Bradley Manning Military Hearing Begins

By ⋅ December 16, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment
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Bradley Manning poster (Photo: Jeffrey Weston/Flickr)

Bradley Manning poster (Photo: Jeffrey Weston/Flickr)

A military officer overseeing the hearing of the US Army analyst accused of leaking government secrets has rejected a request to recuse himself.

The request was made by a defense lawyer for Private Bradley Manning as he appeared at a military court.

He faces 22 charges of obtaining and distributing government secrets – which he allegedly leaked to anti-secrecy site Wikileaks.

The Article 32 hearing will determine whether Private Manning is to stand trial.

Reporter Arun Rath is following the hearing for PBS FRONTLINE and The World.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Bradley Manning appeared today for the first time before a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland. The Army private is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified US government files to the anti-secrecy website, Wikileaks. The subsequent publishing of those secret documents shook America’s foreign policy and national security establishments. Manning is facing a possible sentence of life in prison if found guilty. After the charges were read in court, Manning’s civilian attorney, David Coombs, asked the investigating officer presiding over the course to recuse himself. Coombs said the officer was biased against his client, but the request was denied. Correspondent Arun Rath of our partner program, Frontline, is in Maryland. He says today was a start of a pretrial hearing to decide whether Manning faces a court marshal.

Arun Rath: The investigating officer who’s in charge of this, he would come out of the hearing with a recommendation, and not a recommendation to go to a full court marshal. There are different types of court marshal, but it would be either a court marshal or dismissal. Almost always recommendation of the investigating officer of the Article 32 is followed; I know of only one case where that hasn’t been the case.

Werman: And Arun, I mean how did Bradley Manning look today at this pretrial hearing?

Rath: It was interesting, Marco, actually I didn’t even recognize him at first, which is kind of remarkable because we’ve seen all these famous pictures of him from his happier days. And part of it was probably the poor image quality on the closed circuit feed here, but you know, his hair is darker, maybe he dyed it before the incarceration. And he was wearing this big dark glasses with black rims. And he looks a little bit heavier, not the kind of slight waif’ish kid we’ve seen in those pictures. And mostly he sort of commonly waited with his hands folded. Occasionally you would see a smile on his face when his defense council made a particularly impassioned point.

Werman: Now we know Bradley Manning is being charged with downloading over a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables and US military reports from Afghanistan and Iraq. But who is Bradley Manning, this man? What more can you tell us about him?

Rath: Well, he’s a very troubled young man. I mean the Frontline investigation we did into him shows you know, he had a very troubled home life. This is a guy who was so unstable that they disabled his you know, his weapon. He was not allowed to have a functioning weapon, but he still had full security clearance at the same time. So you know, it’s interesting. He is definitely someone who is you know, if you read the transcripts of his chats of Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned him in, he was a guy who seemed to be really sort of casting around for meaning.

Werman: I mean he’s young, in his early 20s. He’s an expert in computer and internet technology, a former intelligence analyst. He seems like the kind of person the military in this country wants on their side. Do you have any sense what might have motivated him?

Rath: Well, there’s a lot that’s been going into that. Manning is gay and he did talk in some of these transcripts we’ve seen about the strains of working under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He also didn’t like a lot of what he saw in Iraq, apparently. But it’s really hard to draw a line from one thing to another. There are plenty of people in the army who had problems and then didn’t turn over hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

Werman: Arun Rath with our partner program, Frontline, speaking from the pretrial hearing of Private Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, Maryland. Arun, thanks a lot.

Rath: No problem, Marco, my pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Arun Rath’s tweets from Fort Meade, Maryland.

PBS Frontline: Updates From Bradley Manning’s Pretrial Hearing

Read tweets about the Manning hearing




Discussion

4 comments for “Bradley Manning Military Hearing Begins”

  • Anonymous

    I find it “troubling” that this reporter from Frontline focuses on Manning as a “troubled” homosexual, rather than a person of conscience who could not accept the murder of innocent Iraqi civilians, nor the decision to invade and occupy a sovereign nation.  Why isn’t this reporter asking the pertinent questions: When will the executors of this foreign policy, which led to so much death and destruction, stand trial?  Is this Frontline reporter a real journalist or someone on the Pentagon’s payroll?

  • Anonymous

    This reporting was of the (in this case, monumentally inappropriate) style of “Entertainment Tonight”, virtually ignoring the important implications of what Bradley Manning allegedly did, focusing on the micro details of Manning’s persona, and yet somehow failing to mention or acknowledge that Manning’s motivation might have been greater than his own individual self-interest, in exposing the corrupt nature of this nation’s war efforts in the Middle East.  The reporting thus reveals more about the limited perspective of the reporters than it helps the rest of us understand what’s happening and why it matters.

  • http://www.facebook.com/linda.milazzo Linda Milazzo

    Frontline reporter Arun Rath’s prejudicial statements about Bradley Manning are “troubling” to say the least. Interesting that Rath uses the adjective “troubled” to describe Manning, principally because in Rath’s words “Manning grew up in a troubled household.” PRI would be wise to remind Mr. Rath that millions of adults across the globe have grown in perceived “troubled” households and gone on to live healthy, functional adult lives.

    In the future, Mr. Rath might consider reporting in a less biased manner. The status of Bradley Manning’s mental health is not for Mr. Rath to determine nor should he engage in conjecture on the lasting effects of Manning’s childhood. All Rath can report with accuracy is that Bradley Manning is present in the courtroom, (nonjudgmental) details of his appearance, specific and relevant occurrences in the courtroom, including statements by witnesses, lawyers, court personnel, etc. Unfortunately, Rath’s prejudicial statements that describe Manning as “troubled” are astonishingly unprofessional and far beyond the pale for legitimate journalism.

  • http://www.facebook.com/achurg Antonie Churg

    Reporting from the right-of-enter perspective is standard fare at PBS nowadays. I am outraged that Rath talks about Manning’s hair color and weight gain, overlooking what is revealed in the Wikileaks documents: the brutality of war, criminal acts, legal and illegal theft by people in power, and the hypocrisy of our government officials.  Rath fails to ask why a person would risk being caught revealing these terrible secrets. The discussion of Manning’s difficult family background is reminiscent of the Soviets, who locked up political prisoners in psychiatric wards on the pretext they are crazy.