There is very little interest in the trial of Bradley Manning. It is a military trial, and the media has decided he is guilty along with the military and State Department. They have all decided he colluded with Julian Assange to release all kinds of sensitive information about American foreign policy and managed to do grievous harm to us all.
Except that he didn't.
The US government is turning law into pretzels in order to make a case and get a conviction. One of the pretzels is arguing that Manning's defense lawyers are not allowed to have evidence or introduce evidence which might show no harm was done at all. They can do this because present law born of Homeland Security-Patriot Act anti-Constitutional hysteria allows the Government to decide everything that is too sensitive to show you even as they prosecute you with it.
And the ACLU --while losing the point to judge--makes a mockery of the argument.
Here is an example:
http://www.aclu.org/wikileaks-diplomatic-cables-foia-documentsBasically, the ACLU has pointed out that State Dept claims releasing the original cables to the defense for review and evidence will do great harm and therefore Manning is deprived of his rebuttal on how much harm was really done to the Government. HOWEVER, the evidence is already in the public domain via WikiLeaks, so if you ask to see the originals with identical content to what WikiLeaks has already put out there, where is the harm? The State Department responded to a request for 23 documents by issuing only 12 including redactions. The comedy of it is that the redactions only show what the State Department was trying to hide and you can plainly read it already from the WikiLeaks version.
The ACLU shows you examples.
The Government is trying to argue Manning was colluding with WikiLeaks/Assange, but they have not proven the case. This is just a small part of the legal jousting, but it reveals the pretzel logic (mockery) of law now permitted by our Government.