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United States v. Manning

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United States v. Bradley Manning
photographPrivate First Class Bradley E. Manning
CourtUnited States Army Military District of Washington
Full case name United States v. Manning, Bradley E., PFC
Case history
Prior actionsArticle 32 hearing, opened December 16, 2011
Court membership
Judge sittingColonel Denise Lind

United States v. Bradley Manning is the 2012 court-martial of United States Army Private First Class Bradley E. Manning.

Manning was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq, where he had been stationed since October 2009, after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker in the United States, told the FBI that Manning had acknowledged passing classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks.

Manning was charged with a number of offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and aiding the enemy. He was ordered on February 3, 2012, to stand trial, and declined to enter a plea. The trial is due to begin on September 21, 2012, though pre-trial hearings may push the date further toward the end of the year.

Background

Material obtained by WikiLeaks

The material in question includes 251,287 United States diplomatic cables, over 400,000 classified army reports from the Iraq War (the Iraq War logs), and 90,000 army reports from the war in Afghanistan (the Afghan War logs). WikiLeaks also received two videos: of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike (the "Collateral Murder" video), and the May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan.

Charges

Main article: List of charges against Bradley Manning

Manning was charged on July, 5 2010, with a number of violations of Articles 92 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which were alleged to have taken place between November 19, 2009, and May 27, 2010. These were replaced on March 1, 2011, with 22 charges, including aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet knowing that it was accessible to the enemy, theft of public property or records, and transmitting defense information. The most serious of the charges is aiding the enemy, for which Manning could face life imprisonment.

(December 2011) Article 32 hearing

photograph
Bradley Manning in September 2009

A panel of experts ruled in April 2011 that Manning was fit to stand trial. An Article 32 hearing, presided over by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, was convened on December 16, 2011, at Fort Meade, Maryland, to determine whether to proceed to a court martial. The army was represented by Captain Ashden Fein, Captain Joe Morrow, and Captain Angel Overgaard. Manning was represented by military attorneys Major Matthew Kemkes and Captain Paul Bouchard, and by civilian attorney David Coombs.

Prosecution evidence

The lead prosecutor, Capt. Ashden Fine, argued that Manning had given enemies "unfettered access" to the material and had displayed an "absolute indifference" to classified information. He showed the court a video of Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaeda spokesman, referencing the leaked material.

The prosecution presented 300,000 pages of documents in evidence, including chat logs and classified material. Nicks writes that Manning appeared to have taken few security precautions. After his arrest, detectives searched his basement room in his aunt's house in Potomac, Maryland, and found an SD card they say contained the Afghan and Iraq War logs, along with a message to WikiLeaks. Investigators said he had also left trails on his computers of Google and Intelink searches, and of using Wget to download documents.

The court heard from two army investigators, Special Agent David Shaver, head of the digital forensics and research branch of the army's Computer Crime Investigative Unit (CCIU), and Mark Johnson, a digital forensics contractor from ManTech International, who works for the CCIU. They testified that they had found 100,000 State Department cables on a computer Manning had used between November 2009 and May 2010; 400,000 U.S. military reports from Iraq and 91,000 from Afghanistan on the SD card in his aunt's home; and 10,000 cables on his personal MacBook Pro and storage devices that they said had not been passed to WikiLeaks because a file was corrupted. They also said they had recovered an exchange from May 2010 between Manning and Eric Schmiedl, a Boston mathematician, in which Manning said he was the source of the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral Murder") video.

Johnson said he found a text file called wl-press.txt on an external hard drive in Manning's room in Iraq. The file was created on November 30, 2009, and gave the contact detail in Iceland for WikiLeaks. He said he also recovered 14–15 pages of encrypted chats, in unallocated space on Manning's MacBook's hard drive, between Manning and someone believed to be Julian Assange, using the Adium instant messaging client. The MacBook's log-in password, "TWink1492!!", was the encryption key. Two of the chat handles, which used the Berlin Chaos Computer Club's domain (ccc.de), had names associated with them, Julian Assange and Nathaniel Frank. Johnson also said he found SSH logs on the MacBook that showed an SFTP connection, from an IP address that resolved to Manning's aunt's home, to a Swedish IP address with links to WikiLeaks. There was also a text file named "Readme" attached to the logs, apparently written by Manning:

Items of historical significance of two wars Iraq and Afghanistan Significant Activity, Sigacts, between 00001 January 2004 and 2359 31 December 2009 extracts from CSV documents from Department of Defense and CDNE database. These items have already been sanitized of any source identifying information.

You might need to sit on this information for 90 to 180 days to figure out how best to send and distribute such a large amount of data to a large audience and protect the source.

This is possibly one of the most significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century assymmetric warfare.

Have a good day.

Johnson said there had been two attempts to delete material from the MacBook. The operating system was re-installed in January 2010, and on or around January 31 an attempt was made to erase the hard drive by doing a "zero-fill," which involves overwriting material with zeroes. This process was started, cancelled, then started again, but the material was overwritten only once, which meant it could be retrieved.

Defense arguments

photograph
David Coombs, Manning's civilian lawyer

Manning's lawyers argued that the government had overstated the harm the release of the documents had caused, and had overcharged Manning to force him to give evidence against Assange. They suggested that other people had had access to Manning's workplace computer, and under cross-examination Shaver acknowledged that some of the 10,000 cables on Manning's personal computer did not match cables published by WikiLeaks. David Coombs asked for the dismissal of any charge related to the use of unauthorized software, arguing that Manning's unit had been "lawless ... when it comes to information assurance."

The defense also raised the issue of whether Manning's gender identity disorder had affected his judgment. Manning had e-mailed his master sergeant, Paul Adkins, in April 2010 to say he was suffering from gender confusion and attaching a photograph of himself dressed as a woman. After Manning's arrest, the army found information about hormone replacement therapy in his room, and his commander, Captain Steven Lim, learned that he had been calling himself Breanna. His lawyers argued that his superiors had failed to provide adequate counseling, and had not taken disciplinary action or revoked his security clearance, and suggested that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy – which was repealed in September 2011 – had made it difficult for Manning to serve in the army as a gay man.

Decision to proceed to court-martial

The hearing resulted in Almanza recommending that Manning be referred to a general court-martial, and on February 3, Major General Michael Linnington – commanding general of the Military District of Washington, the court-martial convening authority – ordered him to stand trial on all 22 charges, including aiding the enemy. He was arraigned on February 23, and declined to enter a plea.

Other pre-trial developments

(January 2012) Defense request to depose six witnesses

After the hearing, in January 2012, David Coombs filed a request to depose six witnesses, whose names were redacted in the application, and who are believed to have been involved in classifying the leaked videos. Coombs argues that the videos were not classified at the time they were obtained by WikiLeaks.

(April 2012) Article 39 hearing

An Article 39 hearing was convened on April 24, 2012, during which the judge, Colonel Denise Lind, denied a defense motion to dismiss the charge of aiding the enemy, and ruled that the government must be able to show that Manning knew the enemy would be able to access information on the WikiLeaks site. She ordered the CIA, FBI, DIA, State Department, and Department of Justice to release documents showing their assessment of whether the leaked material had damaged the national interest of the United States. Lind said she would decide after reading the documents whether to make them available to Manning's lawyers. She also ordered forensic imaging of five computers removed from Manning's work station that had not yet been wiped clean.

During the hearing, Manning told the judge that he had replaced his military lawyers, Major Matthew Kemkes and Captain Paul Bouchard, with Captain Joshua Tooman. The parties agreed on a tentative date for the trial, which will take place in the courtroom at Fort Meade:

  • June 6-8, 2012: Article 39 hearing
  • July 16-20: Article 39 hearing
  • August 27-31: Article 39 hearing
  • September 19-20: Article 39 hearing
  • September 21: Trial begins
  • October 12: Estimated completion

(May 2012) Petition to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals

The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a petition in May 2012 asking the Army Court of Criminal Appeals to order press and public access to motion paper, orders, and transcripts. Petitioners include Julian Assange, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Chase Madar, author of The Passion of Bradley Manning (2011), and Glenn Greenwald of Salon.

See also

Material alleged to have been leaked by Manning

Notes

  1. ^ Rizzo, Jennifer "Bradley Manning charged", CNN, February 23, 2012.
  2. Nicks, Denver. "Private Manning and the Making of Wikileaks", This Land, September 23, 2010.
  3. Zetter, Kim. "Bradley Manning to Face All Charges in Court-Martial", Wired, February 3, 2012.
  4. "Attorney for WikiLeaks suspect says he's seen no evidence on documents", CNN, August 31, 2010.
  5. "WikiLeaks: Bradley Manning faces 22 new charges", CBS News, March 2, 2011.
  6. "Panel Says WikiLeaks Suspect Is Competent to Stand Trial", Associated Press, April 29, 2011.
  7. Nicks 2012, p. 3.
  8. Nicks 2012, p. 223.
  9. ^ For the army investigators' testimony, see Zetter, December 19, 2011.
  10. Nicks 2012, pp. 137–138; also see Zetter, December 19, 2011.
  11. For the prosecution argument about Manning's "absolute indifference," and for the defense argument about Manning's unit being "lawless," see Marshall, Serena. "Court Martial for Bradley Manning in Wikileaks Case?", ABC News, December 22, 2011.
  12. That he was deemed fit to stand trial, see "Panel Says WikiLeaks Suspect Is Competent to Stand Trial", Associated Press, April 29, 2011.
  13. Coombs, David. "Request for oral depositions", United States v. PFC Bradley Manning, January 12, 2012.
  14. ^ "Bradley Manning Judge to Rule on Request to Drop Charges", ABC News, April 24, 2012.
  15. Dishneau, David. "GI Seeks Dismissal of 10 Counts in WikiLeaks Case", Associated Press, 24 May 2012.

References

Books
  • Nicks, Denver. Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History. Chicago Review Press, 2012.

Further reading

Articles
Books
  • Assange, Julian and O'Hagan, Andrew. Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography. Canongate, 2011.
  • Brooke, Heather. The Revolution Will Be Digitised. William Heinemann, 2011.
  • Domscheit-Berg, Daniel. Inside WikiLeaks. Doubleday, 2011.
  • Fowler, Andrew. The Most Dangerous Man in the World. Skyhorse Publishing, 2011.
  • Leigh, David and Harding, Luke. WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy. Guardian Books, 2011.
  • Madar, Chase. The Passion of Bradley Manning. OR Books, 2012.
  • Mitchell, Greg and Gosztola, Kevin. Truth and Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning. Sinclair Books, 2012.
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