you that the center for constitutional rights had filed a petition requesting that the army court of criminal appeals or the judge and the court martial of bradley manning to the public and the press more access now more access means access to the government's motion papers the court's own orders the transcripts of the proceedings and the petition also challenge the fact that substantive legal matters in this court martial court martial like a pretrial publicity order are all argued and decided in secret now it wasn't just the center for constitutional rights that took part the petitioners included amy goodman glenn greenwald joined us on having got stolen and jeremy scahill those people that i would argue fight for more transparency and more honesty in our political culture and our criminal justice proceedings on a daily basis but this week however the petitioners got an answer from the court of appeals and the answer was a simple no no explanation as to why just a one line answer considering the way the government the military been handling manning's case thus far can really say it's a surprise but

court's own orders. where is this going? >> the judge announced at the opening of the proceedings there was this petition before the court of appeals, the army criminal court of appeals. and she did not think there needed to be a stay of proceedings, so there's not any reason for the proceeding to be put on hold so that this could be decided. the key issue here is that in the proceedings, as a reporter, i don't get to go look at these decisions, these motions, some of these orders in the aftermath. that means i'm listening to what is being said in real time -- basically, try to do my own transcript of the proceeding in order to put together a report for their readers after the proceedings are concluded for the day. this is very problematic because in some ways, it is hard to confirm what is being said. for example, you have misspellings of names. you have trouble with members and key details. it is hard because you're putting all of the burden on the military briefer to provide you with information. you're also trying to keep up with what is being read. it is totally unreasonable that there would not be any sort of documentation provided to the press