DOD Press Office Scrambling to Explain Bradley Manning’s Treatment

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Something is badly amiss in DOD’s efforts to tell its side of how it is treating Bradley Manning.

It started on Monday when NBC’s Chief Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski (that is, not a hippie) published an article with two big scoops. First, that investigators have been unable to tie Manning directly to Julian Assange.

U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.

In the same article, Miklaszewski reports what appears to be limited hangout push-back against allegations that Manning was “tortured” (but not “abused”). While Manning was not tortured, Miklaszewski’s sources say, he was improperly put on suicide watch for two days last week.

On Monday, U.S. military officials also strongly denied allegations that Manning, being held in connection with the WikiLeaks’ release of classified documents, has been “tortured” and held in “solitary confinement” without due process.The officials told NBC News, however, that a U.S. Marine commander did violate procedure when he placed Manning on “suicide watch” last week.

Military officials said Brig Commander James Averhart did not have the authority to place Manning on suicide watch for two days last week, and that only medical personnel are allowed to make that call.

Note that both of these scoops were attributed to “US military officials,” though a later reference refers to “official,” singular. Later in the article, he cites, “U.S. Marine and Army officials” stating that Manning “is being treated like any other maximum security prisoner.” If I had to guess, I’d say Miklaszewski was protecting whatever officials gave him the scoop, while more clearly identifying those who pushed back on it.

The following day, CNN’s Chris Lawrence wrote a piece reporting that Brig Commander Averhart was being investigated.

The U.S. military is investigating why the commander of the military jail put Pfc. Bradley Manning, suspected of leaking documents to WikiLeaks, on suicide watch for a few days last week, according to Pentagon spokesman Col. David Lapan.

[snip]

An investigation has been launched into whether Brig Commander James Averhart had the authority to place Manning on suicide watch, which is usually ordered by the medical staff.

That report was sourced to David Lapan, by name. Within three hours after that story appeared, CNN pulled the story, first explaining,

The CNN Wire has killed the story slugged US-WikiLeaks-Manning-1 that moved at 2:47 p.m. due to new information. The military spokesman identified in the story says there is no investigation into the decision to put Bradley Manning on suicide watch.

That retraction now names Lapan, again by name. Lawrence was among the first to report, the following day, that Averhart (who a day before was maybe or maybe not under investigation) was being replaced–pursuant to a decision made back in October.

But the really interesting thing came before that, in yesterday’s press briefing by David Lapan’s boss, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell (whose resemblance to the Matrix’ Agent Smith is uncanny, and who notes this was his first press briefing since November; here’s a video of the presser). Read more →

The NYT’s “Heads Up” Meeting with the FBI on Wikileaks

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The NYT has a very long profile on their interactions with Wikileaks, about which I will have more to say.

But I wanted to point to this meeting, which Bill Keller describes as the NYT’s effort to give the government a “heads up” on the diplomatic cables.

Because of the range of the material and the very nature of diplomacy, the embassy cables were bound to be more explosive than the War Logs. Dean Baquet, our Washington bureau chief, gave the White House an early warning on Nov. 19. The following Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, Baquet and two colleagues were invited to a windowless room at the State Department, where they encountered an unsmiling crowd. Representatives from the White House, the State Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon gathered around a conference table. Others, who never identified themselves, lined the walls. A solitary note-taker tapped away on a computer. [my emphasis]

It’s bad enough that–as Keller also reports–the NYT has no secure communications.

But is it also the habit of the NYT to meet with the government–including the FBI–on upcoming stories? For all the NYT’s insistence, with Judy Miller, that they would not be an accomplice to a government investigation, what the hell were they doing meeting with the FBI before they published a story?

Visa: WikiLeaks Guilty until Proven (Twice) Innocent

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The AP reports that a Swedish company Visa Europe hired to study whether WikiLeaks was breaking the law or Visa’s own rules has “found no proof the group’s fundraising arm is breaking the law in its home base of Iceland.” But, the AP goes on, Visa will not accept WikiLeaks donations until it completes its own investigation, which has thus far lasted eight weeks.

Shorter Visa: “we’re going to keep investigating this until we find some justification to explain why we’ll accept donations to the Ku Klux Klan but not WikiLeaks.”

Now, this says one of two things about Visa.

Either, Visa is saying it arbitrarily will decide to stop doing business with any customer it chooses until such time as it proves that customer is innocent. Imagine the absurdity of standing at a check-out counter while Visa not only does a criminal background check, but scrambles with its lawyers to invent new legal theories by which you might be breaking the law.

Or, Visa has stopped processing Wikieaks donations at the behest of the U.S. government based on lies. And even after the government admitted that it had told lies to shut down WikiLeaks, Visa continues to stall for time to come up with an adequate explanation for why it’s doing so.

Did Manning Zerofill His Computers? Or Did the Military?

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Wired has a post on MSNBC’s report that “there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to [Julian] Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.” In it, Kim Zetter looks to the chat logs to try to explain why there is no such evidence.

If it’s true that investigators have found no evidence linking Manning and Assange, it may be because Manning allegedly erased it from his system. He discussed doing so in his chats with Lamo. Manning noted in the chats that any incriminating evidence of his activities had been “zerofilled”, or erased, from his computers:

But that’s not precisely what the passage she quotes says. Note, because I’ve used a different selection of chat log than Zetter, I have bolded the part she included in her selection (though she includes in her post).

(02:13:51 AM) Lamo: Why does your job afford you access?

(02:13:59 AM) Lamo: except for the UN.

(02:14:03 AM) Manning: because i have a workstation

(02:14:15 AM) Lamo: and World Bank.

(02:14:17 AM) Manning: *had*

(02:14:36 AM) Lamo: So you have these stored now?

(02:14:54 AM) Manning: i had two computers… one connected to SIPRNET the other to JWICS…

(02:15:07 AM) Manning: no, they’re government laptops

(02:15:18 AM) Manning: they’ve been zerofilled

(02:15:22 AM) Manning: because of the pullout

(02:15:57 AM) Manning: evidence was destroyed… by the system itself

(02:16:10 AM) Lamo: So how would you deploy the cables? If at all.

(02:16:26 AM) Manning: oh no… cables are reports

(02:16:34 AM) Lamo: ah

(02:16:38 AM) Manning: State Department Cable = a Memorandum

(02:16:48 AM) Lamo: embassy cables?

(02:16:54 AM) Manning: yes

(02:17:00 AM) Manning: 260,000 in all

(02:17:10 AM) Manning: i mentioned this previously

(02:17:14 AM) Lamo: yes

(02:17:31 AM) Lamo: stored locally, or retreiveable?

(02:17:35 AM) Manning: brb latrine =P

(02:17:43 AM) Manning: i dont have a copy anymore

(02:17:59 AM) Lamo: *nod*

(02:18:09 AM) Manning: they were stored on a centralized server…

(02:18:34 AM) Lamo: what’s your endgame plan, then?

(02:18:36 AM) Manning: it was vulnerable as fuck

As Zetter correctly notes, in this passage Manning suggests files had been zerofilled. But in this passage, he doesn’t say he did it.

Now, in a separate section, Manning says he zerofilled the original of the Rejkjavik 13 cable.

(1:48:50 PM) Lamo: give me some bona fides … yanno? any specifics.

(1:49:40 PM) Manning: this one was a test: Classified cable from US Embassy Reykjavik on Icesave dated 13 Jan 2010

(1:50:30 PM) Manning: the result of that one was that the icelandic ambassador to the US was recalled, and fired

(1:51:02 PM) Manning: thats just one cable…

(1:51:14 PM) Lamo: Anything unreleased?

(1:51:25 PM) Manning: i’d have to ask assange

(1:51:53 PM) Manning: i zerofilled the original

(1:51:54 PM) Lamo: why do you answer to him?

(1:52:29 PM) Manning: i dont… i just want the material out there… i dont want to be a part of it [my emphasis]

Contextually, this might suggest that both mentions of zerofilling refer to the same–all 250,000 cables–since they both come in response to Lamo’s probing questions about the cables. Indeed, Manning’s reference to zerofilling himself, in the context of the Rejkjavik cable, may explain why he no longer has access to any cables he could give Lamo to prove his bona fides. But even if both references both mean to include all the cables, it would remain ambiguous whether Manning zerofilled his computer or someone else did.

Read more →

CNN: Military Investigating Why Brig Commander Put Bradley Manning on Suicide Watch [Update: Or Maybe Not]

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CNN elaborates on something MSNBC reported last night. Not only did Quantico Brig Commander James Averhart improperly put Bradley Manning on suicide watch for two days last week, but the military is now investigating why he did so.

The U.S. military is investigating why the commander of the military jail put Pfc. Bradley Manning, suspected of leaking documents to WikiLeaks, on suicide watch for a few days last week, according to Pentagon spokesman Col. David Lapan.

[snip]

An investigation has been launched into whether Brig Commander James Averhart had the authority to place Manning on suicide watch, which is usually ordered by the medical staff.

Now, as MSNBC explained last night, the suicide watch came because Manning allegedly disobeyed the order of two guards, so it’s not entirely clear what CNN means by “why.”

But this is a really welcome development. I hope the investigation is as transparent as the reports to MSNBC and CNN have been in the last day.

Update: Now CNN has retracted this story, with the following notice.

The CNN Wire has killed the story slugged US-WikiLeaks-Manning-1 that moved at 2:47 p.m. due to new information. The military spokesman identified in the story says there is no investigation into the decision to put Bradley Manning on suicide watch.

I’ve put a screen cap of the original story up top.

Government Admits Brig Commander Improperly Put Bradley Manning on Suicide Watch

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Quantico entrance. (photo: crowdive on Flickr)

The government has admitted to MSNBC that the Brig Commander at Quantico improperly put Bradley Manning on suicide watch last week.

The officials told NBC News, however, that a U.S. Marine commander did violate procedure when he placed Manning on “suicide watch” last week.

Military officials said Brig Commander James Averhart did not have the authority to place Manning on suicide watch for two days last week, and that only medical personnel are allowed to make that call.

The official said that after Manning had allegedly failed to follow orders from his Marine guards. Averhart declared Manning a “suicide risk.” Manning was then placed on suicide watch, which meant he was confined to his cell, stripped of most of his clothing and deprived of his reading glasses — anything that Manning could use to harm himself. At the urging of U.S. Army lawyers, Averhart lifted the suicide watch.

So Manning allegedly fails to follow an order and the Brig Commander decides he loses his glasses and is stripped of his clothing?

Remember, Manning has not been convicted of anything yet.

The rest of the article describes that the government has been unable to link Manning to Julian Assange. Maybe that’s why they took his glasses away.

Update: This certainly puts the events from Quantico yesterday in a different light. According to MSNBC, government lawyers realized last week Manning had been improperly treated. By preventing David House from visiting Manning yesterday, they made sure that he wouldn’t have confirmation of that from Manning directly. But since Jane and David’s comments said they’d be back next week, DOD realized they’d need to ‘fess up themselves.

Cheney/Obama Justice: 3 Detainees + 1 Jailed Whistleblower = 19,000 Rich Tax Cheats

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As a July 1, 2009 Wikileak cable released by Norway’s Aftenposten makes clear, the US and Switzerland included the acceptance of three Gitmo detainees and a settlement in a suit accusing UBS of harboring tax cheats–along with an effort to shut down a Swedish company’s business with Iran–in negotiations “resolving all issues between our countries.”

1. (S) Summary: Swiss Minister for Economics and Trade Doris Leuthard called CDA in to advise that the Swiss Federal Councilors had decided in a special session to shut down Swedish firm Colencos commercial activities in Iran. The Minister also reaffirmed the commitment of the Swiss government to accept several detainees from Guantanamo Bay for resettlement in Switzerland. Minister Leuthard made it clear that these two activities were linked to the achievement of a political settlement in the case of Swiss banking giant, UBS. The US court is scheduled to hear arguments in the civil case on July 13 and it is clear that the GOS hopes a settlement can be reached before the hearing date. End Summary.

2. (S) Minister Leuthard began the meeting by describing todays special session of the Federal Council which was focused on what steps the Swiss government could take to advance a political solution of the UBS case. The Council considered action on the Colenco case, long advocated by the USG and a major topic during the February meeting between Secretary Clinton and Foreign Minister Calmy Rey, was one proactive measure the Swiss government could take in this direction.

[snip]

4. (S) Leuthard then turned the topic of discussion to Swiss willingness to accept several detainees from Guatanamo for resettlement and encouraged us to provide as much data as possible quickly so that the Swiss could move forward. CDA advised that more bio and medical data had been received today and was being delivered via a separate channel.

5. (S) At this point, Leuthard emphasized that these two actions were “elements showing that Switzerland is committed to resolving all issues between our countries.” To bring home the point, she reiterated that this resolve extended especially to finding a political solution to the UBS case. [my emphasis]

One of the recipients of the cable was Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz.

Mind you, the Swiss minister in question has denied there’s a “direct link.” So maybe not a direct quid pro quo–just Switzerland “indirectly” doing us two big favors in exchange for our DOJ limiting how many of the rich tax cheats we pursue in Switzerland. But the favors may go both ways: among those reportedly involved in the UBS scandal were American politicians.

It’s bad enough that we traded 3 detainees (two were some of the Uighurs not even the US government claims had anything to do with terrorism, so we should have been able to settle them in the US) for a deal that ended up shielding most of the tax cheats first targeted in the UBS probe.

But not long after the negotiations, we sentenced the whistleblower in the case, Bradley Birkenfeld, to 40 months in prison.I’m still wandering through the docket, but there’s a bunch of sealed documents in it starting the month before this Wikileak cable and continuing up to the point where the judge gave Birkenfeld more time in prison than prosecutors requested.

Birkenfeld’s imprisonment is considered one of the most egregious examples of the government prosecuting whistleblowers rather than the criminals they expose. Perhaps there’s more to Birkenfeld’s troubling imprisonment than it first appeared?

Gulet Mohamed’s Interrogation without Counsel: Is this the New Miranda Policy?

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Gulet Mohamed, the teen held in Kuwait, allegedly beaten, and interrogated by the FBI while in custody, is finally back in the United States. But before he reunited with his family, he was subjected to one more interrogation without his lawyer.

FBI agents have detained and are interrogating Gulet Mohamed, an American teen who was detained in Kuwait for a month, without counsel at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC, Mohamed’s lawyer said Friday morning.

[snip]

Mohamed’s family and lawyer claim that Mohamed has asked FBI officials for counsel multiple times during previous questioning. US legal and constitutional restrictions generally require that custodial interrogations stop when a subject asks for his lawyer. That rule does not seem to have been followed in this case. Mohamed traveled to Yemen and Somalia, two hotbeds of anti-American extremism, in 2009 (to visit family and learn Arabic, his family says). But he has not been charged with a crime in any country.

Now, Baumann points out that interrogations should stop once an American asks for counsel.

Or at least that’s the way things used to be.

But as Justin Elliot reported yesterday, the Administration has changed its Miranda policy. Only, it hasn’t explained what the change entails.

The Obama administration has issued new guidance on use of the Miranda warning in interrogations of terrorism suspects, potentially chipping away at the rule that bars the government from using information in court if it was gathered before a suspect was informed of his right to remain silent and to an attorney.

But the Department of Justice is refusing to publicly release the guidance, with a spokesman describing it in an interview as an “internal document.” So we don’t know the administration’s exact interpretation of Miranda, even though it may have significantly reshaped the way terrorism interrogations are conducted.

[snip]

Asked about the administration’s current stance on Miranda, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd sent along this statement about the new guidance that was sent to “relevant agencies”:

As demonstrated most recently after the attempted terrorist bombings last Christmas and in Times Square last spring, law enforcement has the ability to question suspected terrorists without immediately providing Miranda warnings when the interrogation is reasonably prompted by immediate concern for the safety of the public or the agents. Because of the complexity of the threat posed by terrorist organizations and the nature of their attacks — which can include multiple accomplices and interconnected plots — we have formalized guidance that outlines the appropriate use of the well-established public safety exception to providing Miranda rights. To ensure that law enforcement is aware of the flexibility that the law gives them in these circumstances, the guidance has been distributed to relevant agencies.

So are the repeated interrogations of Mohamed without counsel a sign of what DOJ has permitted?

Mind you, today’s interrogation was probably something much more similar. As the experience of Wikileaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, who has been interrogated at the border on three different occasions, shows, our government maintains it can subject anyone crossing into our country to this treatment.

Yet that doesn’t explain the interrogations in Kuwait, coming after Mohamed says he was beaten.

So should we conclude the new Miranda policy allows beating and interrogations with no counsel so long as they take place in other countries?

So, Amazon, Visa, PayPal, Was It Worth Accepting Government Lies?

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Mark Hosenball reports that aside from some pockets of short-term damage, the impact of the Wikileaks leak of diplomatic cables has been embarrassing, but not damaging.

Internal U.S. government reviews have determined that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite the Obama administration’s public statements to the contrary.

A congressional official briefed on the reviews said the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.

“I think they just want to present the toughest front they can muster,” the official said.

But State Department officials have privately told Congress they expect overall damage to U.S. foreign policy to be containable, said the official, one of two congressional aides familiar with the briefings who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

“We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging,” said the official, who attended a briefing given in late 2010 by State Department officials.

[snip]

National security officials familiar with the damage assessments being conducted by defense and intelligence agencies told Reuters the reviews so far have shown “pockets” of short-term damage, some of it potentially harmful. Long-term damage to U.S. intelligence and defense operations, however, is unlikely to be serious, they said. [my emphasis]

More important than yet another indication that the Obama Administration has oversold the damage done by Wikileaks is the reason given by Hosenball’s Congressional source as to why they oversold that damage: to bolster legal efforts to shut down Wikileaks’ website.

The Administration lied, says a congressional official, to make it easier to shut down Wikileaks.

Now that’s important for several reasons. First, all this time the government has been pretending that the series of decisions by private corporations to stop doing business with Wikileaks were made by the businesses on their own. Surprise surprise (not!), it seems that the government was affirmatively trying to shut down Wikileaks.

Just as importantly, Hosenball’s story seems to suggest, the government was going to service providers–the same service providers they routinely go to on terrorist investigations–and lying to get them to do the government’s bidding. The government was making claims about the damage of the leak to convince service providers to shut down Wikileaks.

And companies like Amazon, Visa, and PayPal complied.

So, to these companies, now tainted with cooperation in government censorship, was it worth it? Was it worth being branded as a collaborator, knowing you were lied to?

And to Philip Crowley, whom Hosenball quotes talking about “substantial” damage: given your critique of Tunisia’s suppression of social media, and given that we now know you lied in the service of similar repression, do you still want to claim there’s no disjunct between claiming to support free speech while squelching that of Wikileaks?

The US Prevented BabyDoc from Returning in 2006, Why Not Now?

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Five years ago, BabyDoc Duvalier applied for a passport for Haiti, threatening to return in a period leading up to elections. As a series of Wikileaks cables make clear, the US pressed hard–with apparent success–to prevent his return to Haiti. One cable shows the US asking France, on January 11, 2006, whether it could prevent Duvalier from leaving that country. Another shows the US raising concerns about Duvalier with Haiti Prime Minister Latortue that same day, and again on January 16. And the US raised the same concerns with the Dominican Republic, first (as far as we can tell from the cables) on January 11 and then again on February 7, 2006.

Over the course of those conversations, the US government tried the following methods to keep Duvalier from returning to Haiti and disrupting the elections:

  • Asking France to help convince Haiti’s interim government to refuse Duvalier the passport (which failed)
  • Asking Latortue to prevent Duvalier from boarding any plane to Haiti
  • Asking Latortue to use informal communication channels to ask Duvalier not to return
  • Getting a commitment from Foreign Minister Herard Abraham, after he had issued the passport, to do anything else he could to prevent Duvalier’s return
  • Getting Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez to prohibit Duvlier from entering his country in transit to Haiti

All of which raises the question why, if the US prevented Duvalier from returning in 2006, they were either unable or chose not to prevent his return this time?

Interestingly, the Guardian provides some background of these efforts in 2006. But they focus entirely on one cable recording discussions with Dominican Republic (the rest of the cables were made available by Aftenposten, the Norwegian paper that somehow got its own set of cables). This has the effect of making it appear that US objections were equally to Duvalier and Aristide (both are mentioned in the cable, though it is clear Duvalier is the worry). Yet the rest of the cables make it clear that the US was panicked about Duvalier’s return.

So is and was the US as concerned this time around about Duvalier’s disruptive influence? Has it simply lost its influence with the various players (who might just be ready for a stronger influence in Haiti, given that country’s problems)? Or did the US give tacit approval for Duvalier’s return, either explicitly or by not making the same efforts this time around as they made in 2006?