In 2010 U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning committed the largest security breach in US history, handing the classified Afghan War Diary, Iraq War Logs, and 250,000 State Department cables to Wikileaks. Imagery like that of an American helicopter team gunning down citizens and journalists on a Baghdad street in 2007 has been lodged in the global consciousness.

With Manning standing trial before a military court in June, the Frontline Club engaged an expert panel on Monday 15 May to ask what lies ahead for the whistleblower, along with what his experience might mean to governments and the media.

(L-R): Naomi Colvin, Chase Madar, Richard Gizbert and David Leigh. Photo credit: Jim Treadway

Naomi Colvin, a writer, activist and founder of UK Friends of Bradley Manning, declared him a “touchstone for people involved in social justice movements.”

“2011 is one of those years that will go down in history, like 1989, or 1968, or 1848,” she said.  “Political action was on a worldwide scale. . . . That spark of enthusiasm started in the Middle East, and the [documents that Manning released] are at least a contributing factor to that.”

Chase Madar, a New York attorney who has written a book detailing Manning’s experience, agreed:

“The State Department cables [were] just a very brutal and candid assessment of corruption in the Ben Ali government . . . Tunisian intellectuals I’ve spoken with have said you really can’t tell the story of the uprising there without at least mentioning Bradley Manning and his leaks.”

The panel rang of frustration with the American media’s failure to cover the Manning story in fairness or depth. Americans “know very little” about his case, Madar observed.

“The New York Times fails to send a journalist to cover the first public hearing with Manning,” lamented Richard Gizbert, Presenter for al Jazeera’s Listening Post, “which even the Times’ own ombudsman said was ridiculous.”

“I got adopted by the staff of a fish restaurant in Glasgow [recently],” Madar recounted. “The bartender and the waiter knew all about [Manning’s case], and it’s because The Guardian’s coverage [has been] much better than anything in the United States.”

David Leigh, the Guardian‘s investigations editor until 2013 and co-author of a book on Julian Assange and Wikileaks, reduced Manning’s trial to “a piece of theatre by the American military to expose, dramatise, penalise and terrorise whistleblowers.”

Even still, Madar harbored optimism for what Manning will ultimately represent:

“He delivered a 35-page statement of intent in court a couple of months ago…  it was very impressive… poised, very self-possessed, very thoughtful and reflective, as opposed to the way he’d been demonised as some naricissistic little punk… The more people hear from Bradley Manning in his own words and in his own voice – because someone smuggled a recorder into the courtroom, you can hear him with his own voice – the more they’re going to realise that Bradley Manning is the responsible, ethical citizen; that it’s his detractors in government and the media who are the narcissistic, little, punks.”

You can watch a recording of the event or listen to the audio podcast below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/the-case-of-the-us-vs-bradley

Speaking at a special Frontline Club event on Saturday alongside renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek and investigative journalist Amy Goodman, Assange claimed a Cablegate was needed not only for US and Russian intelligence services but for the American daily which first published in 1851.

"It would reveal the extent to which stories have been suppressed and how they have been managed,” said Assange, who told the audience that Daniel Ellsberg claimed the New York Times had been in possession of 1000 Pentagon Papers before he passed them onto the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers in1971. 

Only when it realised its rivals had the papers did the New York Times begin publishing the documents on 13 June of that year, Assange claimed.

Since he was propelled “inside the centre of the storm”  by the publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and the Embassy Cables last year, Assange said he had learnt the extent to which history “is shaped and distorted by the media.”

Contrasting Fox News’ decision, on account of its "hunger" for ratings, to show more of the July 2010 Collateral Murder video than its rival CNN had "under the pretext of sensitivity", Assange said:

"The truth that we got out of Fox was greater than we did out of CNN and similarly for many institutions in the media that we think are liberal."

The 400,000 Iraq War Logs documents, which were published in October 2010, were "the most detailed, significant history of a war to be published," said Assange. Among them were details of some 15,000 hitherto unrecorded civilian deaths:

"Just think about that 15,000 people whose deaths were recorded by the US military but were completely unknown to the rest of the world, that’s a very significant thing."

Responding to claims that have been made that WikiLeaks has not told us anything we didn’t already know, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said WikiLeaks worked in the same way as "that beautiful old fairy tale" the Emperor’s Clothes. He added:

"WikiLeaks is not simply telling the truth. You are telling the truth in a very precise way of confronting explicit lines of justification, rationalisation of the public discourse."

Asked about his decision to collaborate with more than 80 media organisations, Assange said it was necessary in order to "maximise the impact" of the material.

"If you want to have an impact and you are an organisation that is very small then you have to coopt or leverage the mainstream press," he said, raising the question of what what impact a new "internet educated" generation working in News Corp and other big corportations might have.

Discussing the impact of WikiLeaks in the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt this year, Assange said it was "hard to disentangle". He described how a number of factors, including the rise of staellite TV, and Al Jazeera’s decision to film protests in the street, had meant the regime could no uphold its claim that opposition was merely "an outcast voice".

"What the media does is censor those voices and prevents people from understanding that actually what the state is saying is the minority is in the majority," said Assange.

"Once people realised their view was in the majority then they understand that they physically have numbers," said Assange, adding that it also became impossible for US to support the regime in Tunisia after Embassy Cables likened President Ben Ali’s family to a Mafia elite.

Žižek said it was significant that WikiLeaks publication of material meant that politicians could no longer operate on the basis of ‘I know that you know but we can still play the cynical game of pretending that we don’t know’.

He added: "The function of WikiLeaks more than to tell us something that we don’t know, is to push us to the point when you cannot pretend you don’t know."

Full coverage of the event can be found here. Video can be watched here and you can read our live blog of the event here.

WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website that is in the process of releasing tens of thousands of classified documents relating to US military and diplomatic affairs, has been the subject of intense media scrutiny in recent months.

Now under arrest following allegations of sexual assault, Julian Assange and his legal team is now fighting his possible extradition to Sweden and/or the US.

Since July when WikiLeaks held its first press conference at the Frontline Club Julian Assange and other members of the WikiLeaks have taken part in a number of discussions about the issues raised by their leaking of documents on Afghanistan and Iraq and the diplomatic cables. 

Each time Julian Assange or other WikiLeaks members have taken part in an event tickets have sold out at a record rate, demonstrating the level of interest in WikiLeaks and the questions their work raises.

Here is a roundup of the Frontline events involving WikiLeaks, with links to summaries and videos, along with other articles of interest.

WikiLeaks’ main website can currently be accessed here

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26th July 2010

WikiLeaks: Afghan War Logs – Julian Assange holds press conference at Frontline Club.

Subsequent to the previous evening’s release of 90,000 classified US military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan between 2004-2010, Julian Assange gave a press conference at the Frontline Club in front of many British and international journalists.

You can read a summary of the event and watch the video here.

Further links to media coverage of this press conference can be accessed here.

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27th July 2010

Special event: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the Frontline Club.

Julian Assange was joined by the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell to engage the audience on the impact of the leaked classified documents which chronicle in detail US military operations in Afghanistan between 2004-2010.

A video and audio podcast of the event can be accessed here.

An interview with Julian Assange about the best and worse case scenarios for WikiLeaks can be found here, along with more analysis of the evening.

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12th August 2010

The data revolution: How WikiLeaks is changing journalism.

The controversy surrounding WikiLeaks’ historic release of more than 70,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan has not died down. But one thing is certain: online data and its dissemination is changing journalism and the relationship between the public and those in power. In this special event, we asked: 

• How are organisations like WikiLeaks changing the way public data is released?
• What do the Afghan War Logs mean for the mainstream media and government media relations?
• What are the legal implications of the War Logs files’ release?

You can read a summary of the event and watch the video here.

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25th October 2010

WikiLeaks: Iraq War Logs – Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg in conversation.

Following the leak by WikiLeaks of almost 400,000 secret US army field reports from the Iraq war between 2004 and 2009, Julian Assange was at the Frontline Club in conversation with one of the most famous whistle blowers in history, Daniel Ellsberg, who was responsible for the leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

The event was chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.

A summary and a video of the event can be found here.

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1st December 2010

WikiLeaks: The US embassy cables

Following the release of of 251,287 confidential United States embassy cables, December’s First Wednesday debate focused on the revelations of this latest leak from whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.

You can read a summary of the evening here and access a video here.