|
| FILE - In this Monday, July 29, 2013, file photo, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted to a security vehicle outside of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md. U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was acquitted Tuesday, July 30, 2013, of aiding the enemy for giving classified secrets to WikiLeaks. The military judge hearing the case, Army Col. Denise Lind, announced the verdict. |
FORT MEADE, Md.
(AP) -- U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was acquitted of aiding the
enemy - the most serious charge he faced - but was convicted of
espionage, theft and other charges Tuesday, more than three years after
he spilled secrets to WikiLeaks.
The judge,
Army Col. Denise Lind, deliberated for about 16 hours over three days
before reaching her decision in a case that drew worldwide attention as
supporters hailed Manning as a whistleblower. The U.S. government called
him an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor.
Manning
stood at attention, flanked by his attorneys, as the judge read her
verdicts. He appeared not to react, though his attorney, David Coombs,
smiled faintly when he heard not guilty on aiding the enemy, which
carried a potential life sentence.
When the
judge was done, Coombs put his hand on Manning's back and whispered
something to him, eliciting a slight smile on the soldier's face.
Manning
was convicted on 19 of 21 charges, and he previously pleaded guilty to a
charge involving an Icelandic cable. He faces up to 136 years in
prison. His sentencing hearing begins Wednesday.
Coombs came outside the court to a round of applause and shouts of "thank you" from a few dozen Manning supporters.
"We
won the battle, now we need to go win the war," Coombs said of the
sentencing phase. "Today is a good day, but Bradley is by no means out
of the fire."
Supporters thanked him for his
work. One slipped him a private note. Others asked questions about
verdicts that they didn't understand.
Manning's
court-martial was unusual because he acknowledged giving the
anti-secrecy website more than 700,000 battlefield reports and
diplomatic cables, and video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that
killed civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters news photographer and his
driver.
In the footage, airmen laughed and
called targets "dead bastards." A military investigation found troops
mistook the camera equipment for weapons.
Besides
the aiding the enemy acquittal, Manning was also found not guilty of an
espionage charge when the judge found prosecutors had not proved their
assertion Manning started giving material to WikiLeaks in late 2009.
Manning said he started the leaks in February the following year.
Manning
pleaded guilty earlier this year to lesser offenses that could have
brought him 20 years behind bars, yet the government continued to pursue
all but one of the original, more serious charges.
Manning
said during a pre-trial hearing in February he leaked the material to
expose the U.S military's "bloodlust" and disregard for human life, and
what he considered American diplomatic deceit. He said he chose
information he believed would not the harm the United States and he
wanted to start a debate on military and foreign policy. He did not
testify at his court-martial.
Coombs portrayed
Manning as a "young, naive but good-intentioned" soldier who was in
emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay service member at a time
when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. military.
He
said Manning could have sold the information or given it directly to
the enemy, but he gave it to WikiLeaks in an attempt to "spark reform"
and provoke debate. Counterintelligence witnesses valued the Iraq and
Afghanistan war logs at about $5.7 million.
Coombs
said Manning had no way of knowing whether al-Qaida would access the
secret-spilling website and a 2008 counterintelligence report showed the
government itself didn't know much about the site.
The
defense attorney also mocked the testimony of a former supervisor who
said Manning told her the American flag meant nothing to him and she
suspected before they deployed to Iraq that Manning was a spy. Coombs
noted she had not written up a report on Manning's alleged disloyalty,
though had written ones on him taking too many smoke breaks and drinking
too much coffee.
The government said Manning
had sophisticated security training and broke signed agreements to
protect the secrets. He even had to give a presentation on operational
security during his training after he got in trouble for posting a
YouTube video about what he was learning.
The
lead prosecutor, Maj. Ashden Fein, said Manning knew the material would
be seen by al-Qaida, a key point prosecutor needed to prove to get an
aiding the enemy conviction. Even Osama bin Laden had some of the
digital files at his compound when he was killed.
Some
of Manning's supporters attended nearly every day of two-month trial,
many of them protesting outside the Fort Meade gates each day before the
court-martial. They wore T-shirts with the word "truth" on them,
blogged, tweeted and raised money for Manning's defense. One supporter
was banned from the trial because the judge said he made online threats.
Hours
before the verdict, about two dozen demonstrators gathered outside the
gates of the military post, proclaiming their admiration for Manning.
"He
wasn't trying to aid the enemy. He was trying to give people the
information they need so they can hold their government accountable,"
said Barbara Bridges, of Baltimore.
At a press
conference Tuesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange blasted the
verdict, calling it "a dangerous precedent and an example of national
security extremism."
"This has never been a fair trial," Assange told journalists gathered at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
The
court-martial unfolded as another low-level intelligence worker, Edward
Snowden, revealed U.S. secrets about surveillance programs. Snowden, a
civilian employee, told The Guardian his motives were similar to
Manning's, but he said his leaks were more selective.
Manning's
supporters believed a conviction for aiding the enemy would have a
chilling effect on leakers who want to expose wrongdoing by giving
information to websites and the media.
Before
Snowden, Manning's case was the most high-profile espionage prosecution
for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for its
crackdown on leakers.
The WikiLeaks case is by
far the most voluminous release of classified material in U.S. history.
Manning's supporters included Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg,
who in the early 1970s spilled a secret Defense Department history of
U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
The 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers showed that the U.S. government repeatedly misled the public about the Vietnam War.
The
material WikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 documented complaints of
abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. tally of civilian deaths in Iraq,
and America's weak support for the government of Tunisia - a disclosure
that Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern
pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
The
Obama administration said the release threatened to expose valuable
military and diplomatic sources and strained America's relations with
other governments.
Prosecutors said during the
trial Manning relied on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange for
guidance on what secrets to "harvest" for the organization, starting
within weeks of his arrival in Iraq in late 2009.
Federal
authorities are looking into whether Assange can be prosecuted. He has
been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition
to Sweden on sex-crimes allegations.
