“There’s a much bigger reason why the cloak-and-dagger approach of the US government to this trial should be taken seriously. America doesn’t seem to have woken up to this yet, but the prosecution of Bradley Manning poses the greatest threat to freedom of speech and the press in this country in at least a generation. When one of the prosecution lawyers was asked whether the government would still have gone after Manning had he leaked to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, she unhesitatingly replied: ‘Yes’. If that’s not a threat to the first amendment, then what is?”
