MPs: We Were Told To Do This (Or: ‘Expired Tabs’ My Ass)

As John Chandley noted in a Tweet earlier this evening, the AP story on the detention of David House and Jane Hamsher at Quantico, which prevented David House from seeing Bradley Manning for yet another week, leaves out a key fact — namely, that the MPs told House and Hamsher that they had been ordered to detain them. As Jane Hamsher tells it:

I am very happy that I went, and could be there to support David, because one of the first things the MPs said to us when we arrived — long before they asked for driver’s license, social security numbers, registration, phone numbers, quizzed us about the addresses on our licenses, etc, etc, was that they had orders to do all of this. Which means they were planning to detain us long before we got there. They were going to use any excuse to keep David from visiting Manning, and try to intimidate him from coming back.

In other words, the “expired tabs” excuse that the Quantico spokesman fed to the AP is beside the point. The MPs had orders to detain House and Hamsher, a detention that magically ended almost exactly when visiting hours did, keeping House from checking up on Manning and his deteriorating mental condition.

Oh, and by the way: I’m not going to post it online because it’s private information, but while Jane’s tabs were indeed a month out of date, she was able to provide proof of insurance, which I have seen.