Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 224

Pfc. Manning's Statements

UPDATE  The Army will not offer hormone therapy as requested by Pfc. Manning. Today quotes statement:  "Inmates at the United States Disciplinary Barracks and Joint Regional Correctional Facility are treated equally regardless of race, rank, ethnicity or sexual orientation. All inmates are considered soldiers and are treated as such with access to mental health professionals, including a psychiatrist, psychologist, social workers and behavioral science noncommissioned officers with experience in addressing the needs of military personnel in pre- and post-trial confinement....

"The Army does not provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery for gender identity disorder.   The USDB has implemented risk assessment protocols and safety procedures to address high risk factors identified with the Prison Rape Elimination Act."


Earlier today:  Pfc. Manning released another statement via attorney David Coombs on the Today show just now, including:  “I am Chelsea Manning. I am female.  Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition.... I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility). I look forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back.”  Manning again thanked supporters and signed the note, "Chelsea E. Manning." Attorney said he expects Manning to be paroled in seven years but still hopes for pardon before then.

Released via  attorney on Wednesday:

The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of the concern for my country and the wrold that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We have been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on a traditional battlefield. Due to this fact, we’ve had to alter our methods of combatting the risk posed to us and our way of life.

I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend our country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time that I realized that our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our humanity

We consciously elected to devalue life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians.

Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism any logically-based dissension, it is usually an American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism and the Japanese-American internment camps—to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.

As the late Howard Zinn once said, there is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

I understand that my actions violated the law. I regret that my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and my sense of duty to others.

If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my request knowing that some time you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.

Nixon's Last Tapes

It's dirty work but someone's got to do it.  You may have heard that the final trove of Nixon's infamous tapes were released today at the Nixon Library, with very little descriptive to help researchers.  Well, the Atlantic Wire plunged in, and offers this partial report.   They say there's more on Watergate but they stick pretty much to Nixon in his classic Jew-hating, and black-mocking mode.   So we've got him damning an aide's "Jewish soul" and saying blacks will never run Jamaica well for a 100 or 1000 years.  And those little black kids don't like him much (for some reason).  Surely more to come.   I should not that I was the very first researcher to use the library, even before it opened, doing some digging for my Nixon-Douglas book.

Bradley Manning's Statement Today

Released via his attorney.
 ***

The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of the concern for my country and the wrold that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We have been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on a traditional battlefield. Due to this fact, we’ve had to alter our methods of combatting the risk posed to us and our way of life.

I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend our country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time that I realized that our efforts to meet the risk posed to us by the enemy, we had forgotten our humanity

We consciously elected to devalue life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians.

Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.

In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.

Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism any logically-based dissension, it is usually an American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism and the Japanese-American internment camps—to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.

As the late Howard Zinn once said, there is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

I understand that my actions violated the law. I regret that my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and my sense of duty to others.

If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my request knowing that some time you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.

Man Who Brought Beatles to USA Dies

Sid Bernstein helped launch "The British Invasion," and later brought Beatles back for final appearance here, at Shea (see below).  During the '70s, we repeatedly covered Bernstein, at Crawdaddy, as he made calls for the Beatles to re-form (with his help). 

Kurt Vonnegut Meets Kilgore Trout

Here's a second excerpt from my new e-book, Vonnegut and Me: Conversations and Close Encounters of the Weird Kind.  (First excerpt here.)   One feature of the book is the full text of my epic 1974 profile for Crawdaddy, which Vonnegut at the time hailed as the best piece written about him.  I'd interviewed him in New York, then mixed actual quotes from that with a fanciful reunion of his most famous characters--all under the byline of Kilgore Trout.  Here's a very small part of it.
**
by Kilgore Trout

I had to be at the Hilton for the symposium at 3 o'clock; the others wouldn't be arriving at Vonnegut's until 2:30. I welcomed the opportunity to spend some time alone with my Creator and didn't feel all that bad that I wouldn't get a chance to fool around with my fellow former slaves -- even though Eliot Rosewater, for instance, was one of my biggest fans.

What were we doing walking around with all that free will? Vonnegut had explained the motivation behind his dramatic Emancipation Proclamation in his latest book, Breakfast of Champions.

"As I approached my fiftieth birthday," he wrote, "I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

"Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.

"Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life," Vonnegut continued, "I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life."

And he promised: "I'm not going to put on any more puppet shows."

So the Creator had cut the strings on his dancing dolls. "I won't be needing them anymore," he told one interviewer. "They can pursue their own destinies. I guess that means I'm free to pursue my destiny, too."

So there I was, sleeping in dirty movie houses and walking down East 48th Street, pursuing my own destiny.

Since Vonnegut no longer needed me, I was free to write for anyone: reputable publishers, publishers of beaver books -- anyone. At that moment, in fact, I was considering ways I could turn that afternoon's gathering into a big-deal magazine article for a certain national magazine.

I was only a half block from my Creator, and slowing down. I wondered if he would recognize me. Since our previous meeting, my hair had gotten thinner on top and greyer on the sides, and I had shaved my scraggly white beard. Still, there were these distinguishing features: I am snaggle-toothed and missing the top joint of my right ring finger.

Vonnegut did that to me, incidentally. He had me born snaggle-toothed, and had Dwayne Hoover bite off the top of my finger at the end of Breakfast of Champions. Hoover had done that because of something he had read in a book, Now It Can Be Told. I wrote that book.

Vonnegut had also given me a tremendous wang. You never know who'll get one.

There I was in front of his four-floor Victorian brownstone, where he had moved within the past month from another location ten blocks away, with his lady-friend, whom I shall call Ellen.  West Barnstable, Cape Cod, where he had constructed me and most of his other puppets, was now four years in his distant past. I rang the bell and within seconds, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was at the door.

"Here I am," I offered.

"So glad you are," he said, taking my bag.

He spoke twangily and his smile went on and on. He's a sweet old poop, a big man, six-feet-three, broad shoulders, no hips, no belly, less of the bear of a man I had remembered from our previous, brief meeting on a dark night. His hair had been trimmed, also.

"Mr. Trout -- Kilgore," he began to say, ushering me into the apartment, when suddenly somewhere a big dog barked.

Vonnegut's diffident bloodhound Lope appeared at the entrance to the living room. I recoiled. I'm scared to death of dogs. Vonnegut shooed him away.

"I got him from my brother," he said, confidentially. "He has to fight all the time because he can't wag his tail."

He introduced me to Ellen, a pale, dark-haired woman in her early 30s who was busy unpacking boxes. They had just moved in.

"It's a nice cozy house you have here," I said, and it really was.

"It takes a heap of living," Vonnegut said, "to make a house a home."

The room was bare but for the black leather couch we sat on, a glass coffee table alongside and shelves of books against two walls.  Vonnegut was dressed in terribly baggy but good tweed pants, a green V-neck sweater and brown hush puppies.

"What are you doing now, my old friend?" he asked, his dark eyebrows shooting up and his lips breaking into a really fine grin. He had left me in Cohoes, New York, installing aluminum storm windows and screens. Before that he had made me circulation man for the Ilium Gazette -- made me bully, and flatter and cheat little delivery boys.

I told him I was back at the job he'd made me leave a decade before at a stamp redemption center in Hyannis, Massachusetts. "Think of the sacrilege of a Jesus figure redeeming stamps," I said, softly.

What Manning Revealed

The debate in the media, and in political, circles over Edward Snowden--Right or Wrong--often doubles back on references to Bradley Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison this morning.  Too often (that is, most of the time), the value and import of the Manning/WikiLeaks disclosures are ignored or dismissed, just as Snowden's NSA scoops often derided as "nothing new." 

So for those who either suffer from memory loss or ignorance on this particular score, here is a partial accounting of some of the important revelations in the Manning leak, drawn from my book (with Kevin Gosztola) on the Manning case, Truth and Consequences .  The book was updated to this past June but the revelations below all came before March 2011--many others followed.

First, just a very partial list from "Cablegate" (excluding many other bombshells that caused a stir in smaller nations abroad):

-U.S. pressured the European Union to accept GM — genetic modification, that is.

-Yemeni president lied to his own people, claiming his military carried out air strikes on militants actually done by U.S.  All part of giving U.S. full rein in country against terrorists.

-U.S. tried to get Spain to curb its probes of Gitmo torture and rendition.

-Egyptian torturers trained by FBI—although allegedly to teach the human rights issues.

-State Dept memo: U.S.-backed 2009 coup in Honduras was 'illegal and unconstitutional.'”

-Cables on Tunisia appear to help spark revolt in that country. The country's ruling elite described as “The Family,” with Mafia-like skimming throughout the economy. The country's First Lady may have made massive profits off a private school.

-U.S. knew all about massive corruption in Tunisia back in 2006 but went on supporting the government anyway, making it the pillar of its North Africa policy.

-Cables showed the UK promised in 2009 to protect U.S interests in the official Chilcot inquiry on the start of the Iraq war.

-Washington was misled by our own diplomats on Russia-Georgia showdown.

-Extremely important historical document finally released in full: Ambassador April Glaspie's cable from Iraq in 1990 on meeting with Saddam Hussein before Kuwait invasion.

-The UK sidestepped a ban on housing cluster bombs. Officials concealed from Parliament how the U.S. is allowed to bring weapons on to British soil in defiance of treaty.

-New York Times:  “From hundreds of diplomatic cables, Afghanistan emerges as a looking-glass land where bribery, extortion and embezzlement are the norm and the honest man is a distinct outlier.”

-Afghan vice president left country with $52 million “in cash.”

-Shocking levels of U.S. spying at the United Nations (beyond what was commonly assumed) and intense use of diplomats abroad in intelligence-gathering roles.

-Potential environmental disaster kept secret by the US when a large consignment of highly enriched uranium in Libya came close to cracking open and leaking radioactive material into the atmosphere.

-U.S. used threats, spying, and more to try to get its way at last year's crucial climate conference in Copenhagen.

-Details on Vatican hiding big sex abuse cases in Ireland.

-Hundreds of cables detail U.S. use of diplomats as “sales” agents, more than previously thought, centering on jet rivalry of Boeing vs. Airbus. Hints of corruption and bribes.

-Millions in U.S. military aid for fighting Pakistani insurgents went to other gov't uses (or stolen) instead.

-Israel wanted to bring Gaza to the ”brink of collapse.”

-The U.S. secret services used Turkey as a base to transport terrorism suspects as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

-As protests spread in Egypt, cables revealed that strong man Suleiman was at center of government's torture programs, causing severe backlash for Mubarak after he named Suleiman vice president during the revolt.  Other cables revealed or confirmed widespread Mubarak regime corruption, police abuses and torture, and claims of massive Mubarak famiiy fortune, significantly influencing media coverage and U.S. response.

Now, an excerpt from our book on just small aspect of the Iraq war cables.  This doesn't even include the release of the "Collateral Murder" video earlier.

Al Jazeera suggested that the real bombshell was the U.S. allowing Iraqis to torture detainees. Documents revealed that U.S. soldiers sent 1300 reports to headquarters with graphic accounts, including a few about detainees beaten to death.  Some U.S. generals wanted our troops to intervene, but Pentagon chiefs disagreed, saying these assaults should only be reported, not stopped.   At a time the U.S. was declaring that no torture was going on, there were 41 reports of such abuse still happening “and yet the U.S. chose to turn its back.”
      The New York Times report on the torture angle included this: “The six years of reports include references to the deaths of at least six prisoners in Iraqi custody, most of them in recent years. Beatings, burnings and lashings surfaced in hundreds of reports, giving the impression that such treatment was not an exception. In one case, Americans suspected Iraqi Army officers of cutting off a detainee’s fingers and burning him with acid. Two other cases produced accounts of the executions of bound detainees.
    “And while some abuse cases were investigated by the Americans, most noted in the archive seemed to have been ignored, with the equivalent of an institutional shrug: soldiers told their officers and asked the Iraqis to investigate….That policy was made official in a report dated May 16, 2005, saying that ‘if US forces were not involved in the detainee abuse, no further investigation will be conducted until directed by HHQ.’ In many cases, the order appeared to allow American soldiers to turn a blind eye to abuse of Iraqis on Iraqis.” 
     Amnesty International quickly called on the U.S. to investigate how much our commanders knew about Iraqi torture.
     A top story at the Guardian, meanwhile, opened: “Leaked Pentagon files obtained by the Guardian contain details of more than 100,000 people killed in Iraq following the US-led invasion, including more than 15,000 deaths that were previously unrecorded.
     “British ministers have repeatedly refused to concede the existence of any official statistics on Iraqi deaths. U.S. General Tommy Franks claimed 'We don't do body counts.' The mass of leaked documents provides the first detailed tally by the U.S. military of Iraqi fatalities. Troops on the ground filed secret field reports over six years of the occupation, purporting to tote up every casualty, military and civilian.
     “Iraq Body Count, a London-based group that monitors civilian casualties, told the Guardian:  'These logs contain a huge amount of entirely new information regarding casualties. Our analysis so far indicates that they will add 15,000 or more previously unrecorded deaths to the current IBC total. This data should never have been withheld from the public”’  The logs recorded a total of 109,032 violent deaths between 2004 and 2009.
     Citing a new document,  the Times reported: “According to one particularly painful entry from 2006, an Iraqi wearing a tracksuit was killed by an American sniper who later discovered that the victim was the platoon’s interpreter….The documents...reveal many previously unreported instances in which American soldiers killed civilians—at checkpoints, from helicopters, in operations. Such killings are a central reason Iraqis turned against the American presence in their country, a situation that is now being repeated in Afghanistan.”

And now,  re: the Afghanistan war logs:

     The Times highlighted it as “The War Logs” with the subhed, “A six-year archive of classified military documents offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war.” Explicitly, or by extension, the release also raised questions about the media coverage of the war to date.
     The Guardian carried a tough editorial on its web site, calling the picture “disturbing” and raising doubts about ever winning this war, adding: “These war logs—written in the heat of engagement—show a conflict that is brutally messy, confused and immediate.  It is in some contrast with the tidied-up and sanitized 'public' war, as glimpsed through official communiques as well as the necessarily limited snapshots of embedded reporting.”
     Elsewhere, the paper traced the CIA and paramilitary roles in the deaths of civilians in Afghanistan, many cases hidden until now. In one incident, a U.S. patrol machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15.  David Leigh wrote, “They range from the shootings of individual innocents to the often massive loss of life from air strikes, which eventually led President Hamid Karzai to protest publicly that the US was treating Afghan lives as ‘cheap’.”
     The paper said the logs also detailed “how the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.”    Previously unknown friendly fire incidents also surfaced.
     The White House, which knew what was coming, quickly slammed the release of classified reports -– most labeled “secret” — and pointed out the documents ended in 2009, just before the president set a new policy in the war; and claimed that the whole episode was suspect because WikiLeaks was against the war.   Still, it was hard to dismiss official internal memos such as:  “The general view of Afghans is that current gov't is worse than the Taliban.”
     Among the revelations that gained prime real estate from The New York Times: “The documents… suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.”  The Guardian, however, found no “smoking gun” on this matter. The Times also reported that the U.S. had given Afghans credit for missions carried out by our own Special Ops teams. 

Obviously much more in our book.

Manning Sentenced to 35 Years

As with the verdict I'll be covering closely (from a few hundred miles north).  Follow my co-author on our Manning book, Kevin Gosztola, @kgosztola.

11:30 Strong piece by John Cassidy at The New Yorker on the "draconian" sentence and history absolving Manning.  "In fifty years, people will look on the Manning case as another blot on a dark era for the United States and the values that it claims to hold dear. As for Manning himself, future historians will surely agree with Ellsberg, who, speaking to the A.P. yesterday, described him as 'one more casualty of a horrible, wrongful war.'”

8:00 p.m.  NYT editorial calls Manning sentence "excessive.... by any standard."  And adds:  "But the larger issue, which is not resolved by Private Manning’s sentencing, is the federal government’s addiction to secrecy and what it will do when faced with future leaks, an inevitability when 92 million documents are classified in a year and more than 4 million Americans have security clearance."

4:30  Daniel Ellsberg responds.  Manning another victim of Iraq war. 

1:35   At press conference going on now, Manning attorney David Coombs says he will formally ask President Obama to pardon the soldier "or at the very least commute his sentence to time served."  Also reads statement from Manning: "We consciously elected to devalue human life in Iraq and Afghanistan."  Also Manning quotes Howard Zinn: "There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."  Amnesty Int'l also just made that "time served" request.

Coombs says he in Manning both "in tears" after sentencing but Manning cheered him up.  Reveals that early gov't plea deal called for sentence longer than 35 years--and Manning would have had to testify.  Coombs' advice to Edward Snowden: "Current environment isn't friendly to whistleblowers."

12:35  Michael Moore tweets:  "35 years. For being what an American is supposed to be. Shame."  Great Twitter storm after David Frum tweeted "shocker" that you'd get punished if you release national security secrets.  Many responded with such as "Shocker--murder civilians and not punished."  Or "Shocker--torture and no consequences."  Or: "Invade country with lies--no penalty."

11:25 Alex Gibney, director of the We Steal Secrets film, tweets:  "Outrageous sentence of Bradley Manning. terrible day for US. ...No prosecutions for torture sanctioned by US officials but Manning gets 35 years. Is that justice? BM is 21st century Eddie Slovik."  Gibney, in our interview months ago, raised the case of the executed World War II soldier repeatedly.

11:20  ACLU's comment here.  Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project:  "When a soldier who shared information with the press and public is punished far more harshly than others who tortured prisoners and killed civilians, something is seriously wrong with our justice system. A legal system that doesn't distinguish between leaks to the press in the public interest and treason against the nation will not only produce unjust results, but will deprive the public of critical information that is necessary for democratic accountability. This is a sad day for Bradley Manning, but it's also a sad day for all Americans who depend on brave whistleblowers and a free press for a fully informed public debate."

11:15  BBC's Mark Mardell:  "Bradley Manning stood to attention as he heard the sentence of 35 years - no flicker on his face. All took just seconds."

11:00  Reminder:  My full report on key things we learned from what Manning leaked--an amazing list.

10:35 Report from scene by co-author of my Manning book, Kevin Gosztola.  "Guards quickly escorted Manning out of the courtroom as supporters in the gallery shouted, 'We’ll keep fighting you, Bradley,' and also told him he was a hero."  And:  “At the time of the charged offense,” Judge Army Col. Denise Lind found, “al Qaeda and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were enemies of the United States. Pfc. Manning knew that al Qaeda was an enemy of the United States.” His conduct was “of a heedless nature that made it actually and imminently dangerous to others.”

More from Gosztola:  "With regard to the Espionage Act offenses, she found, 'The more than one classified memorandum produced by a United States government intelligence agency was closely held by the United States government. PFC. Manning had reason to believe the information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.'”
10:20   Manning gets 35 years.  MSNBC military expert says eligible to get out in 10 years.   He must serve about one-third of sentence, which is 31 years counting the "time served."  Forfeit of all pay & allowances. Dishonorably discharged.  Minus 1294 days for time detained and treatment at Quantico.   CNN guest says sentence can be reviewed in six months. Glenn Greenwald tweets: "Sick, sad, pathetic, and disgusting....gee, I wonder why Snowden doesn't trust US justice as a whistleblower."  

10:00  Slight delay.  Nothing new.   Alexa O'Brien tweets:  "Manning was held longer than any accused awaiting court-martial history of US mil law. Judge ruled that Speedy Trial rights not violated." Manning attorney to not speak to media until 1:30 p.m.

9:30   Manning will get credit for time "served'  (over 1000 days) and for over 100 days of "torture" at Quantico. 

9:00 a.m.  Gosztola:  Media being sniffed by dogs one last time in court martial before being escorted on base...Government has asked for 60-year sentence. Defense asks that he get sentence that "allows him to have a life."  Alexa O'Brien:  "All the networks are here. I am told MSNBC showed up for the first or second time yesterday."  Chris Hedges and Cornel West, who have attended on some other days, also have arrived.

Kevin Gosztola completes quite a saga--he's been at nearly all of hearings and trial days and now sentencing segment for the past, what, eighteen months, with only two or three others.    Of course, this will be one of the very rare days where a bunch of other media will show up.   My post on plans to seek clemency and pardon, and protests tonight.  My post on whether Manning will get longer sentence that Sgt. Robert Bales, who killed 16.  

Your Daily Vonnegut: A New Feature

Starting this week, and running for awhile, a quote a day from Kurt Vonnegut, usually witty and/or political in nature.  My new e-book, Vonnegut and Me , was published a couple of days ago, detailing (often in a fun way) my "conversations and close encounters of a weird kind" with the famed novelist, starting in 1970 and then over the years. 

Today's quote, one of his most famous, relating to his character Howard W. Campbell, the American double-agent who too gleefully helped Hitler:  "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

Yesterday's quote, from my 1974 interview with him:  "When you get to be my age, you all of a sudden realize that you are being ruled by people you went to high school with.  You all of a sudden catch on that life is nothing but high school -- class officers, cheerleaders, and all.”

Manning Side to Seek Clemency, Pardon

Press release from the Braldey Manning Support Network:   

David Coombs, lead attorney for WikiLeaks whistle-blower Pfc. Bradley Manning, will give a statement and answer questions from the press, three hours after military judge Colonel Denise Lind delivers Manning’s sentence. Today, Judge Lind announced that she would deliver her sentence at 10:00 AM so the press conference will start at approximately 1:30 PM. At the Hotel at Arundel Preserve, just ten minutes away from Ft. Meade, Mr. Coombs will respond to the sentence and discuss upcoming legal avenues of redress for his client.  This will be the first time since 2010 that Mr. Coombs has taken questions from the press regarding this case. The Bradley Manning Support Network will also provide a brief overview of our efforts moving forward to free Manning, including financial backing for all legal efforts. Immediately, this includes a clemency appeal to the court martial Convening Authority Major General Jeffery Buchanan. During the press conference, Pardon.BradleyManning.org will launch, and will soon include a copy of Mr. Coombs’ application for a Presidential Pardon. Additionally, a crowd-funded college trust fund is being established in order to assure Manning the means to attend college upon his release. Supporters of Manning will hold a vigil at the Fort Meade gate from 7:30 AM to 9:00 AM, and will rally at the White House at 7:30 PM tomorrow evening, with a march to follow.

Hastings Death Ruled 'Accident'

I've never been in the conspiracy camp, though the theories still run rampant.  Now the coroner in L.A. has ruled the death of the journalist and author Michael Hastings an accident--auto striking fixed object, as they say.  Died instantly.  Andrew Blankstein, the L.A. Times reporter who has covered this, just added in a tweet: "Hastings had 'small amount of Methamphetamine' and THC in system at time of death, coroner says. 'Unlikely contributory to death.'" Autopsy report here.

L.A. Times update:

Hastings had arrived in Los Angeles from New York the day before the accident, with his brother scheduled to arrive later the day of the crash "as his family was attempting to get [Hastings] to go to detox," the report stated.

Hastings was believed sober for 14 years, but had recently begun using drugs again in the past month or so, according to the coroner's office, based on  interviews with family members. 

A medical marijuana card was found in Hastings wallet and had been prescribed for treatment of post-traumatic stress resulting from his time as a war journalist in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hours before the crash, Hastings had last been seen by one witness "passed out" sometime between 12:30 a.m. and 1 a.m. The crash occurred just before 5 a.m.