by Chase Madar
Glenn Greenwald,“The CIA’s impunity on ‘torture tapes’,” The Guardian, October 7, 2011.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/07/cia-impunity-torture-tapes
Scott Horton, “The Law of Armed Conflict: Six Questions for Gary Solis,” Harper’s, April 20, 2010. http://harpers.org/archive/2010/04/hbc-90006912
David Kennedy, Of War and Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)
David Leigh and Maggie O’Kane, “Iraq War Logs: US turned over captives to Iraqi torture squads,” The Guardian, October 24, 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/iraq-war-logs-us-iraqi-torture
Karma Nabulsi, The Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance, and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Adrian Vermeule, “Our Schmittian Administrative Law,” Harvard Law Review Vol. 122, Vol. 122: 1095 (2009)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, thanks to Tom Engelhardt, editor of TomDispatch, for putting me on this story to begin with and for his enthusiasm and sage counsel throughout.
Jesselyn Radack, National Security and Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Office, gave me a detailed tutorial on whistleblower protection law, laws in which she has figured heroically as both attorney and client. Professor Marjorie Cohn of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law graciously shared her expertise on conscientious objector cases and Susan Tipograph of the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, gave of her treasure-house of courtroom war stories to tell me about political defenses.
Many thanks to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists for giving his expert opinion on over-classification and on WikiLeaks.
Dr. Larbi Sadiki of the University of Exeter and Al Jazeera and Jillian York of the Electronic Frontier Foundation both gave me thoughtful, invaluable insight into the role WikiLeaks did and did not play in the Tunisian uprising and the Arab Spring more generally.
Ray McGovern, retired senior analyst for CIA, generously gave of his wisdom and knowledge and a riveting seminar in Thomist political philosophy.
Thanks to Kim Ives of Haiti Liberté for introducing me to Haitian-American leaders like the great Tony Jean-Thenor, who told me how the Haiti leaks had energized his community group.
Historians John Milton Cooper of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Trygve Thronveit of Harvard put Wilson’s notion of “open diplomacy” in proper historical perspective. My great mentor Bart Bernstein, Professor Emeritus of History at Stanford, provided many connections and a candid account of the way Washington over-classifies diplomatic records.
Thanks to Chavala Madlena, Maggie O’Kane and Guy Grandjean of The Guardian for sharing a source with me, and for their unsurpassed reporting on Bradley Manning’s time in the US Army.
Jacob Sullivan and Peter Van Buren both told me about their time on FOB Hammer in the Mada’in Qada desert of Iraq. Van Buren’s rich and scabrous memoir of his stint as a Foreign Service Officer in Iraq, We Meant Well (Metropolitan, 2011), is and will continue to be one of the best books on the US invasion and occupation.
Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative, gave of his valuable time to discuss the numerous “black holes” in our everyday domestic legal system; Jean Casella and James Ridgeway of the excellent Solitary Watch also gave me friendly help.
Many thanks to David Glazier of Loyola Law School and Michelle McCluer, Executive Director of the National Institute of Military Justice at the Washington College of Law, who were a constant source of rapid elucidation on military law and procedure.
I owe tuition to Naz Modirzadeh, Associate Director of Harvard’s Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research for the excellent backgrounder she gave me on the laws of armed conflict; thanks also to Claude Bruderlein, Executive Director of the Program, for the thoughtful comments he provided. Thank you to Gabor Rona, Legal Director of Human Rights First and Tom Parker, Policy Director for Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Human Rights at Amnesty International for their thoughts on the “Collateral Murder” video and the laws of armed conflict. Thanks also to Gary Solis of Georgetown University Law Center for a long interview on international humanitarian law.
I am indebted to my publisher, John Oakes and to the OR Books team of Fernanda Diaz and Crystal Williams for their patience and hard work, and to my friend Graydon Gordian for seeing through the first phase of the project. Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for granting permission to use his splendid cartoons.
Thanks to Rich Chang for edits on the biographical section, and to my brother Josiah Madar for a deep reading and the rule of law chapter.
Thanks to Amanda and Bill Madar who obliged their firstborn by converting their home into a deluxe writer’s colony for nearly a month.
Eyal Press, Nicholas Arons, Belén Fernández, Idrees Ahmad, Adam Shatz, Karma Nabulsi, Satish Moorthy and Troy Selvaratnam all fueled the project with their unsolicited encouragement. I am grateful for an emergency power boost from Rosemund and Nils Vaule and for a neighborly landline from Lumi Rolley and Eric McClure.
Most of all, thanks to my luminous bride Jennifer M. Turner for her love and care and edits and supreme patience throughout.
FOR FURTHER READING
The story of Pfc. Manning is not over; this book is likely only the first installment.
For updates on his case and on the movement behind him, the best source is the Bradley Manning Support Network website, http://www.bradleymanning.org. Kevin Gosztola of FireDogLake’s “Dissenter” blog has provided excellent up-to-the-minute coverage, and his FDL colleagues Marcy Wheeler and Jane Hamsher have also poured their talent and energy into thoughtful analyses. Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has also brought his skills as a constitutional lawyer and fiercely independent mind to bear on all the issues at stake in this case. The various WikiLeaks sites—WikiLeaks Press and WikiLeaks Central, among others—also provide constant news and updates. (Traditional print media has not been wholly deficient: The Guardian has covered the Manning story with a thoroughness and sense of proportion rarely found in other newspapers.)
Manning’s lawyer, David E. Coombs, gives valuable regular updates on his blog and website, www.armycourtmartialdefense.com.
For news on over-classification and government secrecy, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists blogs regularly while the National Security Archive focuses on the declassification of foreign policy documents.
Stay current on the overuse of solitary confinement in America and the struggle to end it at the websites of Solitary Watch and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. For coverage of Guantánamo and other war on terror detention matters, no one surpasses author, reporter and blogger Andy Worthington. Anything by Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, the dean of Gitmo journalists who has been whisked off the base once and banned a second time, is also well worth reading.
For foreign affairs coverage outside the narrow Beltway consensus, the first step is to subscribe to TomDispatch’s thrice-weekly reports. CounterPunch and PulseMedia provide a variety of left-of-center viewpoints; The American Conservative provides an equally anti-imperialist outlook from the paleoconservative right. (Daniel Larison’s Eunomia blog at the TAC site is particularly worthwhile.) Black Agenda Report examines Washington and the world from a Black left perspective and is essential reading. Critical views from the “realist” school can be found at Stephen Walt’s excellent ForeignPolicy.com blog, also on the terrific group blog “The Skeptics” at The National Interest. Electronic Intifada and MondoWeiss offer badly needed analysis and opinions on US policy in the Middle East, as does Al Jazeera’s English website. AntiWar.com, run by libertarians but politically ecumenical, is a daily must.
The greatest source of critical views on international law and the laws of war is the Italian site Jura Gentium run by Professor Danilo Zolo at the University of Florence. Much of it is translated into English.
As of this writing, Pfc. Bradley Manning himself can be reached at #89289, JRCF,
830 Sabalu Road, Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2315. According to his lawyer, Bradley Manning greatly appreciates friendly letters.