Guest: Kevin Gosztola studied and analyzed the 17 superseding indictments brought against Julian Assange on May 23. He argues that a familiar contrived, conspiracy narrative and timeline underpin the Dept. of Justice charges.
Editor and journalist Kevin Gosztola joins the show to talk about the jailing of former US Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning for her resistance to a grand jury investigating Wikileaks. Kevin has been reporting on Manning’s case from the start in 2010 and has been a tireless advocate. Secret grand juries, and investigations have been used against dissidents and activists for more than a century as a political tactic of repression, isolation, intimidation and harassment. But there is also a long tradition of resistance. As Kevin wrote: “Chelsea Manning is carrying on this tradition through her bold defiance.” In Manning’s own words:
“I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.”
We discuss what little information we have about the secret grand jury and speculate about other factors that might be affecting the timing of the Manning subpoena. We also talk about the wild political flip flops of the Left and the Right on the subject, about Julian Assange and Wikileaks publications before and after the 2016 election. We toss around some ideas on how the Trump-Russia investigation (aka Russiagate) might factor in. Finally we discuss how Manning’s well being and her health related needs, especially given the history, are the most important priorities and foremost in our minds.
Today former Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning was jailed for contempt of court. She resisting testifying in front of a grand jury convened in the Eastern District of Virginia to deal with sealed charges against Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. Manning said the matter was related to her 2010 disclosures. She has already spent 7 years in prison, before and after being convicted by a military tribunal on her leaking of material related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her sentence was commuted by President Obama before leaving office in 2017. Journalist and filmmaker Ford Fischer was at the courthouse today and is here today to tell us about it.
