FORT MEADE, Md. — A seven-day hearing into the biggest national security leak in U.S. history ended Thursday with defense lawyers insisting that the accused soldier was a victim of overreaching by a military that didn’t even follow its own rules for safeguarding sensitive information.
The government argued that it had made its case for a court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, a troubled young Army intelligence analyst who prosecutors said aided the enemy by leaking troves of documents.
Lawyers for the prosecution and defense gave closing arguments in the preliminary hearing at a military base outside Washington to determine whether Manning should be tried for allegedly sending hundreds of thousands of diplomatic documents and Iraq and Afghanistan war-zone field reports to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
The presiding officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, has until Jan. 16 to recommend whether the 24-year-old Crescent, Okla., native should be court-martialed.
Speaking for more than an hour, the chief prosecutor, Capt. Ashden Fein, recounted evidence supporting each of the 22 charges, illustrating his arguments with slides projected on screens.
“He did this during a time of war,” Fein said.
Laid bare on the Internet last year were military procedures for providing air support for ground troops and procedures used to fly the injured out for medical treatment, he said. Leaked documents also included names of units, intelligence sources and methods, as well as tactics used by troops in general, including secretive special- operations commando forces, he said.
Defense attorney David Coombs spoke for about 20 minutes and never denied his client had leaked the documents. But he said that the Army had failed Manning as he repeatedly struggled with emotional problems and that the government is now piling on charges in an attempt to strong-arm Manning into pleading guilty.
As for security in the intelligence unit where Manning worked, Coombs called it a “lawless unit” where there was a “critical breakdown” in standards. Witness testimony revealed soldiers were allowed to load personal music CDs onto their workplace computers and play music, movies and video games stored on a network meant for classified data.
Coombs said the government needs “a reality check” for bringing such serious charges, which carry combined maximum penalties of more than 150 years in prison.
