Is The Military Fabricating Testimony in the Bradley Manning Trial? [View all]
Is The Military Fabricating Testimony in the Bradley Manning Trial?
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Summary
Some rather crazy testimony came from Bradley Manning's former supervisor on Day 20. So crazy that the defense seems to be implying that it's outright fabricated ... including her recount of a "UFC" type fight that occurred between the two. Add this to her statements that the American flag "meant nothing to him," and she thought "in her gut" that Manning could have been a spy, while throwing in a slur that he appeared "faggotty" ... the prosecution seems to be going off the deep end trying to support their claims that he is enemy #1.
But it got even crazier in the afternoon session, with a witness claiming memory loss, the government trying to change the charges, the defense calling for a mistrial, and more. Nathan Fuller's full report below is a must-read.
By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. July 19, 2013.
Bradley Manning’s former supervisor at Ft. Drum and then in Iraq, Specialist Jihrleah Showman, testified this morning that in a counseling session, Manning said that the American flag “meant nothing to him” and that he felt no “allegiance to this country or any people,” but that she never even wrote the statement down.
The government elicited that allegation in very brief rebuttal questioning, after which defense lawyer David Coombs spent nearly two hours drawing out her support for that statement, why she failed to document it at the time, and why she didn’t report it when first questioned for this investigation, implying throughout that Showman fabricated the allegation after Manning’s arrest. Coombs asked if Manning actually said that one shouldn’t have “blind allegiance” to a flag and shouldn’t be a blind “automaton,” which Showman denied.
Showman said that in an August 2009 counseling session in which Manning’s body language implied he was merely “putting up” with the conversation, she asked him why he joined the military. When he gave a boilerplate reason about wanting to broaden his knowledge and experience, she said she tapped the flag pin on her shoulder and asked what it meant to him, and that’s when she alleges Manning said he felt no allegiance to the U.S.
But she never wrote the statement down. Despite summarizing several other counseling sessions, in which she documented lesser details such as Manning’s “excessive caffeine consumption,” smoking habits, and tardiness to ‘formulation,’ she didn’t write down his statements of purported disloyalty. Showman said this was because she reported the incident to her direct supervisor, MSGT Paul David Adkins, and that he said he’d take care of it. She also said that he instructed her not to document the statement, because he was handling it from there.
Showman also said that in June 2009, she’d recommended Manning for ‘soldier of the month.’ This calls into question another claim she made, that before deploying to Iraq with him in October 2009, she had a “feeling in (her) gut” that Manning was a “spy.” That feeling apparently didn’t compel Showman to talk to anyone superior to Adkins, as he was directly above her in the chain of command, even though the unit commander had an “open-door policy.”
Showman was interviewed upon Manning’s arrest on May 27, 2010, by Army CID investigators, and she didn’t mention the ‘disloyalty’ statements then. However, in a sworn statement a month later, the comments were included.
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http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/trial-begins-for-military-whistleblower.html
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