It was in the final stretch of what unexpectedly became a five-mile trek through the blistering heat near Ft. Meade where a beige sedan slowed down and its driver gestured for me to get in.
Maybe it was the onset of heat stroke that told me to hop in a stranger’s car, but it probably had more to do with the sense of community that captivated just about everyone on our side of the fort’s fence. On Saturday, nearly 2,000 supporters of Army Private Bradley Manning drove or took the bus from across the country to march in support of the soldier on the eve of the first day of his trial. His trial, including charges of aiding Al-Qaeda for leaking military documents to Wikileaks, which could bring Manning a life sentence in jail, starts today.
Anti-war activists, veterans, LGBT rights advocates, and journalists were heavily represented within the legion of Manning supporters on Saturday. The march was one among hundreds of rallies that have occurred in support of the 25-year-old former intelligence analyst from Crescent, Oklahoma, since he was first put in pretrial confinement more than three years ago. Some have been coming to Ft. Meade near Baltimore off and on since preliminary hearings began on site in late 2011, and events happened this weekend in cities from Seoul to Santa Cruz.
During the course of the military trial that starts today, Army prosecutors will say Manning aided al-Qaeda terrorists by taking sensitive military information and sending it to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Manning and his boyfriend had just split up when he started uploading intelligence about the Iraq and Afghan wars to WikiLeaks in 2009, and just a few months later he found himself even more distressed when he was picked up by authories from his base outside of Baghdad. At least one-fourth of the time since has been spent in isolation. Manning has already pled guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him, but not to the most serious charges, including aiding the enemy, which could land him in prison for life.
Manning supporters say the leaked intel and the other material he’s been attributed with releasing helped bring attention to the horrific atrocities committed by the country he swore to serve. The word “whistleblower” couldn’t be any more appropriate, activists said at the weekend’s rally. Some have insisted the prosecution of Manning means no journalist will get away with publishing embarrassing info about the government ever again, and that threat is just one part of what brings people together to talk about the case.
Hundreds more kept arriving every few minutes at Ft. Meade on Saturday. It was hot. To make matters worse, though, roads heading to the site were rerouted, and many people had to schlep to the march after abandoning their vehicles illegally in not-so-nearby parking lots. At least two news organizations hauled media gear more than a mile in either direction.
It was just a minor setback, though. Lt. Dan Choi, a soldier that faced federal charges for an act of civil disobedience against the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, said during the event that heat shouldn’t stop people from celebrating a person who's brought so many strangers together in the name of telling the truth.
“We marched from one place on one street for one thing, for one reason,” he said after the mile-long march along Ft. Meade’s fence wrapped up. Choi and a few others took turns taking to the stage, sweating through their shirts while speaking passionately about the soldier to the hundreds who had managed to survive the sweltering hike.
“We came here because we want to be treated by our government in the way that our government was supposed to treat the people,” Choi said.
Daniel Ellsberg, the Defense Department worker who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, walked on stage moments later. Ellsberg, 82, explained in his own words what the power of a community can mean when people come together to stand for someone who, just like himself, was charged with espionage for trying to help others.
“I’m very happy to be here at what I regard as a family gathering,” Ellsberg said.
Ellsberg explained later what it meant to be labeled a traitor for essentially doing the same thing as Manning, but insisted that his contemporary’s contribution to the annals of whistleblowing is something that should be hailed, not hated.
“There would be tens of thousands of American troops in Iraq right now and many others would have died if Bradley Manning had not revealed atrocities,” he said.
Oddly enough, Ellsberg added, the media in the US was not making an effort to discuss this side of the story. “Our country, sad to say, is the country that perpetrated the crimes that Bradley Manning exposed. I think other countries have noticed something that not too many Americans have noticed: that Bradley was an extraordinary American who went on record and acted on his awareness.”
Then addressing the supporters, Ellsberg mentioned just a few of the groups who should have a damn good reason to respect Manning given what he gave to WikiLeaks.
“I would say that any group that Bradley Manning can be said to be a part of should be honored to recognize him as their hero,” he said. “Of course gays, of course transgender people. It goes for the people of Oklahoma—there won’t be many there who appreciate him. It goes even for short people. Anybody who can identify with Bradley Manning should be honored,” said Ellsberg.
I don’t know if Bradley Manning would have pulled over his luxury sedan to pick up a disgusting, sweat drenched journalist and a ragtag group of colleagues attempting to inch their way back to our rental car this weekend, but that’s not how things worked out. Instead the chauffeur during our four minutes of hard earned air-conditioned bliss was a freelancer contracted by Iranian media to meet some reporters. Just as with us, he was also baffled by how the military seemed to take every precaution imaginable to make access to Ft. Meade on the day of the protest damn near impossible. And then after our conversation erupted into a debate about a contested diplomatic dispute between our respective countries, things subsided. We were all hot and tired, but we were also here for the same reason. To report a story no one else wants to about a guy who can blow a hell of a whistle and attract the oddest combination of interested parties in doing so.
Following over a year of motion hearings rarely attended by the mainstream press, around 350 news organizations submitted requests for credentials this time around. The court-martial against Private first class Bradley Manning begins today and is expected to run through the end of summer.