US soldier goes on trial over WikiLeaks disclosures

[PeterCriss]

US soldier goes on trial over WikiLeaks disclosures

AFP Updated June 3, 2013, 11:58 pm

FORT MEADE, Maryland (AFP) - The military trial of Bradley Manning, the US soldier who handed thousands of secret government files to WikiLeaks, began Monday, more than three years after he was arrested in Iraq.

The 25-year-old Manning went before a court martial presided over by Judge Denise Lind at 1330 GMT. He is accused of the biggest leak of classified information in US history.

US and foreign reporters waited in line for two hours to get through security and into the courtroom.

Manning gave WikiLeaks some 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents from November 2009 until his arrest in May 2010.

He faces a possible 154-year jail sentence. Manning has offered to plead guilty to several offenses but denies prosecutors' most serious charge -- of knowingly aiding the enemy, chiefly Al-Qaeda.

 

[PeterCriss]

WikiLeaks trial: Bradley Manning 'worked closely with Julian Assange'

A US soldier was acting as an agent of WikiLeaks as he "systematically harvested" hundreds of thousands of classified files, prosecutors have said.

In this courtroom sketch, Army Pfc Bradley Manning watches at left as his defence attorney, David Coombs, right, speaks in front of military judge Army Col. Denise Lind on the opening day of Manning's court martial in Fort Meade, Maryland. Photo: WILLIAM HENNESSY/AP

By Raf Sanchez, Fort Meade, Maryland 8:48PM BST 03 Jun 2013

On the opening day of his court martial today, the US government challenged Private First Class Bradley Manning's claim to be a solitary whistleblower who was "young, naive but good-intentioned" when he carried out the largest intelligence leak in American history.

Prosecutors alleged instead that the 25-year-old worked to fulfil a publicly available "most-wanted list" put out by the anti-secrecy website and later plotted with Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder.

They also claimed the leaked files had directly aided al-Qaeda in its struggle against the US and that Osama bin Laden himself had made use of the WikiLeaks releases.

"This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases and then dumped the information on to the internet and into the hands of the enemy," said Captain Joe Morrow, for the prosecution.

Pfc Manning faces life imprisonment if the government successfully argues that the leaked documents aided America's enemies.

The defence painted a starkly different picture, describing Pfc Manning as an idealistic young man who wanted to "lift the fog of war" and show the US the "true nature" of its campaigns in the Middle East.

David Coombs, for the defence, said the then-22-year-old had been unable to get over an incident on Christmas Eve 2009, when a roadside bomb went off in Iraq.

Nearby US troops escaped unharmed, but the blast hit an Iraqi family of five, killing one and wounding four. "He could not forget the life that was lost on that day," said Mr Coombs. "From that moment on Pfc Manning was struggling."

The defence also Pfc Manning said was wracked by an "internal struggle" over with his homosexuality and gender identity issues.

Prosecutors said the soldier's cooperation with WikiLeaks was far more extensive than previously disclosed and that he started aiding the website "within two weeks" of being deployed to Iraq in November 2009 by looking for files they had publicly expressed interest in.

Pfc Manning used his position as a junior intelligence analyst to search secret military networks for information wanted by WikiLeaks, starting with files about the US's controversial prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

By the end of November, he had allegedly smuggled out an encrypted video of a US airstrike in Afghanistan which he passed to WikiLeaks.

Pfc Manning then allegedly graduated to a full-blown associate of Mr Assange, prosecutors said, and the two men engaged in extensive online conversations. The pair allegedly worked together to devise a sophisticated system for stealing files at a rate of 1,000 documents an hour.

Mr Assange claimed diplomatic asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London last year where he is avoiding extradition to Sweden over sex-crime allegations. US prosecutors are known to be trying to bring a case against Mr Assange but have not yet brought any charges. WikiLeaks has never confirmed nor denied that Pfc Manning was the source of the documents.

The defence claims that Manning only turned to WikiLeaks as a last resort in February 2010, having approached both The Washington Post and The New York Times but failing to get either paper to take him seriously.

The discrepancy in the two sides' timelines will be at the heart of the court martial. The government said it would use computers recovered the from the raid on bin Laden's compound to show that the terror leader had read leaked files about US forces in Afghanistan.

"Evidence will show that Osama bin Laden asked for this information and was provided with [documents on Afghanistan] provided by Pfc Manning," Cpt Morrow said.

The trial is taking place at Fort Meade, a sprawling US military base outside Washington, and is expected to last up to three months as the government calls dozens of witnesses.

 

[PeterCriss]

Bradley Manning: hero to his followers, enemy of the state to others

By recently admitting he was the source of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables and war logs regarding Afghanistan and Iraq, later published by WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning appears certain to be found guilty at a trial beginning Monday.

Bradley Manning had an aptitude for computers from an early age and reportedly created his first website when he was only 10 years old Photo: AP

By AFP
12:01PM BST 03 Jun 2013

But having denied the most serious charge of "aiding the enemy," chiefly al-Qaeda, the man accused of causing his country's worst ever security breach remains an enigma: a hero to his followers, an enemy of the state to others.

The short, skinny, bespectacled US Army private has cut a confident figure in previous court appearances, exuding a quiet resolve on the occasions that he has testified and answered questions.

His demeanour belies evidence of numerous episodes of suicidal tendencies and erratic behaviour, such as licking the bars of his cell during some of the 1,109 days he has spent in military detention.

Born in Crescent, Oklahoma to an American father and a Welsh mother who later divorced, Manning had an aptitude for computers from an early age and reportedly created his first website when he was only 10 years old.

At the age of 17, by when he was living as an openly gay man, Manning got a job with a software company in Oklahoma City, only to be fired four months later.

He then migrated to computer hacking, attending events filled with other hackers, a paradoxical prelude to the high-level security clearance he obtained when he became a military intelligence analyst in a war zone."I am the type of person who always wants to figure out how things work. And as an analyst, this always means I want to figure out the truth," Manning said in his pretrial testimony at the Fort Meade military base near Washington.

His homosexuality and gender identity issues – Manning enlisted despite the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on gays in the military at the time – led to problems. As at school, peers bullied and ridiculed him.Commanders judged him ill-suited to military life and during training, he was recommended for discharge. But his technical skills were perfectly suited to becoming an intelligence analyst and the decision was overturned.

Ultimately, he was sent to Iraq where – appalled with what he saw in the reports he analysed – his motivation for illicitly uploading such material and passing it to WikiLeaks appears to have taken hold.The US Army video recording of two Apache attack helicopters gunning down a group of Iraqis in Baghdad, an attack that killed at least 12 men and wounded two children, was an incident Manning said "burdens me emotionally.""They dehumanised the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as 'dead bastards' and congratulating themselves on their ability to kill in large numbers," Manning said in court.

Such an account matches the view of Manning supporters who say he is a voice of conscience who lifted a veil on what he considered the worst transgressions of US foreign policy, by its political and military leaders. Daniel Ellsberg, the US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top secret study regarding decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, has said Manning is a hero who should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Bradley Manning Support Network has received more than $1.1 million (£720,000) in donations to pay his legal costs and has campaigned relentlessly on his behalf.But many people disagree with the cause, most notably Adrian Lamo, the fellow hacker who turned Manning over to the authorities after reading the soldier's innermost thoughts from Iraq during internet messaging discussions."What I saw in those chats was an admission of acts so egregious that it required that response," Lamo told a pretrial hearing of taking the decision that ultimately landed Manning in the dock.

 

[PeterCriss]

Manning said to be 'very political' but effective in Iraq

AFP June 6, 2013, 7:35 am

FORT MEADE, Maryland (AFP) - Bradley Manning, the soldier who passed a trove of secret US files to WikiLeaks, was politically outspoken but excelled in computers and did his job well, his army commanders said Wednesday.

On day three of Manning's court-martial, it became clear the prosecution will seek to prove that he was trained in how to handle classified information before he deployed to Iraq and knew the dangers of it falling into enemy hands.

Such an argument signaled the US government's determination to push ahead with the charge that Manning, 25, knowingly aided the enemy, chiefly Al-Qaeda, by transmitting hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables as well as Iraq and Afghanistan war logs to the anti-secrecy website headed by Julian Assange.

Manning, a former military intelligence analyst, has already pleaded guilty to 10 offenses but denies the most serious charge, for which he faces life imprisonment if convicted.

On Wednesday, however, the court heard evidence of a parallel image of Manning as a well-organized soldier who produced work at the high end of the scale for his level of experience.

"He did put together some extremely good products," said Warrant Officer Kyle Balonek, noting that he never experienced problems with Manning or noticed any drop-off in the standard of his work during his time in eastern Baghdad.

Former army specialist Jihrleah Showman, of Hamilton, Georgia, who deployed to Iraq with Manning in late 2009 and was his supervisor at Forward Operating Base Hammer, also spoke about Manning's technical skills.

"He indicated to me that he was very fluent in anything computer. There was nothing that he could not do on a computer," Showman testified at the Fort Meade military base in Maryland.

Showman, his immediate superior, said she and Manning had chatted outside work, where the accused had revealed his social likes, technical skills and lowly opinion of the security standards of US government systems.

"Passwords were not complicated and he could get through them," Showman said, noting that Manning was "the one guy I knew who had the computer knowledge" to solve any problems she experienced in Iraq.

She added: "He talked a lot about wanting to attend martini parties in the Washington, DC area, that he loved shopping and had enjoyed working as a barista at Starbucks."

Manning's civilian defense lawyer David Coombs has so far sought to portray Manning as a naive but well-intentioned citizen who conducted the massive data dump because he wanted to start a public debate about what he had witnessed.

Asked by Coombs if the accused was "very political," and "on the extreme Democratic side," Showman replied: "Yes."

Showman was among several soldiers who viewed the "Collateral Murder" video, which caused an international outcry when WikiLeaks released it on the Internet, and which figured prominently in Manning's arrest.

The US Army recording of two Apache attack helicopters gunning down at least 12 people in Baghdad, with an audio tape of the pilots calling the victims "dead bastards," caused massive embarrassment to the Pentagon.

That video was available on a drive to which all personnel in Manning's unit had access, but a non-disclosure document bearing his name and signature, dated September 17, 2009, was shown to the court as the prosecution continued to argue the accused had wantonly disregarded his commitment to the United States.

Coombs painted a picture of a slack work environment in Iraq in which the accused and his colleagues played music, games and movies while on duty.

Warrant Officer Balonek, however, denied this. "When work was low it became allowed," he said of soldiers spending their time on such pursuits rather than on intelligence work.

Two other commanders agreed that Manning was effective in gathering intelligence, one of whom, Chief Warrant Officer Hondo Hack, said he "had never seen a more organized soldier," during his 20 years' service in the army.

 

[PeterCriss]

WikiLeaks trial is high-profile case for low-profile lawyer

Private First Class Bradley Manning, 25, (in beret obscured behind security) leaves the first day of his trial at Fort Meade in Maryland, June 3, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Jason Reed

By Joseph Ax
NEW YORK | Fri Jun 7, 2013 2:45pm EDT

(Reuters) - When Private First Class Bradley Manning was seeking a civilian defense attorney to bolster his government-appointed legal team in 2010, he considered a number of lawyers experienced in courts-martial.

His aunt, herself a lawyer, helped vet names of possible lawyers for the case suggested by Army veterans and activist supporters. The family fielded unsolicited offers from attorneys eager to take the high-profile case in which Manning is accused of passing more 700,000 classified files to WikiLeaks in the biggest unauthorized release of secret files in U.S. history.

Eventually, Manning settled on a low-profile choice: David Coombs, a Providence, Rhode Island, attorney who had been in private practice for only a year after more than a decade as an Army prosecutor and defense attorney.

Though Coombs' name was unfamiliar to the public, and even to the defense bar at large, he had built a reputation as a meticulous and thoughtful attorney among his Army colleagues.

"He's probably one of the most organized attorneys I've ever seen," said Jonathan Crisp, a Pennsylvania attorney who worked alongside Coombs as a judge advocate general. "I guarantee he's probably read every piece of evidence. Some attorneys will wing it - he's definitely not in that category."

Manning's court-martial began this week and will resume on Monday.

After previously pleading guilty to 10 lesser offenses, Manning still stands accused on 21 counts, including the most serious one of aiding the enemy. He faces a possible life sentence without parole if convicted.

Some legal experts questioned Coombs' strategy in allowing Manning to plead guilty to 10 lesser charges in February without the promise of any concessions in return.

The voluntary move, known as a "naked plea," seemed aimed at gaining leniency from the judge at sentencing while forcing the government to prove only the most difficult charges, including claims he intended to aid al Qaeda.

Military law experts warned the pleas could also backfire by making it easier for prosecutors to prove their case.

As the trial unfolded, Coombs stood out as the only lawyer in civilian clothes, though his closely cropped hair hinted at his military background and his current status as an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel.

Coombs has sought to portray Manning as an idealistic young soldier grappling with a moral dilemma when he gained access to the documents in Iraq.

Friends of Coombs said his calm, low-key demeanor has served him well in handling the spotlight's glare.

"You don't see him going out there and making the case about him and not his client," said Jon Jackson, a close friend who, like Coombs, is a former judge advocate and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve.

Coombs is not responding to press inquiries during the trial but has used a blog at his law office's website to communicate with the public, post copies of defense motions, and provide updates on his client's well-being.

On the eve of trial, he thanked supporters and concluded with a message in all capital letters: "I am Bradley Manning."

COOL UNDER PRESSURE

Several former colleagues said Coombs has always cut a polished, comfortable figure in the courtroom, keeping theatrics to a minimum.

"I would bet very good money that Dave's not feeling any more pressure than he would for any other case," said Tom Fleener, a Colorado attorney who as an Army defense lawyer opposed Coombs when he was working as a military prosecutor. "That's just Dave's personality."

Crisp recalled a case in which he and Coombs were defending a client accused of rape who attempted suicide by immolating himself with lighter fluid.

"He didn't freak out," Crisp said. Instead, Coombs got to work researching whether the trial would be required to continue without his client's presence.

On his blog in 2009, Coombs said the incident reinforced the importance of developing a rapport with one's client.

"A defense counsel is likely the most educated, responsible and attentive person in the client's life at the time," he said.

A pro-Manning group known as Courage to Resist has raised almost $1.2 million on his behalf; approximately $265,000 had gone to pay Coombs' fees through May, with the balance spent on the group's staff, advertising and outreach. Another $57,000 in donations had gone directly to a legal trust fund.

Jeff Paterson, who runs Courage to Resist, said WikiLeaks gave more than $10,000 early in the case, while another $75,000 came from an anonymous donor. Most of the money has come from a network of 20,000 donors, many of whom opposed the war in Iraq.

Before leaving active duty for private practice, Coombs was offered the chance to be a military judge, a sign that his superiors in the Army recognized his talent, said Amy Fitzgibbons, a former colleague.

He spent several years teaching law at the Judge Advocate General's School in Virginia and currently holds adjunct positions there and at Roger Williams School of Law in Rhode Island, where his wife, Tanya Monestier, is also a law professor.

The judge on the trial, Denise Lind, said during a pretrial hearing last year that Coombs might have taught her classified information course at JAG school.

"You look familiar," she said, before adding, with some polite embarrassment, that she didn't really remember the class.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; editing by Andrew Hay)