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A foundation dedicated to promoting and funding transparency journalism has released a recording of Pfc. Bradley Manning reading a statement he made in military court at Fort Meade about releasing United States government documents to WikiLeaks.
The recording from the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) was covered by NBC’s “The Today Show” at 7am EST. The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald, a board member of the foundation, also put up a post highlighting significant excerpts of his statement.
Full audio of Manning can be listened to by clicking on the player here:
In a release on the foundation’s website, FPF notes, “While unofficial transcripts of this statement are available, this marks the first time the American public has heard the actual voice of Manning.”
FPF states:
Freedom of the Press Foundation is dedicated to supporting journalism that combats overreaching government secrecy. We have been disturbed that Manning’s pre-trial hearings have been hampered by the kind of extreme government secrecy that his releases to WikiLeaks were intended to protest. While reporters are allowed in the courtroom, no audio or visual recordings are permitted by the judge, no transcripts of the proceedings or any motions by the prosecution have been released, and lengthy court orders read on the stand by the judge have not been published for public review.
FPF, which partly decided to start its organization to ensure the flow of donations were able to resume to WikiLeaks, has not been publishing leaks. The foundation realized, “We had a unique opportunity to bring some small measure of transparency directly by allowing the world to hear for itself the voice of someone who took a controversial and important stance for government transparency.”
The foundation hopes ”this recording will shed light on one of the most secret court trials in recent history, in which the government is putting on trial a concerned government employee whose only stated goal was to bring attention to what he viewed as serious governmental misconduct and criminal activity.” It also would like to see “prompt additional analysis of these proceedings by other journalistic institutions and the public at large.”
“While we are not equipped (technically or as a matter of human resources) to receive leaked information” and do not plan to receive “leaks” in the future, “we are proud to publish and analyze this particular recording because it is so clearly matches our mission of supporting transparency journalism,” the foundation declares.
Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras edited a video of Manning’s voice describing what he thought when he first watched the “Collateral Murder” video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq and why he decided to release the video to WikiLeaks:
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I have been regularly attending Bradley Manning’s court martial proceedings. I was able to hear Manning deliver the statement myself like the twenty or thirty people in the public gallery of the courtroom. However, I did not sit back and listen to every word he was saying and fully take in the meaning. There are many parts of Manning’s statement that I am certain I do not remember hearing because I thought I would not hear him say the words again.
The court martial has been conducted with a layer of secrecy that is unjustified. I, along with other journalists, have been plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) to force the military to make court documents available in a timely fashion.
Last week, CCR submitted an additional declaration I drafted to a military appeals court currently hearing the case:
On February 26, 2013, Judge Lind read her ruling on the defense’s speedy trial motion in open court. It took two hours for her to complete reading this order. The order contained a large number of dates and abbreviations for government agencies and other military terminology that might have been readily comprehensible in a written document but that we in the press could scarcely keep up with when listening to Judge Lind’s rapid-fire oral delivery. A colleague of mine in the press room calculated that Judge Lind was reading at a rate of 180 words per minute, and that the entire ruling contained at least 23,000 words, an estimate which comports with my observations as well. (For comparison, a very good professional typist can manage about 80 words per minute, and my understanding is that the absolute maximum speed at which humans can type for extended periods is approximately 150 words per minute.) [emphasis added]
Manning read his statement two days later and, when he read his statement, his reading was not much slower. The only reason why I did not become frustrated with trying to keep up with the statement was because each paragraph seemed to contain a new detail about what he did that I had long been waiting to hear from him. It also contained new details in his story that I never imagined had taken place (like, for example, trying to go to the press before submitting the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs to WikiLeaks or researching the sets of documents or reading about the “Collateral Murder” video before deciding to submit them to WikiLeaks.)
When I return to Fort Meade in April, I will undoubtedly hear about the release of this audio recording from military Public Affairs Officers. I may even receive a press release from officers at some point reminding the press explicitly of the rules: that we are not to use recording devices. At the moment, I think the recording was made inside the courtroom. If it was recorded from inside the media center, one would be able to hear members of the press pool making noise and reacting to Manning’s statement.
The only damage that will come from this leak is the military will feel embarrassed it cannot properly secure the court martial proceedings in the way the military desires. The proceedings will be able to continue appropriately. The source who engaged in an act of forced transparency will see Fort Meade re-establish control over the flow of information.
It was long overdue. The public deserved to hear the voice of the soldier who risked his livelihood and future plead guilty and describe in detail what he did.
Update
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who is also a board member and co-founder of FPF, has a reaction to hearing audio of Manning’s statement up at Huffington Post. He writes:
Whoever made this recording, and I don’t know who the person is, has done the American public a great service. This marks the first time the American public can hear Bradley Manning, in his own voice explain what he did and how he did it.
After listening to this recording and reading his testimony, I believe Bradley Manning is the personification of the word whistleblower.
18 Comments
And the prosecution/court knows the world will begin to think the same thing, and the USG will respond with a vengeance.
I don’t know who recorded this, but by all definitions..they too are a whistleblower on a government gone mad. And that will drive the USG crazy as well, as the whole world will soon discover the Orwellian nature of this theater of the absurd.
Got it. Going to link to the written statement at my site.
Thanks to the unknown recorder and forever thanks go to Bradley Manning.
Sophie Scholl – Statement to the Volksgerichtshof [People's Court] of Judge Roland Freisler (21 February 1943)
Thanks Kevin for what you are doing and for posting this. You are making progress so keep the faith.
Thanks for your consistent and diligent work on this important event in our history, Kevin.
Really great, however it got out, we need to have this information. I hope it will be a game-changer in our country and in the courtroom.
This is a good development. I can’t listen to it at work, but will do so when I get home.
Viva transparency and the free flow of information, out of the cold, bony grip of our government!
Thank You, whoever took the risk of recording and leaking Manning’s statement.
It’s clear from listening to this recording that Manning has credibility as a whistleblower and is not soldier who gave secrets to the enemy. I’m impressed with him.
It’s also clear that USG’s interest in keeping the proceedings secret and keeping Manning’s voice away from public scrutiny is necessary to secure the guilty verdict they need to discourage future whistleblowers.
Firstly, HUGE thanks go to true American Hero, Pfc Bradley Manning who has laid his life on the line in service to his country. My thanks is paltry and cold comfort to this young man, who bravely has faced the enemy and it is the USG, in this case, not some Frankenstein monster created by the CIA or whatever.
And then, a huge debt of gratitude to whoever recorded and leaked this. Yikes, whoever that is: watch YOUR back bc you’ll be next on “the list.”
Good work, Kevin. much appreciated. keep it up.
Not sure if Kevin linked to Democracy Now’s segment on this leak…
What the hell kind of country have we created that takes this long before we get to hear the voice of a hero?
Kangeroo court- check
No speedy trial-check
military rules-check
Excessive secrecy-check
I did not yet. Thanks for dropping a link in the thread.
Telegraph sez the recording seemed to come from the public gallery:
ysd,
Will you turn up the audio played during the “Democracy Now!” broadcast this morning and tell me what you think you hear in the background? There’s background noise. I wonder—although I said it was not made in the media center—if this noise is, in fact, the sound of reporters typing.
I would if I could, but I’m at work and can barely hear the recording at all over the noise here.
Ok. Thanks
I just finished listening to Manning’s statement in its entirety – just fascinating.
Kevin, if you don’t mind a little back-seat driving, I don’t think it’s productive to speculate about the locus of the leak. All that will do is help to identify the patriot (and what a pleasure it is to be able to use that word un-ironically) who enabled us to hear Manning in his own voice.
I think this document belongs to the same genre as Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Not in a literary sense – Manning lacks King’s education and soaring rhetoric – but in the sense that it represents the testimony of a prisoner of conscience made during his imprisonment.
Some thoughts:
* It’s significant that Manning actively did research – especially on the State Department cables, whose ability to harm the U.S. he was initially uncertain of – and only distributed them after he realized that the bulk of them not only had a low classification, they had NO classification.
* In perhaps one of the most stunning understatements in the history of leaker-dom, Manning concludes his initial document submission to Wikileaks by saying “Have a good day.”
* He takes full responsibility for his actions and doesn’t try to say he was pressured by Wikileaks.
The first 10 or 15 minutes of his presentation are largely technical in nature and can be skipped over by anyone in a hurry. The sum and substance of his talk is to convincingly portray himself as a man of conscience who was disturbed by what he learned. Again, he wanted to strengthen the United States, not to harm it.
As far as I’m concerned, the man definitely deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. It would allow the Nobel committee to atone for its egregious Barack Obama mistake.
Finally, the audio quality is not that great, so I listened to it while scrolling through this version of the transcript of his remarks:
http://bit.ly/13tF4EZ
If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see that an updated version of the transcript is available, but this is the one I read while listening to Manning, so it’s the one I’m posting here. Have a good day.
Heard from a member of our objective network media, aka establishment propaganda arm……
Thank heavens for journalists who actually work and think, like Kevin.