https://secure.flickr.com/photos/andyworthington/sets/72157641480729345/   On Wednesday (February 19), I (Andy Worthington) was delighted to travel from London to Oxford to attend the presentation of the Sam Adams Associates Award for Integrity in Intelligence to Chelsea Manning — or rather, to Chelsea’s old school friend Aaron Kirkhouse, who received the award on Manning’s behalf. Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) was given a 35-year sentence in August for the largest ever leak of classified documents, including the “Collateral Murder” video, featuring US personnel indiscriminately killing civilians and two Reuters reporters in Iraq, 500,000 army reports (the Afghan War logs and the Iraq War logs), 250,000 US diplomatic cables, and the Guantánamo files, released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, on which I worked as a media partner.

Speaking at the event were: Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and prominent peace activist; Todd Pierce, a recently retired military defense attorney, who worked on a number of Guantánamo cases involving men facing military commissions trials; Ann Wright, former US Army colonel and former State Department official, who was one of only three US officials to resign over the invasion of Iraq in 2003; the former British ambassador Craig Murray; and MI5 whistleblower Annie Machon. In addition, a video was played of comments made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.  Read the full article here.