WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning goes to trial

After his client was sentenced to 35 years in prison, defense attorney David Coombs indicated he will petition President Obama to pardon Bradley Manning. He described Manning as a whistleblower who tried to present necessary information to the American people — who Coombs called the ultimate oversight in the United States democracy. Coombs said Manning provided valuable insight into a secret realm most American citizens would otherwise never see. “Make no mistake about it,” he said, “the cancer of over-classification is threatening the very fabric of our society.” He described a “government-wide crackdown on whistleblowers,” referencing the Obama administration’s use of the Espionage Act to prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. “I think what’s at stake is how history will look at us,” said Coombs, referring to the United States, “and we haven’t learned that yet.”

Amnesty International also called on President Obama to commute Manning’s sentence to time served. Widney Brown, the organization’s Senior Director of International Law and Policy, said in a statement that Manning’s “revelations included reports on battlefield detentions and previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks, information which should always have been subject to public scrutiny” — while Army Colonel Lind, the military judge, barred any evidence that the leaks served the public interest. Said Brown, “Bradley Manning should be shown clemency in recognition of his motives for acting as he did, the treatment he endured in his early pre-trial detention, and the due process shortcomings during his trial.”

Bradley Manning’s court-martial reached an end today, with Army Colonel Denise Lind sentencing him to 35 years in prison. She also ordered a reduction in rank to private, a forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a dishonorable discharge. He will receive credit for 1,294 days for time served. According to an Army spokesman, Manning would be eligible for parole after serving 1/3 of his sentence; with additional credit for time served, he could face 8-9 years. Manning also has the possibility of a clemency finding that would reduce his sentence.

The WikiLeaks source, arrested in Iraq in 2010 for releasing nearly 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks, was found not guilty of the most serious charge of “aiding the enemy,” which could have resulted in life imprisonment. Manning was found guilty on virtually all other charges under the Espionage Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the code of military justice. The verdict left him facing a maximum 136 years; Lind later found the government had overcharged Manning and reduced that number to 90 years. Within the military justice system, Colonel Lind does not have to explain the reasoning behind Manning’s sentence. She did not, taking less than two minutes to read the sentence. Bradley Manning showed no visible response.

When, at the end of July, Bradley Manning was found guilty of nearly all the charges facing him, his long-running story entered a new chapter. With his guilt established, the trial turned to the matter of his punishment. He faces a potential 90 years in prison, and the judge, Army Colonel Denise Lind, holds his fate in her hands. She will consider the consequences of Manning’s actions and the circumstances surrounding them. The deeper question Lind will also consider, though, is: who was Bradley Manning then, and who is he now?

He was arrested in May 2010 while still stationed in Iraq, suspected of leaking some 700,000 government documents, including reports detailing day-to-day military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a cache of State Department cables. He was subsequently charged with 22 offenses, including violations of the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The arrest and charges brought him to public attention — like Edward Snowden’s years later, his was the story behind the leaks, the human face behind all that information — and he spent the next three years awaiting trial. He was hailed as a hero and denounced as a traitor.

As his legal defense closed today, WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning offered a brief, unsworn statement to the court. Directly addressing the judge and appearing at times to struggle with his emotions, he apologized for his actions and for what he described as a failure to work “more aggressively inside the system.” He expressed hope that he could atone for his mistakes, and that he could eventually “return to a productive place in society.”

After his conviction on charges under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Manning faced a potential 136 years in prison. Early in the post-conviction, sentencing phase of the trial, Army Colonel Denise Lindfound that government prosecutors had overcharged Manning; she reduced his maximum possible term to 90 years.

As she said she would, Army Colonel Denise Lind has delivered her verdict in the Bradley Manning case, finding him not guilty on the most serious charge, aiding the enemy. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), aiding the enemy is a capital offense, though prosecutors said they would only ask for life in prison. After Manning pled guilty to 10 counts through a process called “exceptions and substitutions,” the government chose to move forward with all 22 offenses, leaving Manning to face the possibility of life in prison plus 154 years.

Today’s verdict means Manning escapes the life sentences for aiding the enemy, but still faces a potential maximum of more than 130 years in prison, being found guilty for violations of the Espionage Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and military law.

Before there was PRISM, there was the largest national security leak in US history.

Right now, a military judge is deliberating the fate of Bradley Manning: a US Army intelligence analyst who confessed to leaking around 700,000 classified diplomatic cables and other secret information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The judge in Bradley Manning’s court-martial today upheld a set of charges against the Army private, including that of aiding the enemy, for providing information to WikiLeaks. Prosecutors argued that Manning’s leaks indirectly aided information to the enemy, a fact he should have known given his training as an intelligence analyst. The defense countered that at the time of the leaks, WikiLeaks was generally viewed as a journalistic outlet dedicated to publishing secrets, and that Manning’s training had never specifically dealt with the site. At the time, the defense argued, even the US Army didn’t regard WikiLeaks as a threat.

Defense witness Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor, also testified that the legal notion of “indirectly aiding the enemy” would have a chilling effect on press freedom. The government had previously stated that, regardless of WikiLeaks’ status as a journalistic organization, the charges should stand, and that even if The New York Times had been the sole, direct recipient of the leaks, Manning would still face prosecution.

After being initially denied admittance, court stenographers hired through a crowdfunding campaign to transcribe the trial of whistleblower Pfc. Bradley Manning must be given permanent access to the courtroom, judge Colonel Denise Lind has ruled.

Since the military court does not provide any public record of the proceedings and no electronics are allowed in the courtroom, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has set up a fundraising campaign to hire two stenographers to create a public transcript of the historic trial, which began last week. Of the 350 media organizations who applied for press credentials, only 80 were given access and only 10 allowed into the courtroom due to fire code restrictions. But because the court did not specifically say that stenographers were allowed, the stenographers were denied access until media organizations including The Verge, Forbes, and The Guardian offered up their own press passes.

Bradley Manning’s trial began today. In a small, densely packed and windowless courtroom in Fort Meade, Maryland, the Army private and former intelligence analyst sat quietly as the prosecution presented its opening statement. He stands accused of providing a massive trove of government information to the disclosure portal WikiLeaks — around 700,000 documents, including diplomatic cables and SIGACTS (“significant activity” reports) providing an unprecedented, detailed look at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the prosecution, Captain Joe Morrow opened not with his own words but with a quote from Bradley Manning, taken from an online chat with hacker Adrian Lamo. Manning, as “bradass87,” wrote, “If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?” Morrow used Manning’s words as a rhetorical question; his answer was that in answer to his own question, Manning had “systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents, then dumped them on the internet, into the hands of the enemy.”

The nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation is raising money to pay for a court stenographer to transcribe the events of Bradley Manning’s court martial. Over the next three to four months, the group hopes to raise the $40 - $50,000 it needs in order to pay someone to transcribe each day’s proceedings. In a press release, the organization decried the military court’s overbearing secrecy including its refusal to release an official transcript or copies of written rulings in one of the most widely-reported cases in history. As a result, journalists have had to rely on first-hand accounts from independent reporters like Alexa O’Brien and Kevin Gosztola.

The current situation journalists face in trying to cover the trial is already “Kafkaesque,” in the words of documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, but Judge Lind cracked down further last month, banning cell phones from the court’s media center. The move was made following the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s decision to publish leaked audio of Manning reading a prepared statement at the trial in March.

This morning, a leaked audio recording of Bradley Manning’s testimony was published by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The co-founder of the organization is Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to nineteen papers including The New York Times, and it should be little surprise that he’s staunchly in defense of Manning’s acts. “I can think of no one more deserving who is deserving of the [Nobel] peace prize,” Ellsberg writes. He explains at Boing Boing why he believes that Manning’s actions were right.

On February 28th, WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning pled guilty to ten of the charges against him, reading a lengthy prepared statement that explained why he had chosen to leak classified information like the video now known as “Collateral Murder.” Now, in protest of the secrecy that has surrounded Manning’s arrest and trial, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has published leaked audio of his statement in the courtroom, giving outsiders a rare direct recording of Manning three years after his arrest.

“We have been disturbed that Manning’s pre-trial hearings have been hampered by the kind of extreme government secrecy that his releases to WikiLeaks were intended to protest,” the Foundation said in a press release. “While reporters are allowed in the courtroom, no audio or visual recordings are permitted by the judge, no transcripts of the proceedings or any motions by the prosecution have been released, and lengthy court orders read on the stand by the judge have not been published for public review.” The ban on recording in the courtroom is hardly unique to Manning’s trial, and this leak is both a strike against its secrecy and a sign of how out of step the policy sometimes seems.

Yesterday, the court-martial of Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst accused of providing classified information to the WikiLeaks, took an important turn. As his defense had planned since at least last November, Manning offered a guilty plea for 10 charges; his plea, “by substitutions and exceptions,” allowed him to accept responsibility for lesser offenses primarily related to unauthorized access to classified information and passing that information to unauthorized persons. (He also admitted that such leaks were “service discrediting” and “prejudicial to the good order and discipline” of the Army.) The court accepted his plea, with the offenses carrying a maximum of 20 years in prison.

The prosecution plans to go forward the pleaded charges, as well as with 12 other charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Espionage Act; offenses under the latter can carry a death sentence, though prosecutors have said they’ll pursue life imprisonment instead. Final sentencing authority lies with Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge who has presided over Manning’s case. Rather than allow the facts of his case to be decided by a panel of court members, Manning chose to be tried by the judge alone, meaning Colonel Lind will decide Manning’s guilt or innocence as well as his ultimate sentence.

US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty on 10 counts involving disclosing information to an unauthorized person, but has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges, including “aiding the enemy.” On Thursday afternoon, military judge Colonel Denise Lind accepted Manning’s guilty pleas, while prosecutors said they plan to pursue the 12 contested charges at trial. The guilty pleas cover less serious offenses of misusing classified information and carry a combined maximum sentence of 20 years. If convicted of aiding the enemy, Manning could be imprisoned for life.

This week, word began to leak that Manning would plead guilty to some charges but not others. According to The Guardian and corroborated by other news sources, Manning’s guilty pleas confirm that he was Wikileaks’ principal source for the following:

As Private First Class Bradley Manning prepares to make a formal plea on charges that he provided classified information to WikiLeaks, the Department of Defense has released 84 pre-trial documents from between March 2012 and early 2013. Provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the files give outsiders a look inside a trial that has been conducted under a high degree of secrecy. The Washington Post reports that the DoD is still processing documents, and that more than 500 will eventually be posted.

It’s unknown what information these releases will yield. Many of those posted so far are procedural documents, including orders to provide updates on Manning’s mental health. But so far, getting information about the trial at all has been difficult: there’s been a lack of transcripts and other details outside what can be gleaned from hearings, and preparations have dragged on for years. With a trial expected in mid-2013, the release of these documents is a reassuring — if late — gesture.

You could be forgiven if you’ve forgotten Bradley Manning.

Even before his arrest in May 2010, the 25-year-old Army intelligence analyst could go unnoticed. He was of slight stature, just over five feet tall, a self-proclaimed nerd who’d come to the Army, and then come to Iraq. While there, it is alleged, he downloaded a massive trove of information using his access to classified military databases. That information — including videos of two airstrikes that killed civilians; a collection of over 250,000 United States diplomatic cables; and a half-million logs from the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — he passed on to WikiLeaks, the disclosure portal founded by Julian Assange. As WikiLeaks began publishing the material, Manning allegedly confessed his role in the leak to Adrian Lamo, a hacker who promptly alerted the authorities. Manning was arrested soon after.

Just two years ago, Andy Greenberg had an hours-long interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The author and Forbes reporter listened as Assange claimed to have a massive trove of documents, the release of which, he promised, could “take down a bank or two.” When Greenberg reported the story, stock speculation led to Bank of America losing $3.5 billion in market value in just a few hours. But the promised documents never materialized. Instead, the real story was in a casual remark Assange made at the end of the interview, after Greenberg’s recorder was turned off. He promised a “megaleak” seven times the size of the Iraq War document collection the group had already set into the wild. Asked whether it would affect the private sector or government, Assange answered “both,” and asked which industries, he replied, “All of them.”

If Assange was overstating the case, it wasn’t by much. The release of 251,000 classified State Department cables laid bare the secrets of international relations. The revelations helped spur the Arab Spring, the effects of which are still reverberating; according to CNN, the WikiLeaks dump helped deep-six negotiations that would have kept American troops in Iraq past the 2011 withdrawal date. And those are only the most obvious effects.

It’s been over a year since Bradley Manning was arrested for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of US government documents to WikiLeaks. Now, on the fifth day of the hearing that will determine whether Manning faces court-martial, ex-hacker Adrian Lamo has testified about turning over the chat logs that led to Manning’s arrest. Wired has a writeup of the testimony, including questions about whether Lamo was acting under a promise of journalistic or ministerial confidentiality and his relationship with law enforcement.

Wired has a long-standing relationship with Lamo, and was the first news outlet to publish chat logs between him and Manning. In the chats, Manning allegedly confessed that he had given WikiLeaks classified documents, including 260,000 diplomatic cables and a video since dubbed “Collateral Murder” showing an airstrike in which US soldiers killed two Reuters journalists. Lamo’s testimony is hardly the only piece of evidence against Manning, but he continues to play a pivotal role in the WikiLeaks hearings.