Bradley Manning Not Doing Well Mentally or Physically, Supporters Say

Bradley Manning

Heather Brooke has a piece in the Guardian UK in which she reports on her interview with David House, a Boston “computer researcher” who has been visiting Manning every couple of weeks.

“Over the last few weeks I have noticed a steady decline in his mental and physical wellbeing,” he said. “His prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect; his inability to exercise due to [prison] regulations has affected his physical appearance in a manner that suggests physical weakness.”

Manning, House added, was no longer the characteristically brilliant man he had been, despite efforts to keep him intellectually engaged. He also disputed the authorities’ claims that Manning was being kept in solitary for his own good.

“I initially believed that his time in solitary confinement was a decision made in the interests of his safety,” he said. “As time passed and his suicide watch was lifted, to no effect, it became clear that his time in solitary – and his lack of a pillow, sheets, the freedom to exercise, or the ability to view televised current events – were enacted as a means of punishment rather than a means of safety.”

House told Brooke that people who publicly support Manning have been harassed by the government. They have been followed, and some have had computers seized by investigators. House was even approached and asked to “infiltrate” Wikileaks and report back to the government.

On 3 November, House, 23, said he found customs agents waiting for him when he and his girlfriend returned to the US after a short holiday in Mexico. His bags were searched and two men identifying themselves as Homeland Security officials said they were being detained for questioning and would miss their connecting flight. The men seized all his electronic items and he was told to hand over all passwords and encryption keys – which he refused. The items have yet to be returned, said House. He added: “If Manning is convicted, it will be because his individual dedication to human ethics far surpasses that of the US government.”

Manning is being held without charges, under conditions that most countries would consider torture. How much more evidence do we need in order to accept that the U.S. is descending into a police state?

As Dakinikat wrote last night based on a NYT article by Charlie Savage,

The Justice Department is hoping to use Manning to get to Julian Assange. If the conditions Manning has had to live under in prison are affecting his mental capacity–not at all surprising–he might break. Perhaps that is exactly the reason for the treatment he is getting. As we all know by know, a person who is tortured will say anything to end the agony. And believe me, despite the efforts of some bloggers to pooh pooh this, psychological torture can be as coercive as physical torture.

Human beings are social animals and we need other people in order to stay sane and to keep from sinking into depression. A person who is isolated has no way to help him reality check if he starts having troubling thoughts and feelings. The conditions Manning is living under could cause him to hallucinate and decompensate. After long enough, these effect might be permanent. Manning is only 22 years old. He’s really still a kid. He apparently has no access to the outside world other than visits with attorneys and supporters. It’s just shocking to me that our government is treating one of its citizens so horribly.

Glenn Greenwald has another post up about Manning and Assange. Like Dakinikat, Greenwald is very concerned about the effect of any prosecution of Assange on the rights of free speech and press. He writes:

…it is impossible to invent theories to indict [Manning and Assange] without simultaneously criminalizing much of investigative journalism. Thus, claiming that WikiLeaks does not merely receive and publish classified information, but rather actively seeks it and helps the leakers, is the DOJ’s attempt to distinguish it from “traditional” journalism. As Savage writes, this theory would mean “the government would not have to confront awkward questions about why it is not also prosecuting traditional news organizations or investigative journalists who also disclose information the government says should be kept secret — including The New York Times.”

But this distinction is totally illusory. Very rarely do investigative journalists merely act as passive recipients of classified information; secret government programs aren’t typically reported because leaks just suddenly show up one day in the email box of a passive reporter. Journalists virtually always take affirmative steps to encourage its dissemination. They try to cajole leakers to turn over documents to verify their claims and consent to their publication. They call other sources to obtain confirmation and elaboration in the form of further leaks and documents. Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau described how they granted anonymity to “nearly a dozen current and former officials” to induce them to reveal information about Bush’s NSA eavesdropping program. Dana Priest contacted numerous “U.S. and foreign officials” to reveal the details of the CIA’s “black site” program. Both stories won Pulitzer Prizes and entailed numerous, active steps to cajole sources to reveal classified information for publication.

Greenwald has the same thoughts that I did about the government’s motives for torturing Manning:

The need to have Manning make incriminating statements against Assange — to get him to claim that Assange actively, in advance, helped Manning access and leak these documents — would be one obvious reason for subjecting Manning to such inhumane conditions: if you want to have better treatment, you must incriminate Assange. In The Huffington Post yesterday, Marcus Baram quoted Jeff Paterson, who runs Manning’s legal defense fund, as saying that Manning has been extremely upset by the conditions of his detention but had not gone public about them in deference to his attorney’s efforts to negotiate better treatment.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do about this other than keep writing and talking about it. As far as I can tell, the President and Congress are impervious to our complaints. It’s gotten so I imagine them snickering at the outrage of the American people. We are headed for either tyranny or economic disaster–or both.

---