AMY GOODMAN: From Pacifica, this is Democracy Now!, a special broadcast on the Bradley Manning verdict.

RACHEL ATWOOD: The very idea that he is being punished for coming out against war crimes and such cruelty by his fellow servicemen is—it’s really disturbing.

AMY GOODMAN: A military judge is set to announce a verdict in the trial of Bradley Manning, the Army private who leaked hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents to WikiLeaks. We’ll bring you live reports from Fort Meade and air highlights of our coverage of Bradley Manning, including interviews with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and attorney Michael Ratner.

MICHAEL RATNER: The government’s theory is what really is awful here. It’s basically saying you can aid the enemy by putting information up on the Internet that’s intelligence, doesn’t classified, and because the enemy reads the Internet, you can be accused of aiding the enemy. So that—which is a death penalty. That ends whistleblowing. What person is going to actually start whistleblowing and giving information to the media if they can get the death penalty?

AMY GOODMAN: All that and more, coming up.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with our live stream exclusive coverage of the Bradley Manning verdict.

A military judge at Fort Meade is set to begin reading her verdict in the court-martial of Army whistleblower Bradley Manning for the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history. Manning faces up to life in prison for the most serious of the more than 20 charges against him—aiding the enemy—after he leaked more than 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks in an attempt to spark a national debate about U.S. foreign policy. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of the charges, which could carry up to 20 years in prison. After nearly two months of trial at Fort Meade, Maryland, the judge, Colonel Denise Lind, said she planned to begin reading her verdict at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time today, but it’s unclear how soon we will know her ruling.

The Guardian newspaper is reporting journalists have been told they will not be allowed to leave once the court is in session. Phones are not allowed in the courtroom, so they will have to attempt to leave, get their phones, before calling in the decision.

After the verdict, the trial enters the sentencing phase, where both the prosecution and defense will present more evidence and arguments.

There’s been a lot of activism around Bradley Manning’s case. A campaign called “I am Bradley Manning” recently produced this video. It features a number of luminaries, including, oh, Alice Walker, Dan Ellsberg, Russell Brand, Oliver Stone, the musician Roger Waters and many, many others.

MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: In the words of Bradley Manning, “Yes, Your Honor, I wrote this statement in confinement.”

ROGER WATERS: “I was deployed to Baghdad. I want people to see the truth.”

MOLLY CRABAPPLE: Manning was the one who signed up to be a soldier. He volunteered to be in Iraq.

OLIVER STONE: He was deeply disturbed by what he was seeing as an intelligence analyst in Iraq—the shooting of the Reuters reporters, civilians, by helicopter.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: Fire!

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: Oh, yeah, look at all those dead bastards.

OLIVER STONE: He leaked documents during a war, and they were enormously helpful for people on the outside to understand what the government was thinking about on the inside.

ROGER WATERS: If you join the armed forces, are you accepting, on that day when you sign the paper and you join up, that you will turn a blind eye to any war crime that you witness?

LT. DAN CHOI: Particularly in the uniform of our country, if you don’t have truth, then we have to ask ourselves, “Why do we risk anything? And what are we fighting for, to begin with?”

ANGELA DAVIS: He is asking us to look at the consequences of war, the damage that war produces.

BISHOP GEORGE PACKARD: There is a protocol for torture.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: The Army reports listed some 60,000 civilians dead.

CHRIS HEDGES: Hillary Clinton was ordering State Department employees to spy on diplomats.

PHIL DONAHUE: He’s a man who’s done things that the mainstream media should have done a long time ago.

ALLAN NAIRN: He ignited this chain of social action.

MICHAEL PREMO: We saw very clearly the discrepancies between what we were being told and what was actually happening.

MATT TAIBBI: He’s a whistleblower, and the whole concept of whistleblower laws and whistleblower protections are you cannot get into trouble for reporting about illegal or improper activity.

MOBY: It’s enshrined in our Constitution that an individual has the right to release information and disseminate information that makes the powers that be uncomfortable.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: It’s an absurd charge to be charging him with giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

CHRIS HEDGES: The attempt is to shut down any free flow of information.

HAKIM GREENE: They want to shut him up, lock him up.

RUSSELL BRAND:* To take a risk and to take a stand, knowing that in all likelihood you will be persecuted, penalized, demonized and punished for it, that’s incredibly bold.

MICHAEL RATNER: How are you going to act on your conscience, when you know if you do so that you could be subject to the death penalty for aiding the enemy, for simply being a whistleblower of criminality?

OLIVER STONE: Could possibly lead to lifetime imprisonment or even death.

MICHAEL RATNER: I heard his testimony on the day he talked about the torture. It was the most moving day I’ve ever spent in a courtroom, and I’ve spent 40 years listening to people talk about how they were tortured. When he first got arrested, he was put into a wire cage in a tent.

LT. DAN CHOI: And was stripped naked and paraded around.

MICHAEL RATNER: He drew the cell that he was in on the floor and how he had to lay in the cell and how the light was on him 24 hours.

ALICE WALKER: Forced to sleep without cover.

JOSH STIEBER: Conditions far worse than soldiers who have been convicted of cold-blooded murder.

MICHAEL RATNER: Every single newspaper in this country ought to be screaming, screaming about Bradley Manning.

MATT TAIBBI: The whole concept of freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, these are—this is under direct threat in this one case.

TIM DECHRISTOPHER: It’s important that we do have those people who stand up and expose what’s really going on.

ROGER WATERS: They take enormous risks on our behalf.

TIM DECHRISTOPHER: And we need more like him.

ALICE WALKER: And now that I know it, I cannot un-know it.

MICHAEL RATNER: So the question for all of us, when you see atrocities like those that Bradley Manning saw, is the question he asked.

MOLLY CRABAPPLE: If you saw incredible things …

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, you’ve been watching a campaign called “I am Bradley Manning,” which recently produced this video that featured, well, the attorney for Julian Assange, Michael Ratner, also the great writer Alice Walker, Dan Ellsberg, the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, Russell Brand, Oliver Stone, Roger Waters and many others.

This is a Democracy Now! live exclusive broadcast on this day that the verdict will be handed down in the Bradley Manning case. We will be getting reports from inside Fort Meade and speak to a number of guests, including Michael Ratner, Chase Madar, who is author of the new book, The Passion of Bradley Manning. We’ll also be going to Iceland to speak with the parliamentarian, Birgitta Jónsdóttir.

We are going to be bringing you reports inside and outside of the courtroom, but it is very difficult to get those reports to you, as it has been through the trial, despite the fact that this trial, this court-martial, this historic moment in U.S. history, is taking place at the headquarters of the National Security Agency. The ability for the reporters to communicate has been clamped down on. Just read what Charlie Savage had to say, as he was writing in The New York Times, with the military walking behind the reporters as they are writing, reading over their shoulders. The fact that the NSA, which we well know from all of the scandals, being able to spy on Americans all over the country—very difficult for there to be bandwidth for people to get reports out. When we interview the reporters who have been there every day, like Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake and Alexa O’Brien, who haven’t missed a day of this trial, they have to go into a car in the parking lot to set up their own wireless system. We are going to be hearing from Alexa O’Brien in just a moment. She is the reporter who was the first to make transcripts of the proceedings publicly available, when they weren’t being made available by the court.

We’re going to be bringing you the tweets of those who are writing right now. OK, here we have Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake, just 18 minutes ago: “New rule: press cannot get up to pee while judge is reading the verdict in Bradley Manning’s trial.”

Another, AP report: “US Army Private Bradley Manning acquitted of aiding the enemy.” This is absolutely key. Again, Associated Press is reporting U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning has been acquitted of the most serious charge—aiding the enemy—for giving secrets to WikiLeaks. Again, this just in. This is the question all over this country and around the world people have been waiting for the answer for. Colonel Denise Lind, in this judge trial—no jury here—has ruled on the most serious charge, the charge of aiding the enemy, for which, by the way, Bradley Manning not only could have received life in prison, but death. She has acquitted him of this charge, aiding the enemy. Not guilty of aiding the enemy. This is the critical news of this trial at this point for what was possible. Again, the colonel, Denise Lind, is reading inside the courtroom at Fort Meade, Maryland, the verdict. And the big question was: Would Bradley Manning be found guilty of aiding the enemy? She has acquitted him of this charge.

We are going to go back in time to bring you our coverage, and we’ll interrupt throughout as we get more reports from inside the courtroom today. Again, very difficult to—for the reporters to report outside. We have a report at this point of either Kevin Gosztola telling us what’s happening just before the trial began, or we’ll be going to Michael Ratner and Alexa O’Brien. This is a report we brought you on Monday. The verdict—the oral arguments in the case, the final closing arguments, were presented on Thursday by the prosecution, on Friday by the defense. On Monday, we sat down with Alexa O’Brien in the car outside Fort Meade. She was reporting to us as she awaited Judge Lind’s verdict. And Michael Ratner, the attorney for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, particularly important because Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have been raised over and over again. Again, they will be referring in this interview, probably, to the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, because this was an interview we did on Monday. Just remember—and get word out right now as you tell people to tune in to this broadcast at democracynow.org and at Livestream—just remember that, once again, Denise Lind has found—the colonel, the judge in this court-martial, has found Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy.

Now I’m going to read you Alexa O’Brien’s latest tweets, the journalist who’s been there from the beginning. She said the charge two—”Spec 4, Charge II Iraq War Logs Database 641 [found] GUILTY (10 years MAX).” “Spec 3, Charge II CIA Red Cell Memo 793(e) GUILTY #Manning (10 years MAX).” “Spec II, Charge II Guilty to his LIO plea [for] 793(e) Collateral Murder #Manning,” guilty here.

Now, let us remind you that Bradley Manning had already pleaded guilty to a number of charges that could lead to 20 years in prison. But the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, he has been acquitted of.

Again, Alexa O’Brien writes from inside the courtroom. She is tweeting: “Spec 5, Charge II Iraq War Logs Espionage 793(e) GUILTY,” could face 10 years in prison.

We urge you to tell your friends, to let people know, that this is the site you can go to to watch the latest developments.

We’re going to turn right now to Greg Mitchell, who has been writing extensively about Bradley Manning, in fact wrote a book about him.

Greg, thanks for joining us. Talk about the significance of this latest decision, the latest news of the verdict and the most serious charge, aiding the enemy. Colonel Lind, the judge in this case, has acquitted Bradley Manning of aiding the enemy. How significant is this?

GREG MITCHELL: Well, it’s extremely significant, both for Manning and for journalists and whistleblowers and people who really care about this everywhere. Of course, it probably gets him off the hook for the most serious sentencing, which the process will begin tomorrow, which would be life in prison. The other charges, the 19 charges or whatever the final total is, of course will mean he will spend many years in prison, no doubt. But the aiding the enemy was the most serious for him. And in terms of others, it was—if he had been convicted of that, it certainly threatened journalists everywhere and, of course, whistleblowers, because, you know, maybe as many of your listeners know, that this kind of charge was very unusual in this case, and it would put in danger people who disseminate, publish, leak or make public important information for the public that could be or ended up in the hands or was cited by some unknown enemy abroad, which would mean that, you know, any kind of information that you could—you might charge that someone somewhere, one of our alleged enemies, made use of, you could then be brought up on this charge and face—you know, face life in prison or whatever.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Greg, we’re reading the tweets as we talk to you. This is a live broadcast on the day of the verdict. The most serious charge, aiding the enemy, Bradley Manning has been acquitted of. Alexa O’Brien now writes, “Spec 9, Charge II GTMO File 793(e) Espionage GUILTY.” Kevin Gosztola writes, “Manning was found GUILTY of wantonly causing to be published intelligence on the Internet.” Explain.

GREG MITCHELL: Well, these are the long list of charges, many of which—or, some of which he had pleaded guilty to quite some time ago. The judge today had to affirm them, so there they’re included as if he really hadn’t pleaded to them, but they’re part of the charges he is now found guilty of. And, you know, the array of charges against him were—you know, was espionage, was use of a computer to leak information, leaking the videos. I haven’t quite—I haven’t seen the verdict on the Garani video. This is not the “Collateral Murder” video, which I believe he did admit to, but the other video which was a key part of this trial—

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Greg—

GREG MITCHELL: —which showed the mass slaying in—abroad.

AMY GOODMAN: Nathan Fuller has just reported from—he’s a writer for the Bradley Manning Support Network—that for “Collateral Murder” video, Bradley Manning not guilty of Espionage Act violation.

GREG MITCHELL: Oh, OK, interesting, very—that’s very interesting. The Garani video, as I was saying, was the other video where we had the airstrikes that killed allegedly 80 to more than a hundred civilians. And that was a big—a big question in the trial, when actually that video was leaked.

AMY GOODMAN: Nathan Fuller has also just reported, @nathanLfuller—and you can go to democracynow.org, folks, to see as we aggregate the tweets that are coming out of the trial—”Bradley Manning found guilty of 19 counts, 4 of which were his lesser included pleas.” And again—

GREG MITCHELL: Right, mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: —for “Collateral Murder” video, “Bradley manning not guilty of espionage” and—”not guilty of espionage act violation for transmitting Army report on WikiLeaks.” I believe, in addition to Greg Mitchell, we are joined by Jeremy Scahill on the phone right now, who is the author of Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, both the book and the film. Jeremy, your response, as you have covered Bradley Manning now for some time, to the latest news of the acquittal of Bradley Manning on the count of aiding the enemy?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, I concur with a lot of what Greg was just saying. I mean, obviously, all of us are primarily concerned with the fate of Bradley Manning and what’s going to happen with him. And while we’re still awaiting word on all of the actual charges that he’s been convicted of and given determination of his sentence, I think that we can say that there was a minor victory in the fact that the judge acquitted him of aiding the enemy. I mean, I, as a journalist who travels to Yemen and Somalia and Afghanistan and often meets with people who believe that they are in a battle against the United States and try to get their side of the story, this verdict would have—a conviction of aiding the enemy would have had far-reaching implications for me and other reporters, but not just those of us that do this in war zones. I mean, essentially, what it would have said is anyone who puts information on the Internet or in any kind of a publication, that can be downloaded by people the United States designates as enemies or terrorists, could have been convicted of or charged with aiding the enemy. And that would have been a very, very dangerous precedent to set.

But I think that what this case really highlights is the utter hypocrisy of the U.S. state in the face of whistleblowers and independent journalism. We are in a moment when journalism is being criminalized by this administration, by the Justice Department, where the Espionage Act is being used, where reporters are having their phone records seized. We’re all paying attention to the case of Jim Risen of The New York Times, who’s been ordered now to testify against one of his sources. And I think the Manning case really dramatizes that people who blow the whistle and who are participants in or observers to what they believe are war crimes, when they blow the whistle on it, they are going to face either death or life in prison. But those who are sort of stenographers for the powerful get invited to do interviews with the president and play super-soaker fight on Joe Biden’s lawn. And I think it’s a really devastating commentary that Bradley Manning very well may go to prison for many, many years, if not his entire life, while you have legitimate war criminals walking around free, who built up a torture apparatus under the Bush administration, and this administration refuses to prosecute the torturers that operated with impunity for the eight years of the Bush era.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to just keep on reporting the tweets that are coming out of the trial. It’s often been very difficult to get news out of the courtroom. But Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake has just tweeted, “Bradley Manning is found guilty of enough charges to potentially be put in prison for over 100 years.” Nathan Fuller of the Bradley Manning Support Network tweets, “Bradley Manning guilty of Computer Fraud (10 years) for using wget.” Explain what that is, Greg Mitchell.

GREG MITCHELL: … are—you know, are rolling out here, and they all—I think the lowest sentence for any of them is two years, and they go up to 10 years and 20 years. So I think Kevin, who—you know, Kevin—you know, we should have a hat tip to Kevin Gosztola, Nathan Fuller and maybe one or two other people who have followed all these hearings and the trials now for—you know, for over a year, doing incredible work, where the media in general has ignored—has ignored this case, has not shown up, until today, in the courtroom. So, we should not let this pass without a hat tip to Kevin and, you know, three or four others.

But, you know, these charges are—because there are so many of them, they accumulate. And they all involve, you know, some of which he’s admitted to, using a computer to get files, download files, ranging from the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Logs, the Gitmo Files, the Cablegate. These are all things that he essentially has either admitted or is now being found guilty of, and they’re—you know, they are serious charges. So, on the one hand, we want to, you know, maybe applaud the not guilty verdict on aiding the enemy, which, as you know, has incredibly wide ramifications, but we should never lose sight that, you know, as Jeremy says, while so many others go free, Bradley Manning is going to take the brunt of this punishment, when what he has revealed, much like Edward Snowden—you know, much of what Bradley Manning revealed was incredibly significant, had incredible international ramifications, was a tremendous public service on so many issues. You know, I’ve catalogued dozens of them, literally. So, you know, we really don’t want to lose sight of that.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Amy, can I add something?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Jeremy Scahill.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, first of all, we’re getting word that the sentencing actually is going to be tomorrow morning beginning at 9:30 a.m. So my understanding is that he’s not going to actually get his sentence today—

AMY GOODMAN: Right.

JEREMY SCAHILL: —but that it will happen tomorrow morning.

Just to pick up on something that Greg was saying, the corporate media coverage of this trial, which is arguably one of the most important cases in modern American history, has been utterly shameful. When you look at how CNN and MSNBC and Fox News covered the Jodi Arias trial, where all of cable news was turned into one big Nancy Grace Christmas, and then you look at the utter lack of coverage, only those independent journalists—Alexa O’Brien, Kevin Gosztola, Nathan Fuller, the WikiLeaks truck—those people were in the courtroom every day putting to shame corporate journalists who basically systematically whited out the coverage of the Bradley Manning hearing. And we know how news works in this country. When those in power want to gin up support for a war, they know who to call in the powerful media outlets. When they want to tamp down any public awareness of an issue, they know how to make it a non-story. And their colleagues in the media have been utterly complicit in this. You know, there has been more coverage of the indictment of that Real Housewives lady and her husband than there has of Bradley Manning. And this is the state of media in this country right now. And it is just devastating that we don’t have a media culture that says this trial should have been gavel-to-gavel coverage.

The reason it couldn’t be is because of the secrecy involved with it. And, Amy, you and I both were participants in a lawsuit trying to challenge the secrecy there. But the restrictions put on these reporters was a clear attempt by the government to stop any real coverage of Bradley Manning. You don’t get to hear his voice. You don’t—except for the leaked audio. You don’t get to see him. In some cases, you have armed MPs standing over the journalists who dare to cover that trial. And I think that it really is a commentary on how bankrupt our media culture is in this country, but also how far secrecy has gone. It’s one of our fundamental rights in our society, with a free press, to be able to cover proceedings like this. And by limiting the dissemination of information tools of journalists, it really is an attack on democratic values.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s also interesting that Thursday was the closing arguments for the prosecution, Friday for the defense. Actually, it was supposed to all be Thursday, but the prosecution took longer than expected. And it served a very important purpose for the state, because the majority of reporters showed up on Thursday and were only slated for that day, and their news organizations didn’t send them the next day. So you had the big pieces on Friday summarizing the prosecution’s case against Bradley Manning. But when it came to the defense of Bradley Manning, you didn’t have half the number of reporters reporting that story, I mean, just going right through to then.

I just want to read some more—let’s see, from—this is from Freedom of Press stenographer “Eight media, including me, inside court. 68 total spectators in court and overflow.” By the way, folks, today is National Whistleblowers Day. Alexa O’Brien tweets, “Manning faces 136 year MAX punishment on the crimes he was found GUILTY— sentencing begins tomorrow.” In fact, sentencing begins tomorrow—that is, Wednesday—July 31st at 9:30 Eastern Standard Time, and we will be here for that.

GREG MITCHELL: Yeah, Amy, I—if I could jump in here?

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Mitchell.

GREG MITCHELL: Yeah, just quickly, as I do have to get off. But the sentencing tomorrow, I’m not sure of the way that sentences are going to come down. The arguments are going to come down, and both sides have announced, I think, more than a dozen witnesses each. So I’m not sure that the sentences will actually happen tomorrow. But on the defense side, what’s very interesting about it is, finally, they are going to be allowed to present the full arguments they wanted to make in the actual trial about Manning’s motivation and about, you know, any sort of reasons not only for why he did it, but the fact that there has not been documented major, serious negative fallout from it around the world—you know, people killed or injured or attacked or anything—so that the defense is going to have a chance to do those two things, both motivation and the lack of strong harm created by. And that—they hope that that will mitigate the sentence.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim DeChristopher has just tweeted, “#Manning convicted of espionage. In other words, he was spying on the American government for the American public.” Jeremy Scahill?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I mean, that’s—you know, that really is an argument that I think a lot of his supporters have made. And, yeah, he’s had some very prominent supporters, who themselves are military folks or have been prosecutors at Guantánamo. Other whistleblowers, certainly, have stood forward, like Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack and others, to defend Bradley Manning and to say what he did, ultimately, was an act of patriotism.

And, you know, for so long—let’s remember, at the beginning, how Bradley Manning was characterized. He was—first of all, there was an attempt to humiliate him by taking on his sexual orientation. And there was an attempt to make him seem like he was some kind of a degenerate coward, you know, shivering in a corner and suicidal. They utterly tried to smear Bradley Manning. And when that was given—when that was revealed to be an utter lie was when the audio leaked from Bradley Manning’s testimony, where he explained, in a calm, collected, principled way, why he made a decision to do what he did. And what you heard there was someone who clearly asserted that they were motivating based on principle and that they were confident in the actions that they took.

And so, now, if we look at the—what will the legacy of Bradley Manning be, it ultimately depends on how you view the state and its powers right now. If you believe that soldiers deployed in a war zone, who are witnesses to war crimes or evidence of war crimes, if you believe that they should just be silent in the face of that, and that Big Brother knows best, then you should enthusiastically be cheerleading the prosecution and these convictions of Bradley Manning. But if you believe that those within government structures have an obligation and a duty to speak out when they see criminal activity, then you have to view Bradley Manning as a whistleblower. You have to view him as someone who was motivated by love of country and not wanting these kinds of war crimes to be committed in his name or in the names of other Americans. And everything I know about Bradley Manning indicates that he did this because he believed it was wrong and that it was a crime and that he had a moral obligation to speak out.

And the final thing I’ll say on this, Amy, is, right now people are making an argument, and they’re saying Edward Snowden should come back to the United States and face justice, or Edward Snowden should have gone up his chain of command if he—you know, if he really believed that he wanted to fight this battle in a proper way. Look what’s happened to Bradley Manning, who didn’t run away. Bradley Manning now very well may spend decades, if not his entire natural life, in prison. And he stood there, and he took the consequences for it. And I think that, you know, what this does is it sends a very clear message to potential whistleblowers that the full force of the law will be thrown down upon you, even if it can be proven that you did it for reasons of conscience and that you exposed actual crimes, which is what he did.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re urging people right now—you’re listening, by the way, to Jeremy Scahill. His latest book is Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, and has a film, documentary film, by the same title, also wrote about Blackwater, his global best-seller, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. We’re urging you to tweet your reactions with “#dnlive” as we bring you this reporting throughout the day. I also want to thank Greg Mitchell, who was on the line speaking to us, a Nation blogger, as well, who has written a number of books, along with Kevin Gosztola, together, on Bradley Manning, and has continually—he co-authored the book, Truth and Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning, and wrote The Age of WikiLeaks: From Collateral Murder to Cablegate (and Beyond).

But let me get to just a few more quick tweets and summarize for people. More and more people are tuning in to the live stream, and we are live-streaming at Livestream, as well as democracynow.org. Let me summarize that the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, Bradley Manning has been acquitted of. There are—more than 5,000 people right now are on the live stream.

And we’re going directly to Iceland to speak with the Icelandic parliamentarian, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, co-producer of the “Collateral Murder” video, which is very much at the center of this trial. Birgitta Jónsdóttir, I’m sure you’ve just heard. The colonel, Judge Lind, is speaking inside, handing down the verdict. Bradley Manning has been found guilty of enough charges where he could face more than 120 years in jail. But the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, he has been acquitted of. Your response in Reykjavik?

BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: I am just so relieved, because that charge was such a danger, not only to Bradley Manning, but to every journalist in our world. So, I am just—you know, a slight shock. And I’m relieved about that. I am, however, worried about all the other charges that he is facing, and the fact that he might be spending two years in prison for releasing the cables for Icelanders in relation to the Icesave case. So, at least I can say that there is—there are many Icelanders now here with me. We decided to join together to show Bradley Manning our support by watching and witness the verdict. And we owe him a great deal of gratitude, because he is going to—may be facing two years for helping us.

AMY GOODMAN: Birgitta Jónsdóttir, because this has not gotten a tremendous amount of coverage in the United States, this trial—it was mainly a small pool of independent journalists who have reported to the world about what’s been going on at Fort Meade in this court-martial—most people don’t even know what the “Collateral Murder” video is and why it was so significant here. Can you explain what this video was that was released, what it portrayed, and how you were involved with it?

BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: All right. So, when I saw this video, I felt obliged to help bring it out to the general public, because, for me, it was a way to lend a voice to the people that were experiencing war crimes in Iraq every day but had no way of delivering that message to the rest of us that have our name attached to this horrible war. And, you know, of course, I was a part of a large group of people in Iceland and in the world that tried to stop the war from happening. And I, maybe naively, thought that by releasing this video into the public domain, that we could stop the war. I helped with it in many ways. The co-production is just a title. So, I sort of was a jack of many hats. And the most gruesome task I had was to pull out all the stills for the journalists to be able to use it immediately—

AMY GOODMAN: I want to tell people—

BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: —when the video was released.

AMY GOODMAN: What we are showing right now, as you speak, Birgitta, is the “Collateral Murder” video. This was the video of the attack that took place July 12th, 2007. It was in New Baghdad, an area of Baghdad. It’s the video from an Army Apache helicopter. We’re actually showing the second part of it right now, but it begins where you hear the military inside—the soldiers in the plane—they are in the Apache helicopter. They are cursing. They’re laughing. They target this group of men below, and they blow them up. Two of them, by the way, worked for Reuters, Namir Noor-Eldeen as well as his driver, Saeed Chmagh. Namir Noor-Eldeen, the videographer, the journalist. Then a van pulled up—that’s what we see right now—to help the wounded, those who were not yet dead, like Saeed Chmagh, the driver, who was crawling away. And the—once again, the Apache helicopter unit called back—were not rogue—asked for permission to open fire, got it, and they blew up the van. In the van were two children, as well as their father, who had pulled up in this neighborhood to help the wounded. The children were critically wounded. How long was this video, and what did you put out to the world, Birgitta?

BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR: Well, the video was about—the video we released, we released in two bits. When we first watched it, it was very difficult to see exactly what was happening. And it wasn’t after there had been made a transcript and we had sent people off to New Baghdad to try to find the people we discovered were in the video, that we could put all the pieces together. So we decided to put in the names of the people, just so that people would understand, for example, that there were children in the van. It was not very easy to see. And so, then we released at the same time the unedited version. We didn’t cut it or anything like that. We just showed that bit. There is another—like, if you watch the entire video, you see another really gruesome scene where passersby that are walking past a building are just blown up randomly because they couldn’t walk fast enough for the helicopter, so—for the Apache helicopter gunman to wait. So, I really just encourage people to go to the YouTube account and have a look at all of this, and to think if it is justifiable that the only person that is being charged with the war crimes that you see in this video is Bradley Manning, the whistleblower, but not the soldiers nor their senior officers are being charged or even questioned. So what kind of justice is that? And I’m just wondering if any of your listeners might be able to figure out a way so that these people that are responsible for these hideous war crimes can be questioned, at least. And, of course, they should be brought to a trial, just like Bradley Manning.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to read what’s going on in the courtroom from Xeni Jardin, @xeni, who writes, “As verdict read, Manning sat attentively, eyes on judge. Focused, alert. Resigned. Faint smile flashed at not guilty on 'aiding enemy.'” “Notable: No outbursts in courtroom after verdict read, or after court recessed. Manning supporters left quietly. We 8 press escorted out.”

Kevin Gosztola is on the phone with us right now, who has been at this trial from the beginning. Kevin is with Firedoglake. Kevin, describe the whole scene, this big news right now that the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, Bradley Manning has been acquitted of.

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: It’s incredible. It’s certainly remarkable, and I did not expect it. Last night I was telling people I thought that there might have been a compelling piece of evidence that the prosecutors had managed to come up with that could hold [inaudible] over the judge. But that did not happen. And so, we’ve done a lot of speculating and theorizing of what it would mean if Bradley Manning was convicted of aiding the enemy and the implication—the possibility of what could happen to people who were leakers in the military and what it might mean for national security journalism. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange had to mince words, saying he thought it would be the end of national security journalism in the United States if Manning was convicted of aiding the enemy. But it is clear that the judge did not find enough evidence, or, she said, it was—you know, it was not beyond a reasonable doubt that he had aided the enemy, and she did not buy the prosecutor’s theory in the way it was being charged.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, explain what happens tomorrow, Kevin, 9:30, the beginning of the sentencing. Manning faces a possible punishment of 136 years, even having been acquitted, is that right, of aiding the enemy?

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: That’s correct. It’s still serious. We were talking about the aiding the enemy offense and how, if he was convicted, he would get potentially life in prison without parole. But these offenses, especially like these espionage offenses of which he was charged, those offenses come with 10-year maximums, and so it could all add up. And it’s going to be crucial that for the first time in this court-martial, when we’ve had witnesses come forward to testify, the defense is actually going to be calling more witnesses than the government. It hasn’t happened yet, but this is quite an important chapter in the court-martial of Bradley Manning. And Coombs, Manning’s defense attorney, is going to be very well prepared to show that Manning’s motives were altruistic and idealistic and that he did not mean to cause any harm or do any damage to the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Kevin, can you describe your ability inside the courtroom and in the media center, and explain the difference between two, how you get word out? For example, what happened today? What happened on Thursday and Friday? You had The New York Times reporting, you know, Charlie Savage talking about having the military behind him. He had a skirmish with one of the authorities there because of the kind of crackdown on the press.

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: This has been—apparently, the judge decided that, as we were told today, there have been shenanigans in the press pool, and they’re tired of it. And I have to tell you, being here, I’m not sure that it rises to the level of needing to be scolded like that. I don’t know what we’ve been doing to upset the judge, but we were told these shenanigans have been going on. And so, they let us—you know, remember the statement of Bradley Manning leaked; not allowed to have electronic devices, specifically cellphones, in there.

But also, I have to tell you, the feature of the media center is that the Internet doesn’t work at all. It just hasn’t been working. So, when the judge read the verdict, which—it came very quickly. It was about five minutes long. It was rapid. It was very hard to keep up with. And we were all looking off each other’s notes awfterward. And then we all rushed out of the media center.

And it’s just been—the conditions here with the press have become more hostile between the press and the military public affairs. And I don’t—I don’t blame the public affairs officers, who are—who their job is to have public relations. It’s the people who are designing the security procedures here, and then it’s apparently the judge, who is, I guess, instructing people to have zero tolerance anymore. And for the—I couldn’t believe it that as we were about to be given the verdict, we were told that if we got up to go use the bathroom during the oral argument or anything that was said in court, we might, like, lose our privilege to be here reporting, which is just astonishing. I’ve been here for a long time, and there’s been no senseless restriction like that.

And people want to use their own personal hot spots or wi-fi devices so that they can report to their audiences, get things out to the public and the world, and they’re told that that’s not allowed and that’s prohibited, even though they have no working wireless Internet for us to do our job.

AMY GOODMAN: I just want to summarize again, for people who are just tuning in. We are live-streaming at democracynow.org. You’re listening to Kevin Gosztola, who’s speaking from right outside the courtroom, just came out. The news we have so far is that Bradley Manning has been acquitted of aiding the enemy. He’s been found guilty on five espionage charges. He’s been found guilty on five theft charges. And, Kevin, we’d like to explain, since you’ve been there from the beginning, what are these five espionage charges? What are these five theft charges?

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: Yes. So, he was found to have committed espionage, these violations, by releasing the Iraq War Logs, you remember, these military incident reports. And I think the major revelation from this was the FRAGO 242 order, which essentially was the decision by U.S. forces to look the other way. Detainees were being handed over to Iraqi federal police to potentially be tortured and abused.

We’ve got him found guilty of releasing the Afghan War Logs. And this release, of course—there was a Task Force 373 assassination squad, a kill squad that was in the Afghanistan—it was going around doing night raids. That was one of the major revelations from that.

You have him convicted of violating the Espionage Act by releasing Farah records. Well, Farah is involving this Garani air strike, this really horrendous, horrific atrocity that occurred, where over a hundred civilians were massacred. It was a major civilian casualty incident for the military, and Manning released a record on that. But he was found not guilty on the video, the Garani video. And I think the little hiccup in the prosecutor’s case with that is that they could not prove a video had ever been transmitted to WikiLeaks and that Manning had ever done that.

And then we have lesser included offenses, which is going back to his plea on February 28. But those—that about covers the Espionage Act offenses.

Oh, there’s one more with a “Red Cell” memo that was another government document. There is limited information that we know about why prosecutors were arguing—how they were arguing that he was guilty of releasing this and violating the Espionage Act, because that was a classified evidence. That was some of the classified evidence that we weren’t allowed access to seeing during the trial.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Kevin Gosztola. He is at Fort Meade, Maryland. And, you know, just once again, the fact, or the irony—or, it’s probably because—here you are at the headquarters of the national security state, the National Security Agency, the NSA, an agency—top-secret agency several times larger than the CIA. That’s where this court-martial of Bradley Manning is taking place. It’s where the military is, where the intelligence agency is. And yet, you had so much difficulty—or perhaps it’s why they had such ease in cracking down on your ability to report out of this trial. And only when many more reporters came, which was often not the case—Kevin Gosztola, Alexa O’Brien, just a handful of reporters often, the few that were in the courtroom—would the rules change—extremely arbitrary, very difficult to even get out rulings by the judge, reading very quickly, and you all had to take down notes, but then you couldn’t report it out at that moment. Kevin, as you reflect right now, tomorrow, 9:30, the sentencing phase begins. Now, that could go on, what, for weeks? I mean, these are the arguments between the defense and the prosecution, will be presented. Will it just be a day? Do you know? And then, of course, it isn’t over, because it moves on then to an appeal. Is that right?

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: Well, we’re looking at two to three weeks, at least, for sentencing, because there are 21 witnesses on each side. And it’s going to be a lot harder, a lot more contentious, than the main portion of this trial, where we just got the verdict, because during the trial what people may not realize is there were a lot of what you would call stipulations evidence. That means [inaudible] come to testify, the prosecutors and defense were able to sit down and say, “Instead of calling this witness, we agree that this person would testify to this evidence in the courtroom or would give this testimony. It’s not necessary to bring them into the courtroom to testify, so we’re just going to hammer out an agreement on what he would have said.” That’s a stipulation. They’re not going to do that during the sentencing, because I guarantee you that the prosecutors [inaudible] to put him in jail for a maximum amount of time, and I’m sure they won’t hesitate to give him anywhere close to a hundred years in prison, if possible, and also the defense isn’t going to hesitate to have all of their witnesses. As I told you, they have more witnesses ready to go in the sentencing phase than they do—or have had for the entire duration of the trial. Any time that they’ve had to call witnesses, that they’re—they’re calling quite a few over, 20 people who are going to talk about the nature of the information that Manning released, and try to ensure that his sentence is as low as it possibly could be.

So, as I sit here and I reflect upon what just happened in the last half hour, as I’m trying to get a handle on what I just witnessed in the courtroom and saw the judge do, after she chided and scolded any Manning supporter who would dare to have any outbursts in her courtroom, [inaudible] flabbergasted and upset and frustrated that the judge hasn’t given us a piece of paper that we could actually look at so we could see clearly what Manning was convicted of and what he was not convicted of. And the fact that it’s not clearly spelled out and I have to go back and we in the press have to look off of each other’s notes to make sure that we heard the judge correctly, that’s just characteristic of this court-martial the whole entire time. And I was one of the plaintiffs in the Center for Constitutional Rights lawsuit, and we forced transparency in this court-martial to an unprecedented level in military justice history. And I’m very proud about doing that, but we’re still not at the level yet. I mean, we have a transcriber. We have a stenographer that was in there with the Freedom of the Press Foundation, trying to get that today. I’m curious how much she was actually able to keep up with. But I also—

AMY GOODMAN: And she is?

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: She’s—I don’t know her name, but she’s the one who the Freedom of the Press Foundation hired. They crowd-funded transcripts. The military should be providing transcripts. People should understand that the military refused to produce transcripts for the press to use at the end of each day. So, together, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which has as its board of directors individuals such as, you know, actor John Cusack, Glenn Greenwald, Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Xeni Jardin, you know, and these people, together, they crowd-funded and raised money to get enough funds so that—it’s over $100,000 it has cost, over $100,000. So the world funded transparency in the Bradley Manning trial, so people can have some kind of record to go off of with reporting, and the military refused to provide transcripts.

So, you know, at this stage, I’m trying to wrap my head around what I just heard, and I think a lot of other people are trying to wrap their heads around what they just heard. And it will be an hour or two hours from now before we really get it. But what I do know, unequivocally, and can say with very—with great happiness, is that Manning is not convicted of aiding the enemy. And that is a very satisfactory outcome of this. And I’m very happy that Manning is not going to go into his jail cell tonight having been convicted of a charge that is just shy of treason.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you see his reaction as the judge was reading the acquittal?

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: Yeah, I really wish I could have looked up to see how he was reacting to all of this, but the judge—rapid fire, one, one, boom, boom, boom, bam—kept rattling this information off, and dates as she said the offense happened. There was disagreement between the charges and what she determined. She found actually different dates that Manning had disclosed the information than what was in the charge sheet, which is also important. It’s a small, little, leavy detail, but it’s also something that the defense has been contesting, that the prosecutors were making up a timeline of events to argue that he had engaged in some kind of conspiracy on behalf of WikiLeaks. So she changed some of the dates. I mean, it was really hard to keep up. And so, unfortunately, I’m upset. I wasn’t able to quite look at Bradley Manning in the way that Xeni, who managed to—I heard you talking about one of her tweets and some of what was going on with him. I imagine he was just taking this in as calmly as he could, and has throughout the whole court-martial. And again, there weren’t any outbursts I know of, and everything just kind of came to a wrap.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Kevin Gosztola, the latest news out of Fort Meade in the court-martial of Bradley Manning. He has been acquitted of aiding the enemy but found guilty on a number of other charges, a number of them related to espionage. The sentencing portion of the trial will begin tomorrow morning at 9:30 Eastern time. Then, both prosecution and defense will present arguments—will present arguments and will be able to bring in new evidence.

Medea Benjamin now joins us from just outside Fort Meade, well-known activist, co-founder of CodePink, as she—we have live video also of outside the courtroom right now.

Hi, Medea. Can you talk about the verdict today?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Yes. I think we’re all trying to wrap our heads around how we’re feeling, because certainly there is a sense of relief about the aiding the enemy issue, although that was a ridiculous charge to begin with, you know, when they set the charges so high, and then have us be relieved because they have dropped the worst one. It’s a part of the strategy of the government, I think. But certainly we’re feeling like on pins and needles about what [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: Medea, can you walk the other way, and then we can see you? You just walked out of the shot. Stand right in front of that sign.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Oh, OK.

AMY GOODMAN: Because, actually, this is a feed that’s coming directly from Fort Meade, and we were watching you until you walked out of the shot.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Oh, sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: So go back and stand in front of that green sign, and we can see you fine. We know it’s you—

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —because you’re wearing that pink shirt. But go stand in front of the sign. We no longer see you, unless you go right to between the green sign and the big road sign that says “wrong way.” We’re talking—

MEDEA BENJAMIN: That’s where I am right now, “wrong way.”

AMY GOODMAN: Ah, there you are. We now see you. Go ahead. Keep talking. That’s Medea Benjamin in the pink T-shirt and the white pants. Continue to say what you—how you are responding to this verdict of acquittal on aiding the enemy, but conviction on a number of charges that could lead up to over a hundred years in jail. Sentencing phase is tomorrow. Continue, Medea.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Yes. According to his lawyer, who came out, they—he says that he could be facing 136 years with these charges, so that it’s very hard for us to be happy today when we know that there’s such a heavy weight still on Bradley Manning’s shoulders. And we have to wait now for weeks until the sentencing part. And to just think that Bradley is facing this incredible sentence for revealing war crimes, when the war criminals are free, is a very sad state for the United States, and to also recognize that—I wonder how Julian Assange is feeling in the Ecuadorean embassy. I wonder how Edward Snowden is feeling in the transit station of the Moscow airport. And this sends a chill down the spines of anybody who has information to expose wrongdoing of the government, or journalists who want to expose wrongdoing. So, while we are relieved that he hasn’t been found guilty of the worst charge, it’s still a sad day for democracy in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Medea, if you could stay standing there, I just want to read you—the Center for Constitutional Rights has put out a statement on the verdict in the trial of Bradley Manning. They say, “While the 'aiding the enemy' charges (on which Manning was rightly acquitted) received the most attention from the mainstream media, the Espionage Act itself is a discredited relic of the WWI era, created as a tool to suppress political dissent and antiwar activism, and it is outrageous that the government chose to invoke it in the first place against Manning. Government employees who blow the whistle on war crimes, other abuses and government incompetence should be protected under the First Amendment.

“We now live in a country where someone who exposes war crimes can be sentenced to life even if not found guilty of aiding the enemy, while those responsible for the war crimes remain free. If the government equates being a whistleblower with espionage or aiding the enemy, what is the future of journalism in this country? What is the future of the First Amendment?” asked the Center for Constitutional Rights.”

They go on: “Manning’s treatment, prosecution, and sentencing have one purpose: to silence potential whistleblowers and the media as well. One of the main targets has been our clients, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, for publishing the leaks. Given the U.S. government’s treatment of Manning, Assange should be granted asylum in his home country of Australia and given the protections all journalists and publishers deserve.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights writes, “We stand in solidarity with Bradley Manning and call for the government to take heed and end its assault on the First Amendment.” Again, that’s the statement that was just released by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

We are also now getting word from the family of Bradley Manning, who has issued a statement to The Guardian giving their reaction to today’s verdict. The statement is written by Bradley Manning’s U.S.-based aunt, who has asked to remain anonymous, speaking on behalf of the soldier’s family. She said, “While we are obviously disappointed in today’s verdicts, we are happy that Judge Lind agreed with us that Brad never intended to help America’s enemies in any way. Brad loves his country and was proud to wear its uniform.

“We want to express our deep thanks to David Coombs, who has dedicated three years of his life to serving as lead counsel in Brad’s case. We also want to thank Brad’s Army defense team, Major Thomas Hurley and Captain Joshua Tooman, for their tireless efforts on Brad’s behalf, and Brad’s first defense counsel, Captain Paul Bouchard, who was so helpful to all of us in those early confusing days and first suggested David Coombs as Brad’s counsel. Most of all, we would like to thank the thousands of people who rallied to Brad’s cause, providing financial and emotional support throughout this long and difficult time, especially Jeff Paterson and Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network. Their support has allowed a young Army private to defend himself against the full might of not only the US Army but also the US Government.”

Thos are the words of the statement issued by Bradley Manning’s family. Bradley Manning has just been read the charges and the convictions and acquittals. Again, on the most serious charge, Bradley Manning has been acquitted of aiding the enemy. But he has been found guilty of several espionage-related charges, as well as theft charges, when it comes to getting out information. And we’re getting response from outside Fort Meade now and from other places, as well. Medea Benjamin, on the line with us, has been standing right at the gate of Fort Meade. We’re now joined by Nathan Fuller of the Bradley Manning Support Network.

Nathan, can you respond to the verdict today in the court-martial of Bradley Manning?

NATHAN FULLER: Sure. I am relieved for Bradley and this country and journalism that he was not convicted of aiding the enemy, but I am totally outraged that he was convicted of espionage. Bradley chose documents that he knew would inform the American public, not bring harm to the U.S. He wanted to expose abuses, and yet he’s being equated as—with traitors and spies, and that’s a real disgrace.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the Bradley Manning Support Network, what you’ve been doing, Nathan—the family of Bradley Manning has just issued a statement, and in it has thanked the Bradley Manning Support Network—the kind of activism that has gone on around his case, and who is involved?

NATHAN FULLER: Sure. We’ve been involved since its very inception, since Bradley’s arrest. We’ve raised more than a million dollars for Bradley’s legal defense and to keep the support network going. We try to raise awareness not only around the country, but around the world. This is a case of international interest. We have dozens and dozens of solidarity events any time we hold a rally, and we send out materials for that. We want to keep Bradley in the—in the public interest, because the mainstream media is largely blocked out from his trial. We have no audio or video recording, and so it’s very difficult for a lot of these bigger outlets to cover it.

AMY GOODMAN: I also want to say that, as we do this live stream at democracynow.org, we’re showing the illustrations of Clark Stoeckley. Now, it was a fascinating scene to see this WikiLeaks truck drive up every day and this illustrator get out onto the base right where you’re at, the National Security Agency. That’s where the trial has taken place. And he did these remarkable illustrations. There was also an AP illustrator there, as well as another illustrator. And we’re showing some of those illustrations right now. Now, the latest news with Clark Stoeckley is that he was banned from the base during the closing arguments in the case. And, Nathan Fuller, maybe you can explain what happened.

NATHAN FULLER: Yeah, that was kind of a side story, but Clark was tweeting, and the—I didn’t see the tweets themselves, but somebody found them threatening or dangerous to the decorum of the court, and so he was barred from the trial. Clark sent a letter of apology to the defense, and that was forwarded on to Judge Lind, and that was then forwarded to the base commander. But the base commander actually banned him from the Fort Meade itself. So, he did have to report and try to draw just based on what he had so far.

AMY GOODMAN: Actually, we have Clark Stoeckley on the phone right now. Again, he is the independent illustrator who brought us illustrations from inside the courtroom, particularly important because it was so difficult to get an image from inside the courtroom. Clark, can you respond to the verdict right now, and also tell us what happened, why you couldn’t be on the base with your WikiLeaks truck, and even explain what that is?

CLARK STOECKLEY: So, you know, Judge Lind had a lot to work with. She had 154 years, as well as the aiding the enemy charge, which was life in prison. So, on a good note, we are very happy to find out that the—that he was found not guilty for aiding the enemy. But he is still facing 136 years maximum punishment for the other charges. And so, I believe that the sentencing portion of this trial is really going to be important. The defense, for the first time, has more witnesses than the prosecution. As you may remember, in the Article 32, all of the defense witnesses, except for those that crossed over with the prosecution’s, were denied. And so, you know, we’re going to see a, you know, really delving into the details of these charges in the sentencing portion. But I believe that there’s no doubt that this will be appealed to at least one level, if not more. And so, this trial, this case is going to continue for some time.

Regarding my ban from Fort Meade base, last Thursday night I tweeted out what I believed to be a link to a hotel where the prosecution was staying. On Friday afternoon around lunchtime, several MPs pulled me out of the courtroom and told me that I had posted threatening messages on Twitter. And then they confirmed that it was actually the hotel where the prosecution was staying. This information came to me through hearsay. I had never confirmed this information. I had never seen the prosecutors outside the courtroom. But what I was led to believe was that Ashden Fein, the lead prosecutor, who is in charge of the largest leak case regarding information assurance, was the originator of the leak to the public about the whereabouts of where he was staying and the rest of the prosecution team. I have submitted a letter to Judge Lind, and she submitted that letter to the base commander, who decided that I should not have a second chance and that I should be barred from the base for at least the continuation of the trial, if not for life.

And, you know, I feel that this is somewhat—you know, parallels the trial at hand, because WikiLeaks published information, but instead of focusing on the information that is now available to the public, they’re going after me for releasing it. And, you know, I’m very disappointed, because I’ve been at this trial since the very first day, December 16, 2011, and I’ve been drawing over 300 drawings of the trial. [inaudible] from the—I was in the jury box on Friday, and now I am not able to cover the sentencing witnesses, and I wasn’t there today for the verdict. And I’m very sad because of that.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what your WikiLeaks truck is, what you’ve been driving onto this base. I mean, down here in New York, we—at Occupy Wall Street, it was also a very familiar vehicle. But explain what it is you’re driving, Clark.

CLARK STOECKLEY: So, two-and-a-half years ago, I decided to buy a box truck from U-Haul. And at the time, I was homeless, so I was living in it. And I decided to make this truck my art, and so I emblazoned the truck with the WikiLeaks logo and a big “top-secret.” And then, on the back, I had a big, strong message that said, “Release Bradley Manning.” And that was my one demand when I came to Occupy Wall Street, even though I was concerned about many issues. That was the one that was most near and dear to me. And I’ve driven it around the Northeast, from Quantico, Virginia, to Boston, Massachusetts, and park it in front of government buildings and corporations, taking photographs. And for the past two months, as a credentialed journalist, I’ve been able to bring the truck onto the base and park it at the media operations center, where it’s gotten the attention of both journalists as well as military personnel and staff. And so, you know, what that truck really does is brings a little bit of humor to a very, very serious topic. And then, kind of the hook—you know, the hook is, it gets you to the point that we need to release Bradley Manning. And so, you know—

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Clark, I want to thank you very much for being with us, WikiLeaks truck driver and also the courtroom illustrator, one of just a very few independent illustrator in the Bradley Manning trial. And we’ve been showing some of those illustrations on this live stream at democracynow.org.

I also want to read the statement right now of Amnesty International. “Despite the acquittal of Private Bradley Manning of the most serious 'aiding the enemy' charge against him, today’s verdict reveals the US government’s misplaced priorities on national security by finding him guilty of a range of other charges.” Again, this is Amnesty International.

And for those of you who are just tuning in, the news has come down, came down much more quickly than we thought, of the convictions and acquittals of Bradley Manning. He was acquitted of the most serious charge, that was aiding the enemy, for which he could have faced life or even death—though the prosecution didn’t ask for death in this case, it was up to the discretion of the judge. But then there are the espionage-related charges that he was found guilty of, as well as the theft charges that he was found guilty of, releasing information.

And we’re going to talk right now with Michael Ratner, Michael Ratner who is the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and, particularly significant right now, the attorney for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, both of which was raised repeatedly during this trial. He has been attending throughout the court-martial at Fort Meade, Maryland, of Bradley Manning, and he’s joining us now in New York in the studio.

So we’ve just gotten word that Bradley Manning has been acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, but the number of charges that he was found guilty of could put him in jail for some 130 years. The sentencing portion of this court-martial will begin tomorrow morning at 9:30 Eastern time. Michael, what’s your response?

MICHAEL RATNER: I mean, Amy, he was charged with 22 different counts, from aiding the enemy to espionage to theft, essentially found guilty of 20 of those counts. So, in that sense, it’s a horrible, horrible thing that’s happened to him. I mean, to have him facing 130 years in jail for telling the American people what our government should have been telling us about torture centers in Iraq, about 20,000 extra civilians killed in Iraq, I find outrageous. He shouldn’t be put on trial. He’s a whistleblower. The people who should be put on trial are the people who actually did those human rights violations.

It is good, of course, that he was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, because that was the charge in which the government, which has overreached in this entire case, but was overreaching beyond belief, because that would have made anybody who published anything that al-Qaeda or any, quote, “enemy,” whoever they are, would read guilty of aiding the enemy, whether the whistleblower or the publisher. So we’re glad to be rid of that, but he should—Bradley Manning should have never been charged at all, in my view. Certainly, they should not have made whistleblowing into espionage. Five counts of espionage he was convicted on, each one carrying 10 years.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, on aiding the enemy, we keep referring to it and saying he was acquitted of it, but what does it actually mean? Why was he even being tried under this charge?

MICHAEL RATNER: You know, I can’t figure out what the government was trying to do. What it is, is if I’m, let’s say, a whistleblower, and I find some information about human rights violations or war crimes, and I pass them on to whether it’s Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! or The New York Times or WikiLeaks, which it was in this case, the government claims that by my passing it on to anyone that’s really reading the worldwide Internet—and that’s everybody, because that’s why the government said it’s worldwide—that anybody reading that, including our enemies, will then read it, and I’m going to be accused, as the whistleblower, of indirectly aiding the enemy through the means of WikiLeaks or Democracy Now! So that’s completely unheard of in my life as a lawyer who worked on these cases all of the time. I’ve never heard a case where you could simply put—give something to a publisher and then be accused of aiding the enemy. It normally was a crime that took intent. You had to actually intend to aid the enemy. The judge had ruled that out. In that sense, her ruling saying that you didn’t require intent is a bad ruling.

Her ruling, obviously, acquitting Bradley Manning of aiding the enemy is very important—very important for Bradley Manning, because it carried, as you said, a life sentence, if not the death penalty; very important obviously for future whistleblowing and journalists, who will hopefully not be charged with aiding the enemy; very important for all of us out there, from the news media like Democracy Now!, from WikiLeaks and others, who have said this charge is completely outrageous. You can’t do it.” But I just want to emphasize, it’s incredibly good that he was acquitted of that, but it’s incredibly bad that he was charged and convicted of 20 charges out of 22, carrying 133 years in jail.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Michael Ratner. He is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The ACLU has just put out a statement. Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, said, quote, “While we’re relieved that Mr. Manning was acquitted of the most dangerous charge, the ACLU has long held the view that leaks to the press in the public interest should not be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Since Manning already pleaded guilty to charges of leaking information—which carry significant punishment—it seems clear that the government was seeking to intimidate anyone who might consider revealing valuable information in the future.” Those are the words of the American Civil Liberties Union.

And Brad Manning’s family, written by his U.S.-based aunt, responded, as well. In summary, a portion, “While we’re obviously disappointed in today’s verdicts, we’re happy that Judge Lind agreed with us that Brad never intended to help America’s enemies in any way. Brad loves his country and was proud to wear its uniform.”

MICHAEL RATNER: I mean, the horrible part of this is really what they’ve said, that he’s facing this huge sentence for actually doing something and giving us information that we all should know.

AMY GOODMAN: So, again, he has been acquitted of aiding the enemy, but if you add up the charges and the years that he could face for the charges he was convicted of, he faces 136 years in prison.

MICHAEL RATNER: That’s correct, 136 years for a 25-year-old man who gave us incredibly important information.

AMY GOODMAN: What was some of that information, Michael?

MICHAEL RATNER: No, there was a major story that you actually carried part of on the Iraq torture centers in Iraq that were set up by the United States—General Petraeus knew about it—in which literally hundreds of people were taken to these torture centers every month, and they were tortured—set up by the United States. Has anybody ever been prosecuted for that? No. The story published by WikiLeaks that 20,000 more civilian deaths happened in Iraq than were known at the time—and that story was very important, because as a result of that story, the Iraq government refused to sign a status of forces agreement with the United States guaranteeing immunity to U.S. soldiers, because they said, “You’re not investigating your own soldiers. You’re not disciplining them. We’re not going to give them immunity for going out here and killing Iraqis.” That’s one of the big issues that forced—that forced U.S. soldiers out of Iraq. And, of course, the video you’ve shown that is just heartbreaking every time we’ve seen it, the “Collateral Murder” video, the murder of the two Reuters journalists by an Apache helicopter and the incredible bloodlust, as Bradley Manning described it, as those journalists were killed, as the people wanting to rescue or at least try and save the wounded on the ground were shot at, children injured, their parents killed.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re actually showing the video right now of the second part of that attack, first the attack on the journalists and the men who were taking them around this area, and then this van pulls up, a man with his children. He was taking them to school, stops to pick up the wounded. And they pick up the wounded, and then you see the Apache helicopter—this is the video from the Apache helicopter—opening fire on that van with wounded inside, the children critically wounded, the father killed. This is the video that WikiLeaks put out that they called “Collateral Murder.”

MICHAEL RATNER: That’s just some of it, and it’s heartbreaking. You think about this soldier who was 21 or 22 when he—22 when he probably saw that video. And he said to himself, “This has to get out.” They made a FOIA request. It’s not even a classified video. Why aren’t they putting it out?

AMY GOODMAN: And Reuters had actually asked for that information, for their employees—

MICHAEL RATNER: Asked for it.

AMY GOODMAN: —to see what happened to them in the last moments of their life, and weren’t able to get it. And Bradley Manning saw this and knew that.

MICHAEL RATNER: Saw that, saw that they made a FOIA request, Freedom of Information Act request, had been essentially told, “We can’t find any video here.” It was well known that it was there. There’s nothing classified in that video. It wasn’t even classified. Now I ask you—that’s something that the American people and the people of the world ought to know. And that’s the way you can begin to get some change in how our government fights its wars. But you hide that stuff; you keep it secret. I mean, if you look at Bradley Manning in another way, this is a person who basically told us about a secret government and secret wars and secret diplomacy that this country is running. And in some way, you can look at Bradley Manning as opening the door, along with WikiLeaks, to then later the revelations of Edward Snowden. I mean, what you can say is we’re really seeing a period where young activist people, young people who have a conscience and see these atrocities happening say, “This has got to stop. The American people have to start debating what our government is doing in secret.” These people are not the people who ought to be prosecuted. The people committing the war crimes ought to be prosecuted.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go on with this broadcast for just another, oh, 10 minutes or so. We’ll end at 2:30 Eastern Standard Time. But, Michael, you are the attorney for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. It was raised numerous times throughout this trial. Why? And what is the significance now that you’ve heard the verdicts in the case of Bradley Manning? Again, he was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, for which he could have faced life or even death, but the combination of charges of which he was convicted of espionage and theft-related charges could land him in jail for more than a hundred years, 136 max. What does this mean for Julian Assange, now holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy, where he was granted political asylum, but he can’t get out to go to Ecuador because the British authorities say they’ll arrest him if he does?

MICHAEL RATNER: Well, you know, this trial was a—yes, it was about Bradley Manning. It was about—and, obviously, we’re extremely disturbed over what’s happening to Bradley Manning. But it was also, when I went to those trials and heard Julian’s name dozens of times, WikiLeaks’ name dozens of times, essentially being accused of being in a conspiracy with Bradley Manning. What they said at the trial is Bradley Manning worked for Julian Assange, or he worked for WikiLeaks, he used their—the list of their—their wanted list to get the documents he did, he was taking direction from WikiLeaks—trying to put WikiLeaks and conspiracy with Bradley Manning. That’s still pretty clearly the government’s goal. It was the government’s goal two days ago, when I heard the summation. It remains the government’s goal today. It’s very likely there’s an indictment against Julian Assange for what the government claims is a conspiracy.

And when you look at that in the context of what the U.S. is doing to journalists, you understand that this is something extremely serious. You look at what happened to James Rosen, the Fox News analyst or Fox News reporter, whose records were subpoenaed because he was in touch with a whistleblower. And what they did is they subpoenaed James Rosen’s records. And what did the affidavit subpoenaing him say? It said he was a co-conspirator, or basically a conspirator in violating the espionage laws. This is a reporter. Likewise, James Risen, The New York Times reporter—

AMY GOODMAN: James Risen of The New York Times.

MICHAEL RATNER: Risen, New York Times, was working on a story from a whistleblower about Iran and its—and what’s going on with its nuclear program. What do they do when he tries to not testify at a trial against the whistleblower? The government appeals it and said—and gets a decision saying he has to testify who his source is. But worse than that, in the decision that’s written, it said this crime, this espionage crime by Sterling, who was the whistleblower, could not have been committed without James Risen. They’re saying, again, Risen co-conspirator, Rosen co-conspirator, WikiLeaks co-conspirator. What they’re doing is they’re trying to take journalists and put them into the—into their web, where they—it looks, for them, more legitimate to go after the journalists if they can call them co-conspirators. It’s not legitimate to go after the whistleblowers. It’s not legitimate to go after the journalists.

And what this verdict means, of course, five counts of espionage—and I want to say the espionage statute applies to journalists. It applies to anyone, actually. It applies to you or me holding WikiLeaks—holding Bradley Manning documents, WikiLeaks documents. It’s that broad of a statute. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all, while it’s never been used against journalists directly, and there seems to be some hesitation for doing it, they certainly want to try and push journalists into the—into the same place as the sources and then be able to prosecute them under the espionage statute.

AMY GOODMAN: Judge Lind, Judge Denise Lind, the colonel who is the judge and jury, quite literally—first of all, explain why Bradley Manning felt it was better to have just a judge try—just a judge both try and decide this case than a jury. She is now moving on from her position.

MICHAEL RATNER: The lawyer for Bradley Manning, David Coombs, has never explained why he chose a judge rather than a jury. What we can suppose are, one, juries are not picked by lottery or from a pool. Juries are picked by the convening authority, which is the general in charge of that military tribunal, who actually picks who the jurors are going to be. So you’re not getting a jury that’s made up, by chance, of a random population. You’re getting one that the convening authority, who is actually the person who presses the charges against Bradley Manning, picks. So you’re—it’s not a guarantee of fairness.

Secondly, I think there was some concern expressed by somebody that was on Democracy Now! last week, saying perhaps the fact that he was—that he was—that he had issues around gender, and those were coming out, that that might have made a jury hostile to him. I think it’s more likely the first reason, that it’s essentially a hand-picked jury by the convening authority.

The judge, interestingly enough, has been promised or given an appointment to the next highest military court, the appeals court, which I find extraordinary, that in the middle of a trial of the most important whistleblower in United States history, that the judge who’s presiding at it be given a higher position. And, of course, this has—it brings us right back to Daniel Ellsberg. During Daniel Ellsberg’s trial for espionage, which eventually just collapsed under all the government chicanery, hypocrisy, etc., the trial judge in that case was actually offered to be the head of the FBI. Haldeman, from Nixon’s office, went out and sat on a park bench with him, overlooking the Pacific, and said, while the trial is going on, “Hey, Judge, how would you like to be head of the FBI?” I mean, you talk about influencing a judge by the executive. You’re seeing it both in the Ellsberg case, and now you see the other crucial, major whistleblower, the same thing happening, the judge being offered a higher position. I find it pretty remarkable that they would mess around and make it look like that judge may not have a complete fairness.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, I think we can be pretty sure that after the sentencing phase of the trial, that could go on for weeks, it will go right to the appeals court.

MICHAEL RATNER: Yes, that’s the other thing. It goes to the same appeals court where she’ll be sitting. Now, she won’t actually sit on the case. There’s probably a dozen judges or nine judges, and they pick three. But if you’re sitting there with your fellow judges and you’re having lunch with them every day out there, are they going to say, “Hey, Judge, you know, we’re about to reverse your decision. We’re about to tell you you really did bad.” You know, there’s a human dynamic here that’s at play on the same level, and it’s unlikely—it makes it less likely that we’ll get a reversal out of that court.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Michael, I want to thank you for being with us. Michael Ratner, attorney for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, former head of the Center for Constitutional Rights. And I wanted to summarize again what we know at this point, as we wrap up this global exclusive broadcast. I want to quote Ed Pilkington of The Guardian, who writes about Colonel Denise Lind. “’Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,’ she repeated over and over, as the reality of a prolonged prison sentence for Manning—on top of the three years he has already spent in detention—dawned.

“The one ray of light in an otherwise bleak outcome for the Army private was that he was found not guilty of the single most serious charge against him—that he knowingly 'aided the enemy', in practice al-Qaida, by disclosing information to the WikiLeaks website that in turn made it accessible to all users including enemy groups.

“Lind’s decision to avoid setting a precedent by applying the swingeing 'aiding the enemy' charge to an official leaker will invoke a sigh of relief from news organisations and civil liberties groups who had feared a guilty verdict would send a chill across public interest journalism.”

Pilkington also writes, “Lind also found Manning not guilty of having leaked an encrypted copy of a video of a US air strike in the Farah province of Afghanistan in which many civilians died. Manning’s defence team had argued vociferously that he was not the source of this video, though the soldier did admit to later disclosure of an unencrypted version of the video and related documents.

“The judge also accepted Manning’s version of several of the key dates in the WikiLeaks disclosures, and took off some of the edge from other less serious charges. But the overriding toughness of the verdict remains: the soldier was found guilty in their entirety of 17 out of the 22 counts against him, and of an amended version of four more.”

That is the summary we have from The Guardian newspaper. And we’re going to end with the activism that is taking place around the world. The word—in the words of David Coombs, the defense attorney for Bradley Manning, David Coombs said, “Today is a good day, but Bradley is by no means out of the fire,” David Coombs said. He went on: “We won the battle, now we need to go win the war,” David Coombs said, as we will now move into the sentencing phase of this trial.

So, the activism, where we’ll end. A campaign called “I Am Bradley Manning” recently produced this video. Oh, it features Alice Walker, the great writer; Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower; Russell Brand; the director Oliver Stone; the musician Roger Waters; and many others. It begins with Maggie Gyllenhaal, the actress.

MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: In the words of Bradley Manning, “Yes, Your Honor, I wrote this statement in confinement.”

ROGER WATERS: “I was deployed to Baghdad. I want people to see the truth.”

MOLLY CRABAPPLE: Manning was the one who signed up to be a soldier. He volunteered to be in Iraq.

OLIVER STONE: He was deeply disturbed by what he was seeing as an intelligence analyst in Iraq—the shooting of the Reuters reporters, civilians, by helicopter.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: Fire!

U.S. SOLDIER 2: Clear.

U.S. SOLDIER 1: Oh, yeah, look at all those dead bastards.

OLIVER STONE: He leaked documents during a war, and they were enormously helpful for people on the outside to understand what the government was thinking about on the inside.

ROGER WATERS: If you join the armed forces, are you accepting, on that day when you sign the paper and you join up, that you will turn a blind eye to any war crime that you witness?

LT. DAN CHOI: Particularly in the uniform of our country, if you don’t have truth, then we have to ask ourselves, “Why do we risk anything? And what are we fighting for, to begin with?”

ANGELA DAVIS: He is asking us to look at the consequences of war, the damage that war produces.

BISHOP GEORGE PACKARD: There is a protocol for torture.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: The Army reports listed some 60,000 civilians dead.

CHRIS HEDGES: Hillary Clinton was ordering State Department employees to spy on diplomats.

PHIL DONAHUE: He’s a man who’s done things that the mainstream media should have done a long time ago.

ALLAN NAIRN: He ignited this chain of social action.

MICHAEL PREMO: We saw very clearly the discrepancies between what we were being told and what was actually happening.

MATT TAIBBI: He’s a whistleblower, and the whole concept of whistleblower laws and whistleblower protections are you cannot get into trouble for reporting about illegal or improper activity.

MOBY: It’s enshrined in our Constitution that an individual has the right to release information and disseminate information that makes the powers that be uncomfortable.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: It’s an absurd charge to be charging him with giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

CHRIS HEDGES: The attempt is to shut down any free flow of information.

HAKIM GREENE: They want to shut him up, lock him up.

RUSSELL BRAND:* To take a risk and to take a stand, knowing that in all likelihood you will be persecuted, penalized, demonized and punished for it, that’s incredibly bold.

MICHAEL RATNER: How are you going to act on your conscience, when you know if you do so that you could be subject to the death penalty for aiding the enemy, for simply being a whistleblower of criminality?

OLIVER STONE: Could possibly lead to lifetime imprisonment or even death.

MICHAEL RATNER: I heard his testimony on the day he talked about the torture. It was the most moving day I’ve ever spent in a courtroom, and I’ve spent 40 years listening to people talk about how they were tortured. When he first got arrested, he was put into a wire cage in a tent.

LT. DAN CHOI: And was stripped naked and paraded around.

MICHAEL RATNER: He drew the cell that he was in on the floor and how he had to lay in the cell and how the light was on him 24 hours.

ALICE WALKER: Forced to sleep without cover.

JOSH STIEBER: Conditions far worse than soldiers who have been convicted of cold-blooded murder.

MICHAEL RATNER: Every single newspaper in this country ought to be screaming, screaming about Bradley Manning.

MATT TAIBBI: The whole concept of freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, these are—this is under direct threat in this one case.

TIM DECHRISTOPHER: It’s important that we do have those people who stand up and expose what’s really going on.

ROGER WATERS: They take enormous risks on our behalf.

TIM DECHRISTOPHER: And we need more like him.

ALICE WALKER: And now that I know it, I cannot un-know it.

MICHAEL RATNER: So the question for all of us, when you see atrocities like those that Bradley Manning saw, is the question he asked.

MOLLY CRABAPPLE: If you saw incredible things.

MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: Awful things, things that belonged in the public domain.

WALLACE SHAWN: And not on some server.

PETER SARSGAARD: Stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C.

LESLIE CAGAN: What would you do?

MOLLY CRABAPPLE: What would you do?

WALLACE SHAWN: What would you do?

MICHAEL PREMO: What would you do?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: I was Bradley Manning.

WALLACE SHAWN: I am Bradley Manning.

HAKIM GREENE: I am Bradley Manning.

PHIL DONAHUE: I am Bradley Manning.

ROSA CLEMENTE: I am.

MICHAEL CAVADIAS: Bradley Manning.

MOLLY CRABAPPLE: Bradley Manning.

LESLIE CAGAN: Bradley Manning.

DAVEY D: Bradley Manning.

AHDAF SOUEIF: I hope that we are all.

TOM MORELLO: Bradley Manning.

HAKIM GREENE: If it happens to him, it is happening to us.

MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: God knows what happens now.

WALLACE SHAWN: Hopefully, worldwide discussion.

ALLAN NAIRN: Debates.

CHRIS HEDGES: And reforms.

PETER SARSGAARD: I want people to see the truth.

TIM DECHRISTOPHER: I want people to see the truth.

MOLLY CRABAPPLE: I want people to see the truth, because without information.

MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL: You cannot make informed decisions as a public.

AMY GOODMAN: That video produced by the “I am Bradley Manning” team. This from AP as we wrap up today’s broadcast: “When the judge was done, [Bradley Manning’s attorney David] Coombs put his hand on Manning’s back and whispered something to him, eliciting a slight smile on the soldier’s face. …

“Coombs came outside the court to a round of applause and shouts of 'thank you' from a few dozen Manning supporters.

“Coombs said, 'We won the battle, now we need to go win the war,' of the sentencing phase. He concluded, 'Today is a good day, but Bradley is by no means out of the fire.'”

You can go to our website at democracynow.org, where today’s live stream will replay after we end this broadcast. You can also see our Twitter list of reporters following the Manning verdict and all of our coverage of Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks. And tune in on Wednesday morning, 8:00 Eastern time and beyond, when we’ll get reaction from WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange and others.