Guest: Kevin Gosztola. We focus on week 2 of the Assange Extradition hearings, witness testimony from Eric Lewis, Thomas Durkin, Daniel Ellsberg, John Goetz and Carey Shenkman and Assange’s defense team. We also talked about the password leaked in a book by Luke Harding and David Leigh, the highly problematic Espionage Act and how it, like the Assange case, is political in nature. Kevin has been doing reporting and analysis on the cases of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange and Wikileaks both on the ground (and now remotely) for the past decade.
Kevin Gosztola provides an account of his experience reporting on the Julian Assange extradition hearing for four days at the court in London, plus more details and insights about the case and the people involved.
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.
