way to loosely or to speak to an environmental activist who himself was locked up and housed within one of these units and last night we were forced to watch yet another republican debate former governor of new mexico and a presidential candidate gary johnson is going to join us to give us his perspective on what was said and what was left untouched so you have all that and more fit and i couldn't dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. all this morning the article thirty two hearing for need maryland began for bradley manning and the more than eighteen months of his detention this is the first time in the army privacy in a courtroom so you think the maid's free media might provide you coverage of the most high profile whistleblowing case of this current generation especially since every newspaper in cable network has at some point reported on cables war logs or videos released by wiki leaks but personally i think the coverage was a little bit more than just disappointing. today private bradley manning is facing

his accusers in court for the first time it's called the largest intelligence leak in u.s. history military arraignment underway right now for bradley manning the only private suspected of being behind wiki leaks the biggest intelligence leak in u.s. history a short recess was called after private manning's attorney asked the presiding officer to step down some pretty dramatic developments in the courtroom this morning the attorney for bradley manning david combs basically came out with guns blazing and accused the investigating officer who is essentially acting as a judge in this article thirty two hearing accusing that investigating officer of being prejudiced and asking him to recuse himself this preliminary hearing will determine whether private manning will be court martialed for allegedly leaking half a million secret u.s. state department documents to wiki leaks. now c.n.n. was the only channel that even sent somebody over to fort meade m s n b c just said a few words about it over a still photo of manning and fox news well unsurprisingly fox news didn't even

bother to touch upon it at all and i guess i can't say that i'm really surprised the mainstream media has been completely apathetic about manning's case especially the horrible conditions that he was held in while the break in quantico and the fact that for months he was detained without any charges but there's something else to be said about what's happening at this pretrial hearing today for me something that should concern our media outlets if they gave a damn about the freedom of the press and transparency and the value of public information as we highlighted to you on yesterday's show the amount of information the public in the press will actually be able to see here is very limited despite the fact of the state department cables at this point have been released on the internet published in news sources the world over for everyone to see the state department has still decided to keep them classified so if any of that information is discussed at the hearing then it's considered sensitive material that the press is not privy to seeing it discussed but even aside from that just take a listen to the massive restrictions that have been placed on. the press is allowed

to cover this hearing josh gerstein over politico at least pointed this out and so for that we thank him aside from the two charge sheets listing the preliminary allegations against manning the army has refused to release any of the legal filings exchanged between the defense and the prosecution as well as any of the orders issued by military judges or investigating officers assigned to the case and the army has also indicated the reporters attending manning session will not be able to post real time updates or tweets about the proceedings and they can only file updates once they're out of the courts or. by being escorted off of the base and the wireless internet connection in the filing center will also be turned off while the proceedings are underway and restored only after the session breaks not only that but as gerstein also points out as the irony of it all and when to use his own words while manning is now charged with aiding the enemy to the alleged leaks there would be far more information placed on the official public record about his case if he actually were the enemy if manning were

a foreigner held at guantanamo bay and facing a military commission numerous filings about his case would be on a public website and the pentagon set up earlier this year and that was a response to a long running complaints of the military tribunals a lack of transparency because while proceedings were open to the press and human rights observers the legal motions being discussed are unavailable to the public so here you have it we actually will find out less about manning's hearing then we would about detainees at guantanamo bay so this is part of the problem with military proceedings in general it's part of the problem with the overwhelming secrecy of our entire system it's all government goes after this alleged whistleblower with everything they have for potentially being the one that exposed corruption cover ups and barest the ruling elite they still want to be secret from the public as to how they go after him the same way if this administration has been overly secret about the conditions in which manning was held the president still won't allow the un special rapporteur on torture to have a one on one meeting with manning even after he was transferred to fort leavenworth

. anyway i think that you know how i feel about this issue and we all know that the mainstream media doesn't care about manning's case about its treatment about the dangers to the freedom of speech and whistleblowers at this entire wiki leaks episode is shown us but once again i do find it completely unacceptable the mainstream media cares nothing about the lack of openness of transparency right here just like they didn't care when journalists are being blocked from covering a vixens of occupy camps and here they don't care at all the most high profile whistleblower case of this generation is happening under extremely tight lipped circumstances so as long as they still worship those in power get the leaks of they actually care about the mainstream media is going to choose to miss. wells manning for the first time gets a day in court both the prosecution and defense lay out arguments present witnesses most of whom were rejected by the government mannix case let's not forget we need

to once again have a discussion about what matter if ian did deed if he indeed did leak the state department cables and the war logs and the collateral murder video to wiki leaks has done if this is somebody who deserves to be faced with more than thirty charges the most damning of which includes aiding the enemy which carries the death penalty all the military has indicated that this time they plan to seek life in prison or we have to ask if this is somebody who is a hero who should get a medal for exposing what he has now we know how the government feels about it but will other whistleblowers out there find his case inspiring or be intimidated and shy away from exposing wrongdoing joining me to discuss this is daniel ellsberg former us military analyst who famously leaked the pentagon papers in one nine hundred seventy one he's also author of the book secrets a memoir of vietnam and the pentagon papers daniel we're so happy to have you again on the show tonight and you and i have spoken about the case of bradley manning but i want to know specifically what you think of the way that this pretrial hearing is going on

finally after more than eighteen months are you seeing a day in court but all the details that i just mentioned in terms of how closed off it is to the press what do you make of that. well of course it is good at last that he's having the chance to have a lawyer call witnesses and. question the prosecution's witnesses and there's less to represent him in court after these almost two years now that he's he's been suffering what amounts to pretrial punishment i was thinking about sort of like the red queen in alice in wonderland punishment first this case sentence later trial after all if ever actually it's it's rather in line with what the senate and i was just passed the other day and i guess obama is about to sign if he hasn't already and that allows for military courts for civilians. in this case bradley asked for it by joining the joining the military and subjected himself to

military justice but as far as this administration and the congress is concerned it's perfectly all right to do away with due process for american citizens to detain them indefinitely in this country on suspicion which as i understand it doesn't weigh not only with various amendments in the bill of rights but goes hey vs corpus pretty much going back to twelve fifteen so we're really kind of reversing the what we what we want not only in i revel ocean but going well back before george the third in terms of citizens' rights so in that sense bradley i suppose should be should be thankful that his lawyer is able to raise these issues and last he can call witnesses but whether they can come in the eyes of the court is another matter apparently they've turned down all but two of the forty eight witnesses that is why they are asked for while they've accepted the court is accepted twenty eight of the twenty witnesses the prosecutor asked for when asked

whether this didn't suggest partiality on the part of the judge the judge said not a judge actually but the hearing no officer. he said no i guess it's really an unusual human who is willing to say yes to partial to try this case i'd much rather heard a case like that justice thomas justice scalia on the supreme court certainly don't see any problem with conflict of interest questions are raised so i guess we shouldn't expect it here i don't think we can expect. private manning or his lawyer to get a lot of breaks in either this hearing or in a court martial in which the president after all has such has started with a conviction first he announced that bradley manning was broke had broken the law was bill treat this as the commander in chief who is the superior officer to all of the people who will be sitting in both his pretrial hearing and the eventual court

martial it's virtually a directed verdict let's play that video here on the show for our audience many times to you and it doesn't seem odd to me like bradley really will have a chance at a fair hearing or a fair trial here i guess you could say that he was. you could have predicted that president obama ad secretary of state hillary clinton whom the defense asked to be witnesses were going to be there the fact that the rest of their witnesses all that to have also been refused is definitely something that's troubling now the last time that you and i spoke you said the you think of bradley manning as a hero has that changed at all or do you still feel the same way certainly you certainly by your old since the time we spoke i think we've seen and certainly since the beginning since he was first in prison we've seen almost two years of evidence of that kind of enormous benefit to democracy and not only in this country four of the parts of the potential of accountability which hasn't been realized

here for the crimes that he exposed of murder collateral murder which you're showing on your screen right no what you're seeing there is wanted man. civilian civilian clothes unarmed and wonted crawling through his life being shot down. that's murder that is not all killing and war is murder but a lot of it is too much of a defense and this is murder which anyone investigated further after the video came out know it was being concealed precisely because it would reveal them because the unwillingness of people in the military to investigated or to investigate the rules of engagement let me put do you think though you mentioned you know that nobody has been. prosecuted or no justice is come after that video was released but do you think that the release is a from wiki leaks allegedly leaked by bradley manning have made a difference in the world a lot of people would say that what you've seen with the arab spring that maybe helped spark off the revolution in tunisia maybe even leaks that show that there

were horrible raids where women and children were killed in iraq and that had been covered up helps to have the iraqi government basically say that u.s. troops need to leave they don't have legal immunity all of these are you've just mentioned all of the norms affection these are just might seize or these are very clear to start at the last one and just to review what you just said. in the interim on the basis of a week cable which for which obama has given bradley manning credit for releasing by charging him in this case accredited by certainly. he said we can't oh of unities because the wiki leaks cable showed not only that the iraqis had been writing and calling cold blooded murder of a lot of civilians in an incident and i think it's two thousand and six but the americans revelation of her dennehy endangered

a whole networks of people who were involved in that good test that needed secrecy it deserved it should have gotten it it was the bush administration as it happened that leaked it wrongly so there are a. wrong there are right secrets none of that material was involved in any of the material leaked to wiki leaks by someone and bradley manning is charged with that none of it not communications intelligence not nuclear weapons but clandestine agents there were the names of informants and the question could be raised about that i think there was potential harm in that and when those were released initially with the afghan war logs by wiki leaks without rejecting all of the names all goal of fifteen thousand people were withheld out of ninety thousand one out of six but even so some names released that probably should not have been. the chargers mean then that were key leaks and whoever leaked them bradley manning had blood on their hands that was possible but in that it's something that the defense

is going to argue against though and try to get those statements from u.s. officials military and diplomatic officials that in fact the harm has not been their day on force they have to wrap it up but i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and hopefully we can you know catch back up with you and continue having this conversation as we watch this trial from bradley manning unfold thanks so much thank you. all right still ahead tonight the house judiciary committee held a hearing on so i guess today but at times you know it's like a comedy sketch or have details are told and i will tell you about communication management unit prisons have earned the nickname a little bit nuts it's a perspective on these facilities or person who was detained there significant back . into it all their military mechanisms that do not work to bring justice or accountability. i have a right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes.

but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard luck is a big picture. because

i'm laurie mr. there's the elite the rough innit. but what is protesting nobody seems to know. that never a pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. our guys it's time for tonight's tool time award and we're giving it to the u.s.

congress as we told you yesterday the house judiciary committee has been holding a markup hearing on the stop online piracy act or sopa a broad censorship bill which puts far too much control into the hands of the government to blacklist websites now all position has steadily been lining up against this bill the entertainment lobby is still working very hard to make sure that it gets through leaving the final decision to the committee before moves to the floor of the entire house or the hearing didn't really get off to quite the start that one would have expected for starters there was so much confusion over the bill they had to actually read through the entire legislation as you mentioned yesterday that was only the beginning of their trouble one point congressman steve king decided to share his boredom with his followers on twitter and he tweeted the folly he said we're debating a stop on line piracy act and sheila jackson has so bored me that i'm killing time by surfing the internet and apparently miss jackson was so outraged that she let the entire committee know that she was truly offended and they spent over twenty minutes discussing the tweet but that was the beginning of this pathetic excuse for

lawmaking and which they only got through twenty amendments today during the second day of the hearings they got through all of two amendments that's out of sixty total so as a sober hearings continue the discussion surrounding the new bill revealed how digitally impaired the congressman really are and the tech writers of the twitter sphere who were covering this hearing were pretty quick to share their disgust and disbelief here's the one internet law professor tweeted about the hearing saying good guys let's figure out how this internet thing works and that pretty much set the theme according to several tweets of the event members of the house judiciary committee the ones who don't understand the internet are basically taking on the people that engineers the internet the ones that are saying that sopa is going to screw it up as we know it take for example congress member mel watt who stated proudly that he didn't understand technology according to julie sanchez of cato watt thinks that we don't need to hear from tech experts because judges will determine what's bad for cybersecurity oh awesome let's. the experts the judges and that's just skimming the surface of how truly absurd this hearing really was now it

became very apparent as the people who are going to be voting on this bill don't know jack about exactly what they're voting on and i had to point it out but i guess perhaps we should have seen this coming members of our government past and present have proven that they just don't quite understand all this crazy new technology stuff and this starts out with john mccain asking asking if he's a p.c. or mac kind of guy and it really just goes downhill from there and i am a illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that i can get it and it is not something that you just you know something i'm not a big truck if it's a show you should know. if you don't understand those jobs in the field if you know when you put your message on a kitchen light it's going to be delayed when they want to watch of the actual an enormous loss of a jury and. i don't think any of us have a facebook page or. whatever that is.

yeah those guys are the type that are going to be voting on this bill that would essentially kill the internet as we know it are you scared yet and you should be because there is reporting at the judiciary committee just announced of they would be returning next wednesday to continue their quest to destroy the internet and as i mentioned yesterday we're only going to see more of this kind of legislation brought up as our world becomes more reliant on technology so maybe we should get some lawmakers in the mix the are a little younger a little more tech savvy so we're going to give tonight's told time award to members of congress who think that they can make a decision without doing their homework or even really knowing how the internet works. every silly we've highlighted to you that despite the constant hysteria pitch by many politicians and pundits about bringing terror suspects from guantanamo bay to u.s. soil in the last ten years there's been four hundred terrorism related cases prosecuted in our federal courts have gone by virtually unnoticed now all one have these cases can be a testament to the success of our civilian court system they also deserve a good look as to how and why these prisoners are labeled as committing crimes

related to terrorism even more so the units in which these prisoners are housed are in need of more transparency and analysis their communication management unit known as c.m. use one of which is in illinois and the prisoners in these units of incredibly limited means through which to communicate with the outside world to see their families and some people out there have even labeled them many get most units made up almost entirely of muslim prisoners with a few balancers to make it seem like discrimination is in fact taking place let's talk to somebody who's been there joining me from our studio in new york is an easter bunny and co-founder of the sparrow project and i want to thank you so much for joining us and if you can just briefly tell the audience a little bit of your story how it is the you ended up in one of these units and were charged in a crime related to terrorism. well first of all thank you for having me i ended up in one of these units because it was legislated and convicted underneath an overly broad law called the animal enterprise protection act in two thousand and six the

law the animal enterprise protection act was amended to be called the animal enterprise terrorism statute the animal enterprise terrorism act is a law that says that if you inflict financial damage or an economic disruption or physical disruption on a enterprise that uses animals for profit you could be charged as a terrorist now after nine eleven and so unfortunately my conviction came down in two thousand and six and i was sent off to federal prison i served a three year sentence and the last six and a half months of that sentence i was read as a needed as a terrorist to a unit called the communications management unit in marion illinois and while i was there i come to learn that i was one of a few cases a handful of cases that some of the guards there called balancers apparently the communications management unit because it was sixty seven percent muslim inmates at the time was concerned about an inevitable lawsuit from the american civil liberties union in the center for constitutional rights and so they started to read designating inmates that might fit a certain profile like myself that had an alleged extremist case for you know

environmental and animal rights activities. to these units to try and offset that balance and it was an eye opening experience for me and you know from your experience as you mention the fact that they were afraid that there might be some type of litigation here and you know there were people that tried to bring charges said do you think from your experience that this is purposefully done because they're very secretive about it why are these units made up entirely or almost entirely of muslim inmates. well that's a very good question and there's a couple of different avenues you could take with it a lot of it would be conjecture but there is reason to believe that within federal prosecution circles and within congress that they want to keep people that are devout in islam that are not practicing some of the more fringe forms of islam but rather devout sunni muslims out of the general prison population the reason why is because it's a religion that kind of congregates people together regardless of race and racial

disparity and racial segregation is something that's very important to the federal prison guards because that's how they keep the inmates separated that's one reason and of itself the kind of segregate muslims that are united the other reason is that these cases are always highly political and in the case of the communication management units they have something called special administrative measures applied to them the special ministry of measures allows them to house inmates that have everything from minimum security classification points to maximum security classification points and they need an exemption in order to be able to do that to clarify for people that are watching when someone gets designated as a prisoner there's something called the custody classification sheet that gets filled out by the prosecutors and the judge and that custody classification she decides what your security level is while you're in the prison system and ultimately designates you to whatever prison it is whether it's a low security or a minimum security camp that doesn't even have a fence and what happened was i looked around at these men and i asked them what their security classification points were and all of them were minimum or low

security prisoners they were being treated and confined in a facility that was essentially a maximum security facility and what i realized the common thread between every single one of these cases was none of them had crimes of violence but all of them were politically charged cases so it was cases that involved now. and am sorry because we're not we're not don't have a whole lot of time we've seen recently hearings on capitol hill about the threat of muslim radicalization within our prisons do you think that something like this ends up creating you know a worse problem or makes it seem more like we are segregating these people and like there is a religious war going on. well i don't believe that there is a religious war going on but unfortunately i think a byproduct of units like this is that they're going to serve as a recruiting tool for radicals that are out there to say this is what the u.s. is doing they're they're housing muslims they're imprisoning muslims the majority of which are innocent when you make an example like a case like ruffled othar or how these are two men that were philanthropists

they're giving philanthropic aid and charitable aid to people overseas that get caught up in ambiguous and overbroad laws that have to do with sanctions or have to do with material support these are people that they could then start to use and start to recruit other terrorists underneath and say hey you should become a terrorist because look at the u.s. is doing to islam it's creating an environment where muslims may think that the u.s. is cracking down on islam and that's very dangerous these overbroad statutes are dangerous just like what was used against me i never engaged in the violence or property destruction as part of the shack campaign and instead i was sent to prison for a financial disruption against a technology company the same holds true for a lot of these muslim cases these overbroad pieces of legislation and like currently the n.d.a. are things that could rope in people that. don't really pose a threat but may be involved with that level of activity that prosecutors don't like and it's not a crime but it's definitely something that deserves to be highlighted a whole lot more out there like i said the debate is constantly over whether we

should transfer detainees from getting we already have so many terrorism related cases right here at home and they often also show that even our civilian court system is not perfect and sometimes we apply these terms and thanks so much for joining us thank you very much. i would take a quick break but we will be right back. to the police corruption. like what a protester nobody seems to know. that never a pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so sorely plea you think you understand.