Acquitted of the most serious charge against him, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning still faces up to 136 years in prison for leaking government secrets to the website WikiLeaks, and his fate rests with a judge who will begin hearing arguments Wednesday in the sentencing phase of the soldier's court-martial. 
 
 FILE - In this July 26, 2013 photo, Zach Callahan, right, and supporters of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, march outside Fort Lesley J. McNair, in Washington. Few Americans in living memory have emerged... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this July 30, 2013 photo, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md. Few Americans in living memory have emerged from obscurity to become such polarizing public figures... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this July 30, 2013 file photo, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md. after receiving a verdict in his court martial. Few Americans in living memory have... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2011 file photo, unidentified Occupy London protesters demonstrate outside the High Court following news that the City of London Corporation has won its legal bid to evict anti-capitalist... (Associated Press) 
 
 The former intelligence analyst was convicted of 20 of 22 charges for sending hundreds of thousands of government and diplomatic secrets to WikiLeaks, but he was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, which alone could have meant life in prison without parole. 
 
 "We're not celebrating," defense attorney David Coombs said. "Ultimately, his sentence is all that really matters." 
 
 The judge prohibited both sides from presenting evidence during trial about any actual damage the leaks caused to national security and troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but lawyers will be allowed to bring that up at sentencing. 
 
 The release of diplomatic cables, warzone logs and videos embarrassed the U.S. and its allies. U.S. officials warned of dire consequences in the days immediately after the first disclosures in July 2010, but a Pentagon review later suggested those fears might have been overblown. 
 
 The judge also restricted evidence about Manning's motives. Manning testified during a pre-trial hearing he leaked the material to expose U.S military "bloodlust" and diplomatic deceitfulness, but did not believe his actions would harm the country. He didn't testify during the trial, but he could take the stand during the sentencing phase. 
 
 Lisa Windsor, a retired Army colonel and former judge advocate, said the punishment phase would focus on Manning's motive and the harm that was done by the leak. 
 
 "You're balancing that to determine what would be an appropriate sentence. I think it's likely that he's going to be in jail for a very long time," said Windsor, now in private practice in Washington. 
 
 The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, deliberated three days before reaching her verdict in a case involving the largest leak of documents in U.S. history. The case drew worldwide attention as supporters hailed Manning as a whistleblower and the U.S. government called him an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor. 
 
 The verdict denied the government a precedent that freedom of press advocates had warned could have broad implications for leak cases and investigative journalism about national security issues. 
 
 Whistleblower advocates and legal experts had mixed opinions on the implications for the future of leak cases in the Internet age. 
 
 The advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said the verdict was a chilling warning to whistleblowers, "against whom the Obama administration has been waging an unprecedented offensive," and threatens the future of investigative journalism because intimidated sources might fall quiet. 
 
 However, another advocate of less government secrecy, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, questioned whether the implications will be so dire, given the extraordinary nature of the Manning case. 
 
 "This was a massive hemorrhage of government records, and it's not too surprising that it elicited a strong reaction from the government," Aftergood said. 
 
 "Most journalists are not in the business of publishing classified documents, they're in the business of reporting the news, which is not the same thing," he said. "This is not good news for journalism, but it's not the end of the world, either." 
 
 Glenn Greenwald, the journalist, commentator and former civil rights lawyer who first reported Edward Snowden's leaks of National Security Agency surveillance programs, said Manning's acquittal on the charge of aiding the enemy represented a "tiny sliver of justice." 
 
 But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose website exposed Manning's spilled U.S. secrets to the world, saw nothing to cheer in the mixed verdict. 
 
 "It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism," he told reporters at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, which is sheltering him. "This has never been a fair trial." 
 
 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. 
 
 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 Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring. 
 
 To prove aiding the enemy, prosecutors had to show Manning had "actual knowledge" the material he leaked would be seen by al-Qaida and that he had "general evil intent." They presented evidence the material fell into the hands of the terrorist group and its former leader, Osama bin Laden, but struggled to prove their assertion that Manning was an anarchist computer hacker and attention-seeking traitor. ||||| The 25-year-old was found guilty on Tuesday of espionage and more than a dozen other charges which together could result in a jail sentence of more than 100 years for the largest leak in US history. 
 
 However, in a blow for the American government, he was acquitted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge against him. Prosecutors had argued that Osama bin Laden used the leaked documents to hatch plots against America. 
 
 Manning’s supporters, who view him as a whistle-blower who exposed the true nature of America’s wars in the Middle East, said the military judge had stepped back from setting a “dangerous precedent” with her verdict. 
 
 Campaigners said it also offered hope to future whistle-blowers as the judge appeared to reject arguments that leaking to a media outlet could aid al-Qaeda. 
 
 Dressed in his dark blue military uniform, Manning showed no emotion as the verdict was read and his supporters in the sparse military courtroom remained silent throughout the five-minute hearing. 
 
 Manning’s family said in a statement that he “never intended to help America’s enemies in any way”. 
 
 “Brad loves his country and was proud to wear its uniform,” they said. 
 
 The soldier waived his right to a jury trial and his fate was decided by Col Denise Lind, the military judge who presided over his court martial at Fort Meade, a military base outside Washington. 
 
 Bradley Manning, third from left, stands with attorney David Coombs, center, while Denise Lind, right, reads her verdict (William Hennessy) 
 
 She cleared Manning of aiding the enemy, but convicted him of six counts of violating the Espionage Act, five counts of theft and several other minor counts. The 20 charges of which he was convicted or pleaded guilty could result in a total of up to 136 years in prison. The court will begin sentencing today and it could be weeks before Manning learns his fate. 
 
 “It’s a relief that Bradley Manning wasn’t convicted of aiding the enemy for his sake and for our country’s because it doesn’t set a dangerous precedent,” said Nathan Fuller, a spokesman for the Bradley Manning support network. 
 
 “But it’s outrageous that he was convicted of any espionage counts and he faces potential decades in prison.” Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for WikiLeaks, said: “There is no room for optimism that the sentence may be lenient”. 
 
 Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, on Tuesday night said he took no solace from the one acquittal. The only victim in the case had been the US government's "wounded pride", he told a news briefing inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been holed up for over a year to avoid extradition to Sweden. 
 
 "This was never a fair trial," Mr Assange said. He criticised the treatment of Manning in custody, saying he had been stripped, caged and kept in isolation to "break him". 
 
 Mr Assange said Manning, with the backing of Wikileaks, would appeal the conviction, taking the case to the Supreme Court if necessary. 
 
 "WikiLeaks will not rest until he is free," he said. 
 
 Over eight weeks of testimony, prosecutors claimed Manning used his position as a junior intelligence analyst in Iraq to harvest 700,000 classified military and diplomatic files that he then turned over to the anti-secrecy website. 
 
 The court heard how he used blank CDs, including one labelled “Lady Gaga”, to systematically download videos, diplomatic files and military documents which he then passed on to WikiLeaks. 
 
 He was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 after confiding in Adrian Lamo, a hacker he met online, who turned him in to the FBI. “[Manning] was a determined soldier with a knowledge, ability, and desire to harm the United States in its war effort,” said Maj Ashden Fein, for the prosecution. “He was not a whistle-blower; he was a traitor.” Manning’s defence team argued that the soldier, who was 22 at the time of the leaks, was “young, naive, but good-intentioned”. They said he was deeply disturbed by what he saw in Iraq. 
 
 Manning did not dispute that he was responsible for the leaks and in February he pleaded guilty to 10 lesser charges. In a previous hearing, he cast himself as a whistle-blower who wanted to expose the “bloodlust” of US forces in the Middle East. “I felt I had accomplished something that allowed me to have a clear conscience,” he said. 
 
 The sentencing will not bring an end to legal proceedings that first began at Fort Meade in 2011. The case will almost certainly be appealed to a higher military court and reach the US Supreme Court. “This is going to go on for years. We have not seen the last of Manning,” said Eugene R Fidell, an expert in military law at Yale Law School. The proceedings in Maryland have been closely watched by Assaange, who is fighting extradition to Sweden on sex charges, from London. 
 
 “We call those people — who are prepared to risk being a martyr for all of the rest of us — we call those people heroes,” Mr Assange said on CNN before the verdict. “Bradley Manning is a hero.” ||||| WASHINGTON — Feeling outcast and alone in Iraq, Bradley Manning , then a 22-year-old Army private, turned to the Internet for solace in early 2010, wanting to share with the world what he saw as the unconscionable horrors of war, an act that resulted in what military prosecutors called one of the greatest betrayals in the nation’s history. 
 
 Within months, he was arrested for making public, through the WikiLeaks organization, the greatest cache of secret government information since the Pentagon Papers. He was called a traitor by his government; confined to a tiny cell 23 hours a day at the Marine base at Quantico, Va., and the Army brig at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.; and finally court-martialed in Maryland. 
 
 As prosecutors accused Private Manning of being a self-promoting “anarchist” who was nothing like the tortured man of principle portrayed by his lawyers, supporters around the world celebrated him as a martyr for free speech. But the heated language on both sides tended to overshadow the human story at the center of the case. 
 
 That story involved the child of a severed home, a teenager bullied for his conflicted sexuality whose father, a conservative retired soldier, and mother, a Welsh woman who never adjusted to life in Oklahoma, bounced their child back and forth between places where he never fit in. 
 
 Private Manning was a misfit as well in the Army, which he joined in the hope of gaining technical skills and an education, and which eventually sent him to Contingency Operating Station Hammer, a remote post east of Baghdad, where he had access to some of the nation’s deepest military and diplomatic secrets. In early 2010, he covertly downloaded gun-camera videos, battle logs and tens of thousands of State Department cables onto flash drives while lip-syncing the words to Lady Gaga songs. 
 
 He anonymously made contact with WikiLeaks to spill his secrets, hoping, as he told the military court that convicted him on Tuesday, to “spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.” Whatever his motives or inner conflicts, Private Manning knew he was violating the law and military regulations. 
 
 According to a new documentary about WikiLeaks and the Manning case, “We Steal Secrets,” by the filmmaker Alex Gibney, Private Manning thought that in Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, he had an ally. 
 
 “Manning invested more in that relationship,” Mr. Gibney said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. Seeking a more sympathetic ear, Mr. Gibney said, Private Manning confessed his deed, and his multiple personal torments, to Adrian Lamo, an accomplished computer hacker he had met in a chat room online. Mr. Lamo drew him out, and then turned him in to the authorities. 
 
 “He was a naïve idealist. He was not a spy,” said Mr. Gibney, whose film portrays Private Manning sympathetically. “He didn’t get any money for this. He didn’t go to a foreign government. Remember, he did plead guilty to actually leaking to WikiLeaks, but he wouldn’t plead guilty to being a spy, because he didn’t think he was one, and I don’t, either.” 
 
 In his conversations with Mr. Lamo, who shared his computer chats with Wired.com, Private Manning said he had been ignored and isolated at work. “I just wanted to be nice, and live a normal life,” Private Manning wrote. But he said he had seen things that troubled him that he felt helpless to do anything about. 
 
 According to the chat logs, he was first dismayed by the detention of 15 people in Iraq for printing criticism of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “After that,” he wrote, “I saw things differently.” 
 
 In a long statement to the military court this year, he said he was also disturbed by footage shot by an Apache helicopter of an attack on a street in Baghdad in July 2007 that killed two Reuters journalists and several other men. He called the footage one in a series of “war porn-type videos” he had seen that sickened him. The video was among the material he provided to WikiLeaks, which distributed it widely without identifying its source. 
 
 While larger questions about government secrecy and the role of the news media in the Internet age swirl around the case, the roots of Private Manning’s behavior may spring as much from his troubled youth as from his political views. 
 
 He spent much of his childhood alone, playing video games or huddled in front of a computer when he was living with his mother in Haverfordwest, Wales. He was teased relentlessly there for his foreign ways and began to act out in school. ||||| The successful prosecution of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning gives a boost to the Obama administration's aggressive pursuit of people it believes have leaked national security secrets to the media. 
 
 Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., Tuesday, July 30, 2013, after receiving a verdict in his court martial. The successful prosecution of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning... (Associated Press) 
 
 Manning was acquitted Tuesday of the most serious charge he faced, aiding the enemy, but he was found guilty by a military judge of enough charges to send him to prison for many years, and perhaps the rest of his life. 
 
 Legal scholars said they expect the government's case against National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden to be similar to the Manning prosecution, although it would take place in a federal trial court, not a military court-martial. 
 
 "I don't think Edward Snowden is doing a jig in his airport lounge in Russia," said Elizabeth Goiten, co-director of the liberty and national security program at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. 
 
 Prosecutors were able to convince Army Col. Denise Lind that the reams of documents Manning gave to WikiLeaks constituted violations of the Espionage Act, despite the arguments of Manning's lawyers that he chose to hand over information that he believed would not harm the United States. 
 
 Goiten said Lind determined that Manning's intent was irrelevant, although his motives come into play when the judge considers his sentence. 
 
 "He could be convicted even if he had the purest of motives," Goiten said. "What that says is that the Espionage Act will not distinguish between traitors and whistle-blowers." 
 
 Before Lind announced her verdict, Manning supporters and advocates of press freedoms worried that a conviction for aiding the enemy would have a chilling effect on leakers who want to expose government wrongdoing because the charge carries the potential for the death penalty. Manning's prosecutors said they were seeking life in prison for the Army private, not death. 
 
 But in the end, Manning's convictions under the Espionage Act and the prospect of many years behind bars could have much the same effect. 
 
 Charles "Cully" Stimson, manager of the national security law program at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said the verdict appropriately reinforced the potential cost to those who want to expose government secrets. 
 
 "I think what this sends loud and clear to anyone like Snowden or anyone contemplating being the next Snowden is, if you have given over documents, unauthorized, to anyone, you're looking at serious time in jail," said Stimson, a former Bush administration defense official who still serves as a military judge. 
 
 The Obama administration has pursued unauthorized disclosures of secret information much more aggressively than any of its predecessors. It has pressed charges under the Espionage Act in seven criminal cases. 
 
 In addition, a federal appeals court ruled on July 19 that New York Times reporter James Risen cannot shield his source when he testifies at the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is charged with leaking information about a secret CIA operation. 
 
 The court ruling combined with Manning's conviction will make people think twice before talking to reporters, Boston College law professor Mary-Rose Papandrea said. "It sends a really strong message to would-be leakers that they are facing the potential of prosecution," Papandrea said. 
 
 Like Manning, Snowden has acknowledged leaking classified information. The former NSA systems analyst provided information showing that the agency has gathered millions of telephone and Internet records to ferret out terror plots. 
 
 The Justice Department is not discussing how it would prosecute Snowden, who is holed up at a Moscow airport, although Attorney General Eric Holder has said the U.S. had no plans to seek the death penalty against him. It is unknown at this point whether the administration will get Snowden to return to the U.S., either voluntarily or through extradition. But if that happens, "at the end of the day, the charges are going to look very similar" to those against Manning, American University law professor Stephen Vladeck said. 
 
 One difference may be greater transparency if Snowden is put on trial in civilian court, where Vladeck said a judge would be less likely to close large portions to the public. 
 
 Manning also opted to be tried by a judge instead of a jury. Except in death penalty cases, military juries do not have to be unanimous. 
 
 Jurors in civilian criminal trials must all agree in order to reach a verdict. 
 
 Stimson said Snowden may benefit from "a little more sympathy for a civilian disgorging himself of information he believes the public needs to know, than a military person."
– Now that Bradley Manning has been convicted on 20 of 22 counts, his court-martial moves on to the sentencing phase today. Neither side was allowed to present evidence during the trial regarding Manning's motives or any actual damage caused by his leaks (harm to national security or US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example), but starting today, the judge will hear those arguments. Manning himself may even take the stand. "You're balancing [motive and harm] to determine what would be an appropriate sentence," a retired Army colonel and former judge advocate tells the AP. "I think it's likely that he's going to be in jail for a very long time." Manning faces up to 136 years in prison, and the Telegraph reports that it could be weeks before he is sentenced. Federal authorities are also looking into the possibility of prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; Assange's attorney warned after Manning's conviction that it made Assange's own prosecution more likely. Civil liberties groups agree, the Washington Post reports, and press freedom advocates are concerned the conviction will deter other would-be whistleblowers. And as for those who have already blown the whistle, well ... "I don't think Edward Snowden is doing a jig in his airport lounge in Russia," one legal scholar tells the AP. Other experts agree that Manning's conviction is bad news for Snowden. Meanwhile, the New York Times today looks at Manning—describing a "loner" who struggled with his sexuality and gender identity after a difficult childhood—and why he did what he did.