David House, who helped found the Bradley Manning Support Network, reportedly invoked his 5th Amendment right not to testify before a civilian grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia yesterday. The grand jury is investigating Wiki____’s publication of thousands of sensitive and classified documents on its website. Army PFC Manning has been held in various military pretrial confinement facilities for over a year in relation to the document leaks, although he has yet to have an Article 32 investigation (often referred to as being akin to a grand jury, but it isn’t really a very close match) conducted.
Here’s an excerpt:
House said he was not asked any questions about Wiki___ founder Julian Assange.
The Justice Department, House said, “is very frantically trying to link Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, and they’re casting a very wide net.”
His lawyer Peter Krupp said that while House has done nothing wrong, he invoked his right against self-incrimination because “any testimony he would give would be manipulated to be used against him.” Krupp also accused prosecutors of using the grand jury to trample on House’s right to freely associate with Manning or other Wiki___ supporters.
Am I missing something? How do we get the conclusion that the Justice Department is “frantically trying to link” Manning and Assange when the DoJ lawyers didn’t mention Assange?