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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Assange May Be Elephant in Room as Chelsea Manning a Fights Federal Grand Jury Subpoena “If you end up going to trial rather than taking a plea, they actually use it against you in sentencing. They do something called ‘sentencing enhancement’ and they call it ‘failure to take responsibility.’” — CIA-Torture Whistleblower John Kiriakou ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA — Whistleblower Chelsea Manning is fighting a grand jury subpoena in Alexandria, Virginia. On Tuesday, Manning spoke to reporters after she and her lawyer unsuccessfully motioned to quash the subpoena. The subpoena is widely believed — but not confirmed — to be related to sealed charges against WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, whose prosecutors were seen at the courthouse in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) on Tuesday. Charges against the journalist were inadvertently revealed in a filing error in the district last year. “They call EDVA the ‘rocket docket’ because the judges there are committed to pushing cases through the system as quickly as possible,” CIA-torture whistleblower John Kiriakou told MintPress News. Kiriakou spent nearly two years in prison for exposing the CIA torture program, and was tried at the Alexandria, Virginia rocket docket. He added: In my own case, we wanted to block off three weeks for jury selection and the judge told us that we had two days and that if we couldn’t [settle] on a jury in two days she was going to do it for us. They hate when you ask for extensions and sometimes will deny an extension, especially if the extension is requested by the prosecution, only because they want to just force these things through as quickly as possible. And then, if you end up going to trial rather than taking a plea, they actually use it against you in sentencing. They do something called ‘sentencing enhancement’ and they call it ‘failure to take responsibility.’” Kiriakou further stated that “if you go to trial, you turn down a plea offer, you’re convicted,” you will “actually get extra time.” He characterized the court’s rationale thus: You were guilty, you should have taken the plea, you wasted their time by going to trial, you messed up the rocket docket, you have to pay. It’s neanderthal in its outlook. That’s not justice. There have been a lot of [national security cases tried there]. Just to name a few: mine, Jeffrey Sterling, Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th [9/11] hijacker. We know that Ed Snowden has been charged in the Eastern District. It appears that Julian Assange has been charged in the Eastern District. And the reason they do that is because the CIA is based in the Eastern District of Virginia. Also, no national security defendant has ever won a case there, so they’re guaranteed a conviction. And the U.S. Attorney in EDVA has extensive experience in national security cases; they specialize in it.” Because of the rocket docket’s proximity to Washington, D.C. and the CIA, critics argue that finding an unbiased jury pool in the EDVA is an impossible task. The U.S. government has been using grand jury subpoenas as a tactic to bring down WikiLeaks since at least 2011, when it looked at what were believed to be violations of the Espionage Act and conspiracy charges against WikiLeaks staff over the Manning leaks. For her part in exposing U.S. war crimes — including the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts the extrajudicial killing of Iraqis and two journalists with Reuters — Manning was given the longest espionage sentence in U.S. history in 2013, before it was commuted in the final days of Obama’s presidency. Back in 2013, Manning characterized herself as a “transparency advocate.” Now, faced with a subpoena for what appears to be yet another grand jury in the Assange case, Manning stressed the lack of transparency in grand jury proceedings. “I think that in the interest of transparency, what we really want to do is get the motion made public because it’s currently sealed, and also to have the hearings to hear the motion be made public. As it stands right now, it’s all sealed,” Manning told reporters outside the courthouse. “We have good reason to believe that the subpoena is improper and we want to lay out the reasons why, but as it stands the reasons why are sealed,” Manning added. She went on to rail against grand juries: It’s a non-adversarial process, and I think that’s contrary to how — especially doing this in secret — it’s very contrary to the public interest, so I have been very opposed to the whole idea of grand juries in general.” Although MintPress did not mention Assange by name, Manning was reticent to respond to questions about press freedom under the Trump administration without more certainty in the case, promising: We’re going to find out more and whenever we find out whatever we can, we’re certainly going to — I want to be as transparent about what’s going on as possible — but we still don’t actually know what this is about.” Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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