A few days ago, we learned that Private Chelsea Manning attempted to take her own life last month for the second time since being sentenced to 35 years at the U.S. military prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. The whistleblower, who provided the collateral murder video, the Iraq and Afghan war logs, and the hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables to WikiLeaks, was convicted of espionage. As I waited to vote today, I found myself thinking of her languishing in misery in isolation and incarceration.
This election — particularly in its closing stages — has been dominated by controversies over emails, classified documents, and WikiLeaks. We’ve heard endlessly about Hillary Clinton’s private basement server, her 33,000 deleted emails, the phishing and leaking of John Podesta’s emails, including parts of Clinton’s much-discussed private speeches to Goldman Sachs. Trump, for his part, suddenly discovered a great love for Julian Assange, though he does have trouble correctly spelling WikiLeaks in his tweets of praise. Taken together with Trump’s bizarre and consistent lauding of Vladimir Putin and leaks from the U.S. intelligence community, the country has been treated to an odd flashback of Cold War propaganda, including a fair dose of red-baiting from the Democrats. In the matter of Anthony Weiner’s computer, his wife Huma Abedin’s communications, and the potential implications for Clinton, the FBI, whose overreach had not previously been of much concern to Democrats, suddenly became a deviant manipulator of the electoral process, while Trump and his supporters alternately praised the agency’s professionalism and denounced it as part of the rigged system.
The U.S. public is now getting a taste of the way hacking, phishing, and an overwhelming dependence on fallible machines and networks can impact politics. But let’s be clear: None of the disclosures in this campaign — not one thing in any of the hacked emails or those declassified and released from Clinton’s private server — has brought to light anything of greater importance than the documents Chelsea Manning provided to WikiLeaks. She revealed war crimes, including murder and torture; exposed liars and the dirty and duplicitous dealings of the U.S. and its allies; documented a secret history of America’s longest-running war; and forced a much needed debate about the U.S. role in the world. And for that, she is being tortured.
The double standards of our society dictate that a perjurer like the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, faces no consequences for his crimes. Gen. David Petraeus gets a slap on the wrist, no jail time, and prestigious positions at universities for sharing classified information with his mistress. Only Gen. James Cartwright may face the inside of a prison cell for discussing classified information with journalists — and he is a sacrificial lamb for the cause of exonerating Clinton and Petraeus from any true accountability by the Obama Justice Department.
But Chelsea Manning, whose motivation was noble, whose actions made our country better, faces the full wrath of the system. And it may end up killing her. When we talk about the high-tech scandals that marked this election, at the top of the list should be the torture of Chelsea Manning.
Since all torture lately is remotely implemented with no scars to betray it yet with exponential levels of pain inflicted, I would bet that this is how Manning is tortured.
Her attempts to kill herself are acts that many civilians tortured in the same way as we speak, have already, and continue to, succeed in.
Unless journalism stops pretending that the tortured are ‘ crazy ‘, thus helping to shield the crimes, expect Ms. Manning to be tortured until she succeeds in her suicidal attempts.
thank you, Jeremy Scahill.
I think they cut him all up as they say he wished he was a girl . last I heard he was unhappy with being a girl and want to be a man again . But its to late now . I know the government wants to keep there crimes secret . What they have done to manning is a crime . Maybe Trump will help these Whistle blowers . I think he should have been rewarded not punished . Our government today is ruled by the people and a lot of the people think Manning and Wiki leaks have already suffered much at the hands of our evil government . I’am in favor of our new president pardoning both of them
What nonsense.
He’s a mere detail in the endless slaughter of Barry the Kenyan’s regime.
Barry’s war crimes against Syria are far fouler.
That was just beautiful Jeremy. Genuinely.
Glad you addressed this well, Scahill, but i think some points are missing.
PvtManning is so treated bc he has the SUBLIME MORALITY and acts it. This makes PresObama and the CrookdClintons so much darker and evil by comparison.
PresObama and CrookdClintons whomboast carrying a torch of the great moral american way!
The 2nd is example, this is an example of what your life will be like if you cross the CrookdClintonobama set– be not fooled, they are all in this together– no one else but these three have the combined experience, intelligence, connections and resources to do what they are doing.
2008, Hillary settled for SOS instead of VP bc this gave here the cover to circulate the world.
Clintonemail.com to talk to criminals…and Potusa, the most intelligent and powerful man in the whole world– had not a clue! Hahaha! No, he was in on it?
How dare this snit if a Pvt blow this grandiose global plan to hell??
Revenge upon your morality.
I’ve been to the base where Chelsea’s being held twice in my life, for the military honors burials of my father and only brother – in the national cemetery there. Both were over-indulgent dicks that hated each other and at times enjoyed making life very difficult for those around them. If I ever go there again it won’t be to visit their graves. It would be to try and tell Chelsea thank you in person, and that she did a good thing. She helped open many eyes to the truth of an out-of-control war machine – hiding its crimes well.
https://freedom.press/chelsea
And thank you, Mr. Jeremy, for your Amy G-like conscience. Somehow, we should all so suffer.
I apologize for being blind to this, but does the Intercept have what she posted? I didn’t hear anything about this and I wish I did. Thank you for this article.
Wikileaks has all of it. Particularly the video “Collateral Murder”.
One of the 1st things Trump should do is pardon Manning, along with inviting Julian Assange and Edward Snowden to live in the United States, or return to it. while being exempt from any criminal charges being brought against them for any activities engaged in prior to the present time.
Finally an article discussing the national security state and its real, material oppression of Chelsea. A large part of her crime was exposing the criminal activity of Hillary Clinton, the darling of the Intercept and its owner who gave $100,000 to the NeverTrump fund.
I think it was in Chelsea’s documents that we read about how Hillary Clinton was instructing diplomats at the State Department to steal credit card information from their counterparts in other countries — what a disgrace to the art of diplomacy.
Great piece
Thanks, Jeremy.
A very timely article . Thanks Jeremy and thanks Chelsea.
Thank You, Jeremy Scahill for this, thank you.
“Torture”, really…?
I can understand it must be pretty hard for her (an understatement) but I think we should use words in their true meaning…. how will you then call the treatment of those Guantanamo prisoners, waterboarded hundreds of time, if Manning is,according to you, being tortured???
They are also being tortured.
Um…torture.
You think there is only one method of torture?
For much of the time Manning has been in custody, she has been held in solitary confinement. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan E. Méndez, declared that the use of solitary confinement for more than a few consecutive days does indeed constitute torture, because it can and frequently does inflict permanent and serious injury to the mental health of the person so held.
The world doesn’t need more leaks or more journalism or more scrutiny or discussion; it needs more action and more people that even care to take that action.
The evidence is sufficient, yet Americans do nothing and the majority of the ruling elites of the world refuse to act in any way. This is why there is a War on Terror, so that if we, the people of the world, speak out they can drone assassinate us.
Eternal Respect to Chelsea and Ed Snowden; but I guess their only real solace is that they were strong and righteous amongst a multitude of weakling and sinners for we all have truly failed them. The list of worthies is all too short.
The ruling elites are the ones responsible for the situations of Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. The crimes of the establishment were exposed by these courageous people. What we can continue to do is honor their sacrifice and their service and work to throw the ruling class into the dustbin of history!
I went to Quantico 2x to protest her incarceration. I hope she’s freed and hrc is put in her place!
I don’t think Scahill goes far enough in enumerating the many ways Chelsea Manning has been tortured since her revealing of govt brutalities done in the name of all Americans. I’m sad but not surprised that she has tried to commit suicide twice since sentenced. For what, exactly? Sharing with Americans what should have been shared with us from the beginning. Keeping Americans uninformed and stupid does not jibe with basic democratic principles. Holding people and administrations accountable for misdeeds and mistakes is the only way our govt should work. Allowing Hillary Clinton to keep her work secret from the American public then giving her a pass because she apologized is appalling when you consider the excessive punishment of Chelsea Manning by a govt that failed to prosecute one banker for its looting and destabilization of the country.
I bet one of Trump’s first acts as president will be to put the kibosh on any trans surgeries for Chelsea. I hope she’s not in the middle of anything requiring multiple surgeries when he gets in, or she might be half finished for a very long time.
The torturous and corrupt, evil Obama administration is finished, and so by the looks of things are the Democrats and the Clintons, it looks like they have reaped what they sowed for their betrayal of the people, and for their crimes against humanity. Sure to be some arrests soon. Looks like a another Brexit style shock for the elite establishment ha ha
https://wikileaks.org/Assange-Statement-on-the-US-Election.html
Great article: the first that I read connecting the dots to the Manning’s torture.
…and it didn’t happen under boogeyman Drumpf. It happened under Obama.
The American Psychiatric Association remained silent and complicit re: Manning’s torture.
None of the disclosures in this campaign — not one thing […] — has brought to light anything of greater importance than the documents Chelsea Manning provided to Wikileaks. She revealed war crimes, including murder and torture, dirty and duplicitous dealings of the U.S. and its allies, exposed liars, documented a secret history of America’s longest running war, and forced a much needed debate about the U.S. role in the world. And for that, she is being tortured.
Yes, she is being brutally tortured, and she is not the only one. There are many others being tortured under the Idiot American Nose, with its full approval. And you forgot to mention another important fact. In addition to the already mentioned feats, she also exposed the cowardice, stupidity, and malice of the Amercan Voter to at least two dozen people in the U S.
And kudos to Wikileaks for publishing those documents in a responsible manner, despite the patriotic disaproval of many who just voted for The Party again.
Well it isn’t looking good for Hillary Clinton.
Hopefully Dems learn a very valuable lesson from this election (they won’t), because you are seeing the consequence of selling the American working class (white, black, latino and every other) down the river . . . they don’t trust what you tell them because your words amount to shit compared to your actions, and quite frankly the thin veneer of civility that keeps a nation together is precisely that–thin.
And the fuckhead morons at places like LGM won’t be able to blame it on Stein voters given her less than 1% returns, or unmotivated millenials and the young.
GOP turnout is exceeding all expectations because people hate the Clintons. Suck on that for a while national Democratic Party assholes and all you primary voters who buy into that centrist identity politics bullshit.
Simple fact is–the economy trumps every other voting calculus. And when the vast majority of the country is feeling the economic squeeze they won’t vote with their brains or reason, but will vote with emotion and to shake things up–whatever that shake up yields. You combine that with a big fat dose of white resentment (bigotry, misogyny whatever you want to label it) and long term economic dislocation and insecurity, and you get a race that shouldn’t even have been close, but just might go down in history as one of the biggest unexpected political wipeouts ever.
But hey, the LGM dickheads and bean counters think they’ve got it all figured out and they don’t understand the first thing about human beings, or their “politics” or anything else because they are too busy fellating each other based on their intellectual sophistication and mocking the rubes. Trust me the rubes always exact their revenge one way or the other.
If the Dems lose, they’ll take away the wrongs lessons. They always do. Their response after everyone loss is, ‘We need to move harder to the right. We need to further distance ourselves from our traditional base.’
Maybe their pedigreed consultants will work ’round the clock to design a better logo with two right arrows.
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha . . .
Those dumbasses at LGM still think this is about misogyny and racism. It isn’t.
Donald Trump will be a disaster, and until the Democratic Party can offer a “clean alternative” instead of the their triangulating self-serving bullshit, they are toast.
Bernie Sanders would have handed Trump his ass. So much for the “minority” coalition that doesn’t have to appeal to universal human economic values.
In another 25 years maybe the Dems could win with their “identity politics” triangulating bullshit, but when you hang 65% of the American public out to dry economically, nobody, and I mean nobody with even the slightest understanding of human beings and politics should be surprised that somebody like Trump wins.
Lemieux and Loomis and those idiots at LGM are precisely that–casting for someone to blame instead of looking at themselves. I couldn’t be less surprised then if you told me the sun was going to rise tomorrow.
Fucking Clintons–this is precisely what they and their third way DLC fellow travelers have brought on themselves.
While my satisfaction at seeing this article, and my gratitude, are both boundless, it sickens my already ill soul to ponder on this as the nation rapturously watches election returns that matter so little. Clinton will almost certainly win, and the evil ones whom she represents — and whom she is herself — will prosper and kill more people.
All as Chelsea suffers untold horror. Not even permitted to take her life.
Futures traders sodding their pants… Clinton mafia loses Penn., Ohio, and Florida’s electoral votes to Trump mafia… Repeated assertions of “certain” downgraded to “almost certain” HRC coronation… Your perceptions have failed to align with reality again. Do you care yet or is it a learning disability?
Anyhow, the crocodile tears for Ms. Manning were soulful — schizophrenic, given your collaboration work — but a nice touch.
you’re story puts a human suffering reminder of our sociopathic mean spirited leaders of this culture/government and the deliberate stupidness of it.
Chelsea Manning cracked open the Iraq War corruption and stupidty, exposing the idiocy of the Bush Administration to the public. . . . A pardon is more than justified – but no, we have the Obama “cleaner” team, running non-stop Espionage Act prosecutions against anyone who exposed the criminality of the US government.
I wish I could have given a few points of advice to Manning, though, about how to maintain opsec, how to leak documents without getting caught, just a few pointers for whistleblowers in the modern era. Was it inevitable that Manning would be captured and prosecuted and tortured by our government? I don’t think so. We need more people like Manning, not fewer – people willing to put moral principle ahead of loyalty to the system.
When we look at how the U.S. government has treated Manning, while sucking up to the evil Saudis and every other dictator and torturer on the face of the planet, all we can conclude is that the U.S. government has a lot of criminal elements inside it, dirty birds willing to abuse and torture their critics as a lesson to others who might be thinking of doing the same thing.
The best response is not to go along with the criminal government, but to learn from these events and figure out ways to leak government secrets without getting caught. That’s what real patriots do – because these clowns in power are out to undermine American democracy and replace it with a plutocratic oligarchic Soviet-style state.
The champions of democracy in Washington have deep hatred for the truth.
Does anyone have any doubt about this?
“The true scandal”
This is a corrupt system that is riddled with scandals. Far worse than any third world country, that we try to fix by bombing or threat of bombing.
POTUS got the Nobel Peace Prize, Chelsea Manning got my respect. Sorry, it is not worth much.
One thing everyone learned over the past year is that we all cannot ever again trust the White House, the FBI, the NSA, the “left wing” media. To all of included in this bunch – fuck off! We really don’t need any of you sleaze bags.
Change that to “a true scandal” and it’s perfectly accurate and correct. Chelsea’s ongoing treatment at the hands of US authorities is vicious torture.
Using the definite article, the, however, is ridiculous. Is Chelsea’s treatment more scandalous than that of the poor Americans who have been summarily executed by cops this year? Is it more truly scandalous than supporting the Saudi atrocities in Yemen, or al Qaeda in Syria?
Is it more scandalous, for that matter, than the typical treatment of hundreds of thousands of other prisoners of the American PIC? No, it is not. That doesn’t make it less scandalous, “merely” less than unique, far from the most outrageous. Much less.
The torture of Chelsea Manning, which could well lead to the murder–direct or indirect– of Chelsea Manning is an ongoing and “true scandal.” But in line with what you’re saying, Doug Salzman, the ongoing militarized police rioting and brutalizing cops of, at the behest of Obama, Clinton and their donor oil industry, against the Water Protectors who are trying to stop Dakota Access Pipeline is “a true scandal.” It’s a living, current action which should starkly remind us all of The Inglorious History of the United States and how dangerous is the power still being held over us is that we have to get out from under.
Yes.
I remain horrified, furious and nearly hopeless.
Haven’t read a word yet, but want you to know, Jeremy, that a lot of people know this and support you and Chelsea. Please convey regards to her.
This short piece is a good example of why i consider you one of the most important journalists of our time. Thank you for writing and producing Dirty Wars in both its written and video formats. To the extent that you are able, please keep us up to date on what you’re publishing.
Assange is living a torture in it’s own way, so is Snowden. All whistleblowers take huge risk for the sake of making the world a better place, and as with any situation some do it only for money. I agree Manning got the worst end of it and i suspect if Assange is caught he will get the same treatment.
especially if Clinton become President.
To be fair, Trump wanted Snowden killed as well. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/2/donald-trump-edward-snowden-kill-traitor/
ghaddafi did some good in libya, but i wonder if trying to make a currency change is why ,hillary came,saw and he died. she’s a friend of the lunatic asylum that’s called the pentagon and kissinger.
Perfectly argued.
Collateral Murder, never prosecuted.
Yes there are two America’s.