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Prosecutor Calls Manning an Egotist Who Betrayed Nation’s Trust
In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as ‘Anarchist’ for Leaking Archives
(about 7 hours later)
FORT MEADE, Md. — A military prosecutor on Thursday portrayed Pfc. Bradley Manning as an egotist who betrayed the trust of the United States government when he leaked vast archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks, lifting a veil on American diplomatic and military activities.
FORT MEADE, Md. — A military prosecutor portrayed Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday as an “anarchist” who, seeking to “make a splash,” betrayed the United States’ trust when he leaked vast archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks, lifting a veil on American diplomatic and military activities.
As closing arguments began in the high-profile court-martial trial, the prosecutor, Maj. Ashden Fein, focused squarely on the most controversial charge Private Manning is facing: that by giving information to WikiLeaks for publication on a Web site to which the entire world had access, he is guilty of “aiding the enemy.”
As closing arguments began in the high profile court-martial trial, the prosecutor, Maj. Ashden Fein, focused squarely on the most contentious charge that Private Manning is facing: that by giving the information to WikiLeaks for publication on a Web site that the world could see, he is guilty of “aiding the enemy.”
That charge, under which prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment, has never been brought in a leak case, and the theory behind it could establish a precedent with major implications for investigative journalism in the Internet era. But Major Fein said it was justified in Private Manning’s case. He argued that Private Manning’s “wholesale and indiscriminate compromise of hundreds of thousands of classified documents” for release in bulk by WikiLeaks, whom he called “essentially information anarchists,” should not be portrayed as an ordinary journalistic leak.
That charge has never been brought in a leak case, and the theory behind it could establish a precedent with implications for investigative journalism in the Internet era. But Major Fein said it was justified in Private Manning’s case. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence.
Leaking to “established journalistic enterprises like The New York Times and the Washington Post would be a crime,” he said, but, “that is not what happened in this case and under these facts. Pfc. Manning deliberately disclosed classified information to WikiLeaks knowing WikiLeaks would disclose it to the world in exactly the form they would receive it.”
“Pfc. Manning was not a humanist; he was a hacker,” Major Fein said, adding: “He was not a whistle-blower. He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it.”
He added: “WikiLeaks was merely the platform which Pfc. Manning used to ensure that all of the information was available to the world, including the enemies of the United States.”
Private Manning’s defense lawyer, David E. Coombs, has portrayed him as a well-intentioned and principled, if naïve, protester who was motivated by a desire to help society better understand the world, who wanted to prompt a national debate and who was selective about which databases he released to avoid causing harm. Mr. Coombs is set to deliver his closing arguments on Friday.
Private Manning’s defense lawyer, David Coombs, has portrayed Private Manning as a well-intentioned and principled — if naïve — protester who was motivated by a desire to help society better understand the world and who was selective about which databases he released in order to avoid causing harm.
While Major Fein made his arguments, reporters watched the trial on a close-captioned feed at the media center. Two military police officers in camouflage fatigues and armed with holstered handguns paced behind each row there, looking over the journalists’ shoulders, which had not happened during the trial. No explanation was given.
The first part of Major Fein’s opening focused on Private Manning’s exposure in training to an emphasis on avoiding the posting of sensitive information on the Internet. The prosecutor also focused on one of the few factual disputes in the case: the date when Private Manning downloaded and leaked an encrypted video of an airstrike in Gharani, Afghanistan, in which American forces killed 100 to 150 civilians, many of them women and children.
Major Fein spoke from late morning until nearly 6 p.m., going over each batch of documents in detail and repeatedly returning to the theme of what he said was Private Manning’s recklessness and betrayal.
Private Manning contends he did so in the spring of 2010. Though access logs for the server on which the video was stored are incomplete, Major Fein argued that a variety of circumstantial evidence indicated that he instead downloaded it in late November 2009 — less than two weeks after he arrived in Iraq.
He argued that Private Manning’s “wholesale and indiscriminate compromise of hundreds of thousands of classified documents” for release in bulk by the WikiLeaks staff, whom he called “essentially information anarchists,” should not be portrayed as an ordinary journalistic leak but as a bid for “notoriety, although in a clandestine form.”
The timing is important because it goes to the dueling portrayals of Private Manning. The prosecution wants to show that he immediately seized upon his opportunity to release classified information through WikiLeaks, while the defense has argued that he only gradually decided to do so after being in Iraq for a while and seeing things that troubled him.
Leaking to “established journalistic enterprises like The New York Times and The Washington Post would be a crime,” Major Fein said, but “that is not what happened in this case and under these facts.”
Mr. Coombs may begin his closing statement later on Thursday afternoon. After speaking for nearly 90 minutes, Major Fein indicated that he had some two hours left to relay. The court was expected to recess for at least an hour for lunch.
He added, “WikiLeaks was merely the platform which Pfc. Manning used to ensure that all of the information was available to the world, including the enemies of the United States.”
Earlier on Thursday, the judge, Col. Denise Lind, rejected a defense request that she immediately acquit Private Manning of five theft-related counts before the closing arguments.
Some of the files given to WikiLeaks by Private Manning, he emphasized, were found in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and showed up in a Qaeda propaganda video.
The trial has been unusual because Private Manning has already confessed to being a WikiLeaks source and has pleaded guilty to lesser versions of the charges he faces. As a result, there has never been much doubt about most of the basic facts, and the primary open question has been how his actions should be understood.
Private Manning has already pleaded guilty to a lesser version of the charges he is facing. He has also confessed to providing WikiLeaks with two videos of airstrikes in which civilians and journalists were killed; files about detainees’ being held without trial at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; hundreds of thousands of incident reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; and about 250,000 diplomatic cables.
But because prosecutors decided to press forward with the more severe versions of the charges — like violating the Espionage Act and aiding the enemy — they had to spend weeks introducing evidence establishing that Private Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, had indeed downloaded various batches of files at his base in Iraq and sent them to WikiLeaks.
Given the volume of the documents Private Manning released, Major Fein said, “there is no way he even knew what he was giving WikiLeaks.”
As the trial has moved toward its conclusion, the more philosophical questions confronting Colonel Lind are re-emerging center stage — including whether WikiLeaks played a journalistic role and whether providing information to the anti-secrecy group was any different, for legal purposes, from providing it to a traditional news outlet.
Major Fein focused on Private Manning’s training, when he was warned to avoid posting secret information on the Internet, and zeroed in on one of the few factual disputes in the case: the date Private Manning downloaded and leaked an encrypted video of a botched airstrike in Afghanistan that killed 100 to 150 civilians, many of them women and children.
Critics of the case have warned that a conviction on the aiding-the-enemy charge would establish the government’s theory on which it is based — that giving information to an organization that publishes it online is the same as giving it to an enemy — as precedent in leak cases.
Private Manning contends he did so in the spring of 2010. Major Fein argued that a variety of circumstantial evidence indicated that Private Manning instead downloaded it in late November 2009, less than two weeks after he arrived in Iraq.
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor, has argued that the case carries major ramifications for the future of news media freedoms and investigative journalism, and he testified in Private Manning’s defense, arguing that WikiLeaks was playing a journalistic role in the Internet era.
The timing is important because it speaks to the dueling portrayals of Private Manning. The prosecution wants to show that he immediately seized upon his opportunity to release classified information through WikiLeaks, but the defense has argued that he only gradually decided to do so after seeing things that troubled him.
Major Fein criticized that testimony on Thursday, saying that whatever Mr. Benkler’s theories — based largely on reading news articles about WikiLeaks — they were different from what Private Manning thought the organization was. Citing chat logs and government reports about WikiLeaks that Private Manning had read, Major Fein portrayed the organization as more like an intelligence agency.
Similarly, Major Fein pointed to evidence that he said showed that Private Manning was also responsible for leaking a rare file he has denied disclosing, a list of 74,000 names and e-mail addresses of soldiers and civilians deployed in Iraq. That dispute is important because the accusation could undercut Private Manning’s portrayal of himself as selecting only information that could inspire socially valuable debate.
The prosecution of government officials for leaking information for public consumption used to be extraordinarily rare, but it has become common in recent years. The Justice Department brought charges in such a matter for the first time in a generation in 2005, and over the second term of the Bush administration it developed two other leak investigations that led to charges in 2010 under the Obama administration.
Major Fein also focused on Private Manning’s chats with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, based on logs recovered from his computer that have not been made public. At one point, he said, Mr. Assange offered to get Private Manning an encrypted cellphone to use in Iraq. At another, Private Manning sought Mr. Assange’s help in cracking an encrypted password for an anonymous account on his classified computer, but the joint effort failed, Major Fein said.
In all, there have been seven leak-related cases under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents.
Last week, the Obama administration won a major ruling from an appeals court limiting press freedoms in the leak case against a former Central Intelligence Agency official accused of leaking to James Risen, a New York Times reporter, for a 2006 book. The court ruled that the Constitution provided no protections to investigative reporters from having to testify as witnesses in the criminal trials against people accused of leaking to them.
