by Eileen Fleming
Telling the truth and Blowing the Whistle on Government’s War Crimes is not a crime, but in these United States it has become one.
“If you had free reign over classified networks… and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do?”
“God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms… I want people to see the truth… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
-Quotes from an online chat attributed to Bradley Manning Twenty-four year-old Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was accused of leaking a video showing the killing of civilians, including two Reuters journalists, by a US Apache helicopter crew in Iraq.
He has been charged with sharing the documents known as the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and US diplomatic cables, with the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
The video and documents exposed the true number and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq, human rights abuses by U.S. funded contractors and foreign militaries, and the role that spying and bribes play in international diplomacy.
Not a single person has been harmed by the release of this information, but US credibility certainly has and Bradley faces 22 charges*, including “Aiding the enemy by indirect means,” for which a conviction could result in the death penalty or life in prison.
For ten months, Manning was held in solitary confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, in inhumane conditions. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs admitted that the White House had not paying attention to Bradley Manning’s extreme confinement conditions, or the fact that pre-approved visitors of Bradley’s have been detained and interrogated by military police in order to block their scheduled visit.
Partially in response to public outcry, on 21 April 2011, Bradley was moved from Quantico to Fort Leavenworth, KS, where his conditions greatly improved.
The very day he was moved, President Obama was surprised at a breakfast fundraiser by a group of protesters. At the end of the fundraiser, a member of the Bradley Manning Support Network, Logan Price, began questioning Obama about Bradley’s situation.
The President stated that “He [Bradley Manning] broke the law.”
Supporters of Bradley Manning will be in the streets at Fort Meade for his next Court hearing scheduled for April 24-26, calling for Manning’s FREEDOM NOW!
21 April 2012 is The GLOBAL DAY CALLING FOR A FREE VANUNU NOW: www.facebook.com/events
Mordechai Vanunu, 16 April 2012, in east Jerusalem, “Still waiting to my freedom. Now after 26 years.”Background:
On March 2, 2011, The Army announced it had filed 22 additional charges against Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the soldier suspected of providing classified government documents published by the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group. The counts against him involve the leaking of the Afghan and Iraq war logs as well as the quarter million State Department cables disseminated last year.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported that the new charges formally accused Manning of using unauthorized software on government computers to extract classified information, illegally download it and transmit the data for public release by what the Army termed “the enemy.”
CBS Radio News chief legal analyst Andrew Cohen reported that military officials look like they want to throw the book at Manning, not just to punish him, but also to send a message to other service members who may be tempted to do what Manning allegedly did.
In a written statement detailing the new charges, the Army said that if Manning were convicted of all charges he would face life in prison, plus reduction in rank to the lowest enlisted pay grade, a dishonorable discharge and loss of all pay and allowances, but they are not seeking the death penalty. [1]
No mention was made regarding the fact that on January 27, 2011, McClatchy Newspapers reported that Bradley Manning’s, direct supervisor warned that Manning had thrown chairs at colleagues and shouted at higher-ranking soldiers in the year he was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y., and advised he not be sent to Iraq, where his job entailed accessing classified documents through the Defense Department’s computer system. But superior officers ignored that advice because the unit was short of intelligence analysts and needed Manning’s skills.
“An Army report into the service’s high suicide rate concluded in July that military commanders had become so focused on training troops for deployment that they no longer had the time to address issues such as alcoholism, prescription drug abuse and even violence, and instead hoped they’d disappear in combat…The result was a ‘comedy of errors’ as one commander after another assumed someone else was addressing Manning’s problems, one official said.” [2]
“Military pre-trial confinement is supposed to be about ensuring a soldier’s presence at court martial, yet for eight months now Manning has been subjected to extreme pre-trial punishment through the arbitrary use of rarely applied regulations–specifically the ‘maximum security classification’ and the ‘prevention of injury’ order. Manning is allowed no meaningful physical exercise, he is allowed no social interaction with other inmates, he is kept in his cell at least 23 hours per day, and he is not allowed out of his cell without restraints…There is no allegation that Manning did anything but share truthful information with the American public regarding the realities of our nation’s ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with absolutely no benefit to himself, in order to spark public debate regarding foreign policy.” [3]
In 2002, President Bush declared U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and he was stripped of all rights and detained at a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in solitary isolation for 43 months and denied access to an attorney for two years.
Forensic Psychiatrist Angela Hegarty examined Padilla [in 2006] and concluded the extreme isolation and torture had left Padilla essentially brain damaged, “What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind.” [4]
From 1986 to 2004, Israel kept Vanunu in a tomb sized windowless cell-most all of it in solitary confinement. When he was released he was forbidden to leave the state and speak to foreigners.
On May 23, 2010, Israel sent Vanunu back to solitary confinement for 78 days-the outcome of his freedom of speech trial, which began on January 25, 2006, because he spoke to foreign media in 2004.
Mordechai Vanunu Addresses Israel’s Intent RE: Solitary Confinement
In the 1980’s Mordechai Vanunu, was a secular Jew who worked as a technician in Israel’s seven-story underground nuclear facility in the Negev called the Dimona. The sign out front claimed it was a Textile Plant and all employees signed a secrecy agreement to never speak about what they did there.
Because Vanunu was a good worker, he was cross-trained in many areas and when he finally realized he was but a cog in the making of weapons of mass destruction, he decided to document the facts by photographing the evidence and soon after resigned and left Israel.
I began a series of interviews with Vanunu in 2005, and that was when he told me that he obtained the keys to the top secret restricted areas after they had been carelessly left in the shower room by a supervisor. Vanunu shot two rolls of film in the underground facility but did not develop them until ten months later while in Sydney, Australia after meeting Peter Hounam, an investigative reporter with the London Sunday Times.
After the two developed the film, they flew to London and Vanunu spent three days with Nuclear Physicist, Frank Barnaby, who had been employed by the London Sunday Times. Barnaby concurred that Israel had manufactured upwards of 200 nuclear warheads by 1985 and he also testified at Vanunu’s closed-door trial.
Just days before the Sunday Times published the front page story with some of Vanunu’s photos, Vanunu was lured from London to Rome, where he was clubbed, drugged and kidnapped by the Mossad.
Vanunu was convicted of treason and espionage, sentenced to 18 years in jail-11 ½ years in solitary- and has been kept under 24/7 surveillance denied the right to speak to foreigners and leave the country ever since he emerged from his windowless tomb sized cell on 21 April 2004.
During Vanunu’s trial, Barnaby testified, “I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times. I found Vanunu very straightforward about his motives for violating Israel’s secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on.
“He seemed to me to be acting ideologically. Israel’s political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel’s nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy. The knowledge that Vanunu had about Israel’s nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the design of today’s Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed since then. Modern nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the mid-1980.”
Vanunu informed me of something every American should know:
“That President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’
“Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection. The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago. Back then,the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.
“Kennedy demanded inspections. When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.
“Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”- BEYOND NUCLEAR: Mordechai Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and My Life as a Muckraker: 2005-2010
On 26 March 2006, Vanunu told me:
“Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no…CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can’t do it because they don’t want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing. Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it. Also big media from Germany, France, Italy, Japan. None of them wants problems with the Israelis.”
And that led to the taping of “30 Minutes with Vanunu”
Click here to View 30 Minute Video Message on Google Video
Because America’s Media leaders have failed to report about America’s political leaders collusion in Israel’s nuclear ambiguity/deceptions, human rights abuses and separation wall: Vanunu’s Message to US Re: The REAL Wailing Wall
This citizen of conscience is now a candidate for US HOUSE.
Follow Vanunu’s ongoing saga at his YouTube Channel vanunuvmjc
I am Eileen Fleming for US HOUSE and I approve of all of my messages.
1. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/02/national/main20038464.shtml
2. http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/27/v-fullstory/2037978/probe-army-was-warned-not-to-deploy.html
3. http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=4219
4. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/17/1323250
Eileen Fleming founded WeAreWideAwake.org. She produced videos “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”. She has authored many books including; A USS Liberty Remembrance of 50 years USA Government Cover-Up of Israel’s 8 June 1967 Attack on USA Spy-Ship, Wabi Sabi Body ETERNAL SPIRIT, and Heroes, Muses and the Saga of Mordechai Vanunu. Click here to see her latest books. Visit Eileen’s YouTube Channel
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