BRADLEY MANNING

The US military court ruling on finding the WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning guilty of espionage (but not of aiding the enemy) shows a proportionate sense of perspective after one of the most turbulent episodes in recent US judicial history.

In a highly emotive summing up by the prosecutor, Major Ashden Fein, claimed that Manning was ‘a determined soldier with the ability, knowledge and desire to harm the United States.’ He was not a whistleblower, but a traitor… and Manning had, said Major Fein, ‘general evil intent.’

Nobody ever suggested that this young and disillusioned soldier had deliberately sent military secrets to Al-Qaeda, but the court-martial ruling has proved ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ that his voluntary actions to disclose more than 700,000 documents would ‘lead to them being in the hands of the enemy.’

Manning was responsible for the largest leaking of classified information in US history. His actions sent shockwaves through America’s military and political establishments, but undoubtedly their response to his actions was part of the US mindset that materialised after 9/11 in policies such as extraordinary rendition, waterboarding and events that have transpired since at Guantanamo Bay.

The presiding judge over Bradley Manning’s court-martial, Judge Colonel Denise Lind, struck a very different note saying that the policies of the George W Bush presidency which were responsible have been reversed. Whilst that does hold some credence, the malign consequences linger on, including the compulsion in the United States to silence those, like Manning, who discovered that the exercise of American power on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan was significantly different from the way it was advertised back home.

In many ways a dichotomy has been exposed. American claims of fostering a culture of free information have often been inflated, and its media have certainly failed to take full advantage of those freedoms they did possess. But the high collision of President Bush’s ‘war on terror’ with the explosion of information released by the internet – which WikiLeaks came to symbolise – created in America a national mood of paranoia reminiscent of Stalinism. President Obama’s attempts to cool that feverish atmosphere is slowly being achieved with the winding down of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Washington’s refusal so far to countenance any large-scale involvement in Syria or Iran.

While both Bradley Manning and the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were guilty of recklessly flooding media outlets with secret and classified information with little concern for what has subsequently happened to the people who had been named, their underhand dealings enabled many to learn about atrocities committed by the US military which otherwise would have been covered up for ever.

Governments and their military establishments are known in wanting to keep their dirty secrets to themselves, but we should also know they must not be allowed to. Freedom of information is one of the cornerstones of democracy, and whistleblowers just happen to be a vital component to the functioning of societies that aspire to be free. Reconciling that to the authority of their rulers will always throw up issues perfectly witnessed in the court-martial of Bradley Manning.