coombs on the issue. David is certainly aware of the video of President Obama saying
these statements that we recorded and made available freely on the internet. But whether that’s a official defense motion down the road, it’s sort of up to David Coombs.

Daniel Ellsberg: Again, if I can make one comment – Dan Ellsberg – it did seem to me that
on two counts, both that comment by the Commander in Chief, and the earlier ten months of
clearly illegal and abusive confinement, isolation, which has been identified as torture by various
experts on this, and the refusal, by the way, of the military to allow [inaudible] torture to see
Bradley alone, either in Quantico, or for that matter Dennis Kucinich, as a member of Congress,
to see Bradley Manning when he was in confinement, and even now in Leavenworth, both, all
of those seem to me to point toward the unfairness of his being tried in a military court. At this
point I think court martial proceedings should be stopped and if any prosecution is to continue
it should be in a civilian court as mine was. And I would think under those terms, by the way,
his constitutional argument, as, in my case, would be very strong, to have the counts against him
dismissed.

Kevin Zeese: Let me add, this is Kevin Zeese let me add, undue command influence is a serious problem in the military because it is a command structure, and President Obama is the Commander in Chief. The judge and all the jurors will be under his command. And I can’t imagine a juror who wants to have a future in the military and be promoted to higher rank and greater responsibility going against the statement of not [sic] guilty made by his or her Commander in Chief. So I think Mr. Ellsberg is right that this is a very serious problem with the prosecution of this case and I hope that the defense is making an issue of it because undue command influence in other circumstances much less serious than this has resulted in even the dismissal of the charges. So I think this should be an issue in the defense.

Woman: And our next question comes from the site of Mark Edge with Free Talk Live. Please
go ahead, your line is open.

Mark Edge: I’m wondering if there was, if Bradley Manning is in fact, you know, found guilty or the charges are dropped or something, is there some recourse against the plaintiff for prosecution in this case, for the confinement and, I don’t know, what seems to amount to torture in my
opinion, of Bradley Manning.

Jeff Paterson: Well, Kevin might be able to speak to this directly, but there is no recourse for a person in the military to sue the military for anything. And there are some small loopholes that you can take a look at, victims of Agent Orange during Vietnam. Obviously, soldiers get killed
and maimed in battle sometimes because of negligence of commanders. There is simply no,
there is no recourse for them, to take any action. So whatever it would be it would have to be a
novel theory.

Kevin Zeese: I would tend to agree with Jeff on that. And you know, sovereign immunity really protects these officials in their actions unless, you know, they are very clearly outside of the realm of legality. That should break down that [inaudible]. That’s a very tough, tough hurdle to overcome. While I agree with the questioner that the treatment of Manning in solitary confinement for so long, and the other aspects of his treatment, would word torture and could have lasting effects, I see a lot of hurtles for actually getting any kind of justice for that. I mean it’s unlikely.

Jeff Paterson: There’s one recourse, minor in the big scheme of things. Is that if the defense can prove that Bradley’s first year in extreme torturous conditions at Quantico were indeed illegal, then a judge down the road would be compelled to use, say that 12 months and count it as 24 or
36 months towards any additional sentence.

Daniel Ellsberg: I think it is no worry, by the way – this is Dan Ellsberg – that the material released by Wikileaks included a great deal of documentary evidence, prima facie evidence, of illegality and crime in the military and in our executive. The very frequent comments, reports in the that material in Iraq, we were turning over prisoners, as Bradley Manning was ordered to do according to the chat logs, for torture by the Iraqis – that’s clearly illegal. Then, when people reported this, they were told to not investigate further, which in the chat logs Bradley Manning was also ordered. That is an illegal order. The law, both international and domestic, requires us to investigate any credible report of torture, and it’s quite striking that in this case, if Bradley Manning is the source, he’s the one person who obeyed that law by revealing this information, and was made aware of a cover-up inside. He is the one, in this case, the messenger, the whistleblower, is the one person being prosecuted. Those clear documentary reports now, by Americans, and reveals all of illegality have in no case led to either investigation or prosecution, as we are obliged to do. As far as I am aware, President Obama is in clear violation of our legal requirements to investigate such reports himself. And needless to say not being investigated for that. But he has not called for any investigation, including, by the way, the apparent rules of engagement that led people to be killed on the ground, wounded, in the video that was released, and which was part of these charges, I believe, about the shooting from the helicopter in Iraq. Again, it’s asserted by the military that the people shooting these unarmed people in civilian clothes, one of whom happened to be – and killed – a Reuters reporter, and the refusal, by the way, to turn over that material to Reuters on Freedom of Information Act, none of that – the refusal to turn it over, the actual shooting, the people who actually directed the rules of engagement that exonerated these soldiers for doing that. None of that has been investigated. Again, we’re seeing only the whistleblower being investigated, and this in an administration which pledged unusual standards of [inaudible] of George W. Bush and others.

Moderator: And it looks like we have a follow-up question with Brian Bennett from the Los Angeles Times. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Brian Bennett: Hi, this is Brian Bennett. I have a question for the Bradley Manning Support Network. How much money have you raised so far for Bradley Manning’s defense, and are you aware of other sources of money that have been raised for the defense, and can you go over again how much you think has been raised so for his defense and how much you think the total will be?

Jeff Paterson: This is Jeff Patterson. In an effort towards maximum transparency we have monthly updated on the number of donors and the total amount of donation, and a breakdown of what that might be spent on. And that can be found at our, at my organization’s website, since we’re sort of the fiscal handler of the donations on behalf of the support network, it’s not actually a legal and financial entity. So couragetoresist.org/Bradley. And then the second paragraph down you’ll find a link to financial reports or something very similar to that. I haven’t looked at it recently. I believe we’ve raised about four hundred and ten, twenty thousand dollars, and that’s been between defense fund and the legal trust fund. Legal trust funds go only to the legal invoices, whereas the other funds were used to hold these demonstrations, pro tem, also made available to Bradley’s family for travel to visit Bradley and/or to visit the upcoming proceedings in Maryland, and shipping of materials, posters and info cards, stickers, organizers around the world.

Brian Bennett: And any guess on how much more money will have to be raised for…

Jeff Paterson: You know I think it depends on how the pre-trial, the court martial unfolds. It, does, you know, will we be able to organize additional protests. So, you know, I’m confident
that if we were not able to raise another dollar that we’d be able to pay the remaining legal fees. The Bradley Manning Support Network, we’re actually trying to engage the American people and explain and educate them about what’s really involved with this case. So, if our donors respond to that, then we’re gonna have more protests, aid, and ads in the New York Times to coincide with the court martial, things of that nature. So we’re gonna challenge individuals to step forward and make public declarations in support of Bradley through newspaper ads. We’ve done billboards in Kansas City area. We’re gonna be launching billboards in the Washington, DC metro to coincide with the pre-trial hearing next month, and another billboard in the Washington, DC international billboard versus the metro ad. So things of that nature. So we’ll put forward these plans to donors and see how people respond.

Moderator: And it appears that we have no further questions at this time.

Jeff Paterson: Thanks. So we certainly appreciate folks joining us this morning. If there are any follow-up questions today or in the future, you can obviously reach us, myself and the other members of the support network will be at all of the pre-trial hearings, even after our vigils and rallies on that weekend. So feel free to give us a call and we’ll help you out any way we can.

Moderator: And this concludes your teleconference. Thank you for your participation, you may now disconnect.