When people think about Wikileaks, they inevitably focus on Julian Assange, the founder of the controversial organization who was recently released from prison in Britain. Less attention is paid to Bradley Manning, who allegedly fed him large amounts of secret information and is currently kept in solitary confinement at a maximum security military prison in Quantico, Virginia. Manning became famous for leaking video footage of a U.S. Apache helicopter in Baghdad that killed a news photographer with Reuters and his driver. Though he has been in solitary for months, Manning has not been convicted yet.
This was the message of a group of 50 protesters who gathered around the Clock Tower on Saturday. “Freedom of speech and press are being violated,” said the protest’s organizer, Steve Argue, adding that without the leaks, the American public would be left in the dark as to what is really going on in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of the protesters compared Manning and Assange to Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Their appearance in the New York Times in 1971 had a significant impact on public opinion and changed the course of that war. Read more at Santa Cruz Sentinel.
