Courtesy of couragetoresist.org

A whistle with the likeness of Bradley Manning

The small office of Courage to Resist, a nonprofit group in Oakland, is full of items featuring the smiling face of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst accused of passing secret government documents to WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning T-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers — even whistles — are for sale.

Jeff Paterson, the project director of the organization, which has supported dozens of service members who have refused deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan, said the group began to raise money for Manning’s legal defense after he was arrested in May.

WikiLeaks was not supporting the 23-year-old private first class “who gave them all this information,” said Paterson, 42, a lanky former Marine, who was himself jailed for refusing to board a plane bound for Saudi Arabia after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has said he has never spoken with Manning and does not know who is behind the leaks. WikiLeaks technology was “designed from the very beginning to make sure that we never know the identities or names of people submitting us material,” Assange told ABC News.

But Manning’s arrest by the Army, which came after he told a computer hacker that he had leaked video of a helicopter attack that killed two Reuters photographers and Iraqi civilians, along with 260,000 diplomatic cables and intelligence reports on the war in Afghanistan, is proof enough for Paterson.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, is also a supporter. “What I read from his motives seems very familiar to me based on my own experience,” Ellsberg said.

Courage to Resist has raised more than $100,000 to support Manning’s legal fund, Paterson said. An activist with the group visits Manning in prison every two weeks.

“He has supporters all over the world,” said Adam Seibert-Szyper, 39, a staff member who deserted the Marine Corps in 1996. He leafed through envelopes mailed from Brazil, South Africa and Thailand. One envelope, from British Columbia, included a stick of incense and a piece of crystal.

But helping Manning has been tricky. He has never publicly defended himself in political or moral terms, and questions remain about what Manning may have leaked.

The lack of clarity surrounding Manning’s involvement has made building public support a challenge, even in friendly forums like the Berkeley City Council, which last week declined to back a measure calling Manning a hero.

Robert Meola, an activist who drafted the resolution as chairman of Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission, said he would fight for Manning.

“If he didn’t do it, then he’s in pretrial confinement in isolation for several months, and he should be freed,” Meola said.

“If he did do it, I definitely feel that he’s a hero,” Meola added, arguing that revelations contained in the leaked documents “could potentially stop the immoral and illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

This article also appears in the Bay Area edition of The New York Times.