Why manning court martial matters

Those include larceny, aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act, counts that could land him in military prison for the rest of his life.

The judge alone, not a jury, will determine his guilt or innocence. The documents that Manning sent to WikiLeaks constituted the most extensive leak of information in the history of the U.

They included battlefield reports, intelligence memos and State Department cables. Manning has become nothing less than a hero to people who believe he was a noble whistleblower, and those who opposed one or both of the wars — and a traitor to those who believe he compromised the U. To the frustration of reporters, pretrial proceedings have been conducted partly in secret. The court has withheld orders from the judge and even transcripts of hearings.

The few documents that have been released have been heavily redacted. The group, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, did not say how it obtained the recording. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. It will be only the second time he has spoken publicly since his arrest in May The last time his voice was heard was when he gave evidence last November about his treatment in the military prison at Quantico Marine base in Virginia.

He spoke then for several hours about being subjected over a period of months to various forms of suicide prevention. Thursday's appearance from Manning may be less dramatic — he is unlikely, for instance, to talk about how he was forced to strip naked at night — but it promises to be far more revealing about his thinking and his relationship with WikiLeaks.

As the most high-profile leaker — his lawyer's would say whistleblower — in recent times, what he says about how he came to transmit vast quantities of classified information to the anti-secrecy website, and crucially why, could be of great significance. The format of today's hearing is what is called in military jargon a "providence inquiry". That means he will enter into a dialogue with the judge, Colonel Denise Lind, in which he will enter his plea, while the judge will be seeking to ensure that he understands what he's doing and that his plea is voluntary with no coercion behind it.

There will be two types of plea that Manning will be asked about: the charges that he himself has agreed to and to which he is likely to plead guilty, and the charges that the US government alleges against him to which he will probably plead not guilty. The first set of charges are known in military jargon — there's a lot of that in a case like this, so bear with me — as "lesser and included".

In plain English, Manning has agreed to plead guilty to a set of charges that are less serious charges than those alleged by the army. He was the first government leaker to download and then transfer a large trove of classified digital information into the public domain. One of the more intriguing nuggets to emerge from Manning's court martial process was his admission that he first attempted to contact the Washington Post and New York Times with his leaks.

The Times didn't return his call, and an employee of the Post didn't take him seriously. The young soldier then turned to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, which he had already researched, believing it was "the best medium for publishing this information to the world" within his reach.

His trial might have looked rather different had more established media outlets followed up his calls. Although WikiLeaks disclosures were widely reported in the mainstream media, including the Guardian, they were disseminated via Julian Assange, who was portrayed by prosecutors as an "information anarchist".

The case revealed the changing shape of journalism in the internet era. The transcripts of chat logs between Manning and Lamo were central to the trial, and legal hearings that preceded it, but there was no evidence presented in open session to suggest US investigators could have independently identified Manning without the tip-off.

It is possible that the National Security Agency did crack the encrypted submission system that Wikileaks used, and kept the breakthrough secret, but that seems unlikely. While future government employees contemplating leaking information might be dissuaded by the length of sentence Manning received, they could also be emboldened at the thought that, if Manning had not spoken to Lamo, he might still be free today.

In recent weeks, during the sentencing phase of Manning's trial, the US government tried to argue that the year-old soldier risked the lives of government workers , caused extensive damage to the military and disrupted diplomatic missions.