By Medina Roshan
FORT MEADE, Md., Feb 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Army private
accused of providing secret documents to the WikiLeaks website
pleaded guilty on Thursday to misusing classified material he
felt "should become public," but denied the top charge of aiding
the enemy.
Private First Class Bradley Manning, 25, entered the pleas
prior to his court martial, which is set to begin on June 3, in
a case that centers on the biggest leak of government secrets in
U.S. history.
"I believe that if the general public ... had access to the
information ... this could spark a domestic debate as to the
role of the military and foreign policy in general," Manning,
dressed in full military uniform, testified calmly.
Reading from a 35-page statement as he remained seated next
to his lawyers, the short, slight private described his feelings
after he submitted the secret information to WikiLeaks.
"I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have
a clear conscience," said Manning, who spoke under oath for more
than an hour.
"This was the type of information... should become
public," he said.
At the hearing, through his attorney Manning pleaded not
guilty to the most serious charge, of aiding the enemy.
Manning, who has been jailed for more than 1,000 days, could face life imprisonment
if convicted of that charge.
He pleaded guilty to a series of 10 lesser charges that he
misused classified information at the hearing before military
judge Colonel Denise Lind. He faces a maximum of 20 years in
prison for those charges.
Under a ruling last month by Lind, Manning would have any
sentence reduced by 112 days to compensate for the markedly
harsh treatment he received during his confinement. While at
Quantico, Manning was placed in solitary confinement for up to
23 hours a day with guards checking on him every few minutes.
Manning admitted to unauthorized possession and willful
communication of classified information from the Combined
Information Data Network Exchange Iraq and the Combined
Information Data Network Exchange Afghanistan, two military
databases. He called the two tables of documents he sent to
WikiLeaks "two of most significant documents of our time."
He also admitted to misuse of documents from the U.S.
Southern Command pertaining to Guantanamo Bay, a memo from the
United States Army Intelligence Center, and records from a
military operation in Farah province in Afghanistan.
One of the classified U.S. military videos he said he leaked
showed the 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen
people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff,
photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his assistant and driver
Saeed Chmagh, 40.
Manning, an Army intelligence officer, testified that he
first tried to give the information to his "local paper," the
Washington Post, but when a journalist there was not interested
he left a message at The New York Times, which never returned
his call. He then planned to visit the offices of Politico, but
when a winter storm cancelled his plans, he turned to WikiLeaks.
Manning was arrested in May 2010 while serving in Iraq and
charged with downloading thousands of intelligence documents,
diplomatic cables and combat videos and forwarding them to
WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks began exposing the U.S. government secrets in the
same year, stunning diplomats around the world and outraging
U.S. officials who said damage to national security from the
leaks endangered U.S. lives.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has taken refuge in the
Ecuadorean Embassy in London since June to avoid extradition to
Sweden for alleged sex crimes.
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