Julian Assange - On Tuesday, 30 July 2013, Bradley Manning, a whistleblower, was convicted by a military court at Fort Meade of 19 offences for supplying the press with information, including five counts of ’espionage’. He now faces a maximum sentence of 136 years. The ’aiding the enemy’ charge has fallen away. It was only included, it seems, to make calling journalism ’espionage’ seem reasonable. It is not. Bradley Manning’s alleged disclosures have exposed war...
WikiLeaks is playing a central role in helping National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden apply for political asylum in Ecuador. Michael Ratner, an attorney for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, praised Ecuador for standing up to the United States. "They’re trying to bully other countries, not only by pulling his passport away so that he can’t travel, but by saying, 'Send him back to us. Don't take him in. There’ll be consequences,’" Ratner says....
The military trial of Army whistleblower Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, Maryland, began Monday, 4 June 2013, with the defense and prosecution presenting starkly contrasting accounts. Manning is accused of giving a cache of 700,000 secret U.S. government documents and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks in the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history. Democracy Now! interviews Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a lawyer to Julian Assange and...
On Tuesday, Ecuador's foreign minister accused the British government of trampling on Julian Assange's rights by refusing to allow him to travel to Ecuador, which granted him political asylum almost a year ago. Joining Democracy Now! from the embassy, Assange addresses what he calls "attacks on all fronts against WikiLeaks", from a monetary embargo involving some of the world's largest financial firms to a new Hollywood documentary on WikiLeaks, "We Steal Secrets". Assange...
In February this year Private First Class Bradley Manning pleaded guilty to sending restricted documents to WikiLeaks in violation of military regulations, making him the source of the largest intelligence leak in US history. In his statement to the court he talked about "revealing the true costs of war". Ahead of his trial in June, a panel of media and human rights specialists, including former Guardian investigations editor David Leigh, Al Jazeera's Richard Gizbert, New...
Chris Hedges - LONDON—A tiny tip of the vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying WikiLeaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange, appears outside the red-brick building on Hans Crescent Street that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange, the world’s best-known political refugee, has been in the embassy since he was offered sanctuary there last June. British police in black Kevlar vests are perched night and day on the...