Update 3/21/13: Three heroic whistleblowers hail Bradley Manning’s act of conscience
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
Bradley Manning’s statement on giving documents to WikiLeaks has confirmed what we’ve been saying for nearly three years: Bradley is a whistleblower who released documents exposing atrocities and abuses as an act of conscience. But beyond merely validating supporters’ efforts, the statement is garnering Bradley new supporters as more and more understand that he did the right thing.
FireDogLake’s Kevin Gosztola has spoken to three high-profile whistleblowers who have already supported Bradley, but who have since his statement come out in support even more clearly and at greater length: Daniel Ellsberg, Jesselyn Radack, and Thomas Drake hail Bradley Manning as a whistleblower who deserves thanks, not aggressive persecution.
Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, exposing the U.S.’s duplicity in Vietnam, said Bradley is the “one person, who investigated [the crimes he witnessed], and acted on what he saw.”
He compared his own case with Bradley’s and explained their duty not to military brass but to the people they served:
It was up to us to do it and the reason that so many would withdraw from it were the very obvious risks. In his case, not in his statement but in his earlier three years ago statements, he said I am ready to go to prison or even being executed for putting these out and that I recognize as the same mood I was in in 1969 and 1971. In his case, he came to that realization at 22. I was twice his age, forty, when I really realized that and I am giving credit for being more experienced. Well, I give him credit for coming to the same right judgment at such an early age. But, in both cases, it took a war to make us see the light and to see that our duty was not primarily to our boss or even to the president but rather to the Constitution and to the country.
Jesselyn Radack, a former Department of Justice ethics adviser who blew the whistle on the FBI’s handling of John Walker Lind, and who now represents fellow truth-tellers for the Government Accountability Project, calls Bradley a classic whistleblower:
Manning was doing a deliberative thought process about how to get this information into the public, which I think is a goal of a lot of whistleblowers. They want to remain anonymous and they want to get the information out there to the public. In that sense, he very much fits the profile of a classic whistleblower.
Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping, and who was also prosecuted by the Obama Administration under the Espionage Act, says Bradley’s statement should dispel doubts about his motives:
If there was any remaining doubt regarding his motives or intentions, they were fully dispelled in his statement. I mean, it’s crystal clear where he stood in regards to why he did what he did blowing the whistle.
In addition to comparing Bradley’s case with his own, Drake makes a point of calling Bradley’s releases “disclosures” instead of leaks:
Leaks are political. He’s revealing the dark side of our foreign policy and all the corruption and crap that went on under the cover of war and how far we went afield.
Finally, he praises Bradley’s motives:
“What’s so pristine about Manning’s actions,” Drake concludes, “is that he said, ‘You know what, the only way we’re going to get clarity on this, the only way we’re going to have any real discussion is you got to get the evidence out there. The evidence of what we’ve been doing,’—and so he did.”
Bradley Manning may be experiencing a Serpico moment in his court martial. Where are Bradley’s commanding officers? Where are the Apache helicopter gunship pilots and commanding officers?
Serpico (1973) movie is the true story about an honest New York cop who blew the whistle on rampant corruption in the force only to have his comrades turn against him.
It is time for Bradley Manning to be vindicated.