United States v . Manning United States v . Manning was the court - martial of former United States Army Private First Class Bradley E . Manning ( known after the trial as Chelsea Manning ) . Manning was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq , where she had been stationed since October 2009 , after Adrian Lamo , a computer hacker in the United States , provided information to Army Counterintelligence that Manning had acknowledged passing classified material to the whistleblower website , WikiLeaks . Manning was ultimately charged with 22 specified offenses , including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source , and the most serious of the charges , aiding the enemy . Other charges included violations of the Espionage Act , stealing U . S . government property , charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and charges related to the failure to obey lawful general orders under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice . She entered guilty pleas to 10 of 22 specified offenses in February 2013 . The trial began on June 3 , 2013 . It went to the judge on July 26 , 2013 , and findings were rendered on July 30 . Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge , that of aiding the enemy , for giving secrets to WikiLeaks . In addition to five or six espionage counts , she was also found guilty of five theft specifications , two computer fraud specifications and multiple military infractions . Manning had previously admitted guilt on some of the specified charges before the trial . On August 21 , 2013 , Manning was sentenced to 35 years ' imprisonment , reduction in rank from Private First Class to Private , forfeiture of all pay and allowances , and a dishonorable discharge . She may be eligible for parole after serving one third of the sentence , and together with credits for time served and good behavior could be released after eight years . Background . The material in question includes 251 , 287 United States diplomatic cables , over 400 , 000 classified army reports from the Iraq War ( the Iraq War logs ) , and approximately 90 , 000 army reports from the war in Afghanistan ( the Afghan War logs ) . WikiLeaks also received two videos . One was of the July 12 , 2007 Baghdad airstrike ( dubbed the " Collateral Murder " video ) ; the second , which was never published , was of the May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan . Manning was charged on July 5 , 2010 , with violations of Articles 92 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice , which were alleged to have taken place between November 19 , 2009 , and May 27 , 2010 . These were replaced on March 1 , 2011 , with 22 specifications , including aiding the enemy , wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet knowing that it was accessible to the enemy , theft of public property or records , and transmitting defense information . Manning was found not guilty for the most serious of the charges , aiding the enemy , for which Manning could have faced life in prison . Pre - trial hearings . Article 32 hearing . A panel of experts ruled in April 2011 that Manning was fit to stand trial . An Article 32 hearing , presided over by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza , was convened on December 16 , 2011 , at Fort Meade , Maryland , to determine whether to proceed to a court martial . The army was represented by Captains Ashden Fein , Joe Morrow , and Angel Overgaard . Manning was represented by military attorneys Major Matthew Kemkes and Captain Paul Bouchard , and by civilian attorney David Coombs . The hearing resulted in Almanza recommending that Manning be referred to a general court - martial , and on February 3 , 2012 , the convening authority , Major General Michael Linnington , commander of the Military District of Washington , ordered Manning to stand trial on all 22 specified charges , including aiding the enemy . Manning was formally charged ( arraigned ) on February 23 , and declined to enter a plea . Prosecution evidence . The lead prosecutor , Captain Fein , argued that Manning had given enemies " unfettered access " to the material and had displayed an " absolute indifference " to classified information . He showed the court a video of Adam Gadahn , an al - Qaeda spokesman , referencing the leaked material . The prosecution presented 300 , 000 pages of documents in evidence , including chat logs and classified material . Nicks writes that Manning appeared to have taken few security precautions . After Manning ' s arrest , detectives searched a basement room in Potomac , Maryland , and found an SD card they say contained the Afghan and Iraq War logs , along with a message to WikiLeaks . Investigators said Manning had also left computer trails of Google and Intelink searches , and of using Wget to download documents . Lieutenant Colonel Almanza heard from two army investigators , Special Agent David Shaver , head of the digital forensics and research branch of the army ' s Computer Crime Investigative Unit ( CCIU ) , and Mark Johnson , a digital forensics contractor from ManTech International , who works for the CCIU . They testified that they had found 100 , 000 State Department cables on a computer Manning had used between November 2009 and May 2010 ; 400 , 000 U . S . military reports from Iraq and 91 , 000 from Afghanistan on the SD card ; and 10 , 000 cables on a personal MacBook Pro and storage devices that they said had not been passed to WikiLeaks because a file was corrupted . They also said they had recovered an exchange from May 2010 between Manning and Eric Schmiedl , a Boston mathematician , in which Manning said she was the source of the Baghdad helicopter attack ( " Collateral Murder " ) video . Johnson said he found a text file called wl - press . txt on an external hard drive in Manning ' s room in Iraq . The file was created on November 30 , 2009 , and gave the contact detail in Iceland for WikiLeaks . He said he also recovered 14 – 15 pages of encrypted chats , in unallocated space on Manning ' s MacBook ' s hard drive , between Manning and someone believed to be Julian Assange , using the Adium instant messaging client . The MacBook ' s log - in password was found to be the encryption key . Two of the chat handles , which used the Berlin Chaos Computer Club ' s domain ( ccc . de ) , had names associated with them , Julian Assange and Nathaniel Frank . Johnson also said he found SSH logs on the MacBook that showed an SFTP connection , from an IP address that resolved to Manning ' s aunt ' s home , to a Swedish IP address with links to WikiLeaks . There was also a text file named " Readme " attached to the logs , apparently written by Manning : Items of historical significance of two wars Iraq and Afghanistan Significant Activity , Sigacts , between 00001 January 2004 and 2359 31 December 2009 extracts from CSV documents from Department of Defense and CDNE database . These items have already been sanitized of any source identifying information . You might need to sit on this information for 90 to 180 days to figure out how best to send and distribute such a large amount of data to a large audience and protect the source . This is possibly one of the most significant documents of our time , removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century assymmetric warfare . Have a good day . Johnson said there had been two attempts to delete material from the MacBook . The operating system was re - installed in January 2010 , and on or around January 31 an attempt was made to erase the hard drive by doing a " zero - fill , " which involves overwriting material with zeroes . This process was started , cancelled , then started again with a single pass . The material was recovered after the overwrite attempts from unallocated space . Defense arguments . The defense named 48 people it wanted to appear on Manning ' s behalf . The list was believed to include President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton . Clinton had said that the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks " did not represent significant consequences to foreign policy . " Obama was named because of an April 2011 statement that Manning " broke the law " : Obama ' s statement was later echoed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , General Martin Dempsey , who said " We ' re a nation of laws . He did violate the law . " Manning ' s lawyers argued that the government had overstated the harm the release of the documents had caused , and had overcharged Manning in order to obtain evidence against Assange . They suggested that other people had had access to Manning ' s workplace computer , and under cross - examination Shaver acknowledged that some of the 10 , 000 cables on Manning ' s personal computer did not match cables published by WikiLeaks . Coombs asked for the dismissal of any charge related to the use of unauthorized software , arguing that Manning ' s unit had been " lawless . . . when it comes to information assurance . " The defense also raised the issue of whether Manning ' s gender identity disorder had affected her judgment . Manning had e - mailed her master sergeant , Paul Adkins , in April 2010 to say she was suffering from gender confusion and , despite then living as a man , attaching a photograph of herself dressed as a woman . After Manning ' s arrest , the army found information about hormone replacement therapy in her room , and Manning ' s commander , Captain Steven Lim , learned that she had been calling herself Breanna . Defense lawyers argued that the superiors had failed to provide adequate counseling , and had not taken disciplinary action or revoke Manning ' s security clearance . They also suggested that the " don ' t ask , don ' t tell " policy — which was repealed in September 2011 — had made it difficult for Manning to serve in the army as a gay man . Defense request to depose six witnesses . After the hearing , in January 2012 , Coombs filed a request to depose six witnesses , whose names were redacted in the application , and who are believed to have been involved in classifying the leaked videos . Coombs argues that the videos were not classified at the time they were obtained by WikiLeaks . Article 39 hearing . An Article 39 hearing was convened on April 24 , 2012 , during which the judge , Colonel Denise Lind , denied a defense motion to dismiss the charge of aiding the enemy , and ruled that the government must be able to show that Manning knew the enemy would be able to access information on the WikiLeaks site . She ordered the CIA , FBI , DIA , State Department , and Department of Justice to release documents showing their assessment of whether the leaked material had damaged the national interest of the United States . Lind said she would decide after reading the documents whether to make them available to Manning ' s lawyers . She also ordered forensic imaging of five computers removed from Manning ' s work station that had not yet been wiped clean . At the start of the hearing , Manning replaced the assigned two military defense lawyers , Major Matthew Kemkes and Captain Paul Bouchard , with Captain Joshua Tooman . The next Article 39 hearing was set for June 6 – 8 and trial was set for September 2012 . Petition to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals . The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a petition in May 2012 asking the Army Court of Criminal Appeals to order press and public access to motion papers , orders , and transcripts . Petitioners included Julian Assange , Amy Goodman of " Democracy Now ! " , Chase Madar , author of " The Passion of Bradley Manning " ( 2011 ) , and Glenn Greenwald of " Salon " . Motion to dismiss . On September 19 , 2012 , Manning ' s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss all charges with prejudice , arguing that Manning had been unable to obtain a speedy trial . The motion claimed that the 845 days spent in pretrial confinement was longer than the periods that the law says is unreasonable . ( United States military law normally requires a trial within 120 days . ) Judge Lind ruled against the defense motion and allowed for the delay because the prosecution needed more time to prepare its case . Initial plea . On February 28 , 2013 , Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 specified charges . Military judge Colonel Denise Lind accepted the guilty pleas , for which Manning could face up to 20 years in prison . Manning did not plead guilty to the most significant charge of aiding the enemy . Manning acknowledged having provided archives of military and diplomatic files to WikiLeaks . She pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the material leaked , which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were killed , logs of military incident reports , assessment files of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay , Cuba , and a quarter - million cables from American diplomats stationed around the world . Manning read a statement recounting how she joined the military , became an intelligence analyst in Iraq , decided that certain files should become known to the American public to prompt a wider debate about foreign policy , downloaded them from a secure computer network and then ultimately uploaded them to WikiLeaks . When the judge asked Manning to explain how she could admit that her actions were wrong , Manning replied , " Your Honor , regardless of my opinion or my assessment of documents such as these , it ' s beyond my pay grade — it ' s not my authority to make these decisions about releasing confidential files . " An audio recording of Manning ' s statement was released by journalist Glenn Greenwald on March 12 , 2013 . Manning put the files on a camera digital storage card and took it home on a leave in early 2010 . Manning then decided to give the files to a newspaper , first calling " The Washington Post " . Next , " The New York Times " was contacted and an unanswered voice mail message was left . In January 2010 , Manning called the public editor ' s line at Bloomberg News , but got no response . Manning then copied the files and uploaded them to WikiLeaks , through its website , using a directory the group designated as a " cloud drop box " server . Manning was frustrated that WikiLeaks did not publish files about 15 people who printed " anti - Iraqi " pamphlets . After uploading the files , Manning was engaged in more online conversations with someone from WikiLeaks , who Manning thought was a senior figure , like Julian Assange . In retrospect , Manning described the relationship as " artificial . " Trial . The trial began on June 3 , 2013 , at Fort Meade , Maryland , before Colonel Denise Lind , chief judge , U . S . Army Trial Judiciary , 1st Judicial Circuit . Opening for the prosecution , Captain Joe Morrow accused Manning of having " harvested " hundreds of thousands of documents from secure networks , then making them available within hours to the US ' s enemies by dumping them on the Internet : " This is a case about what happens when arrogance meets access to classified information , " he said . For the defense , Coombs described Manning as " young , naïve and good intentioned . " Coombs recounted an incident in which a convoy was hit by an IED , which U . S . troops were relieved did not result in any American fatalities . Manning was reportedly disturbed by her comrades ' lack of sympathy upon later learning that an Iraqi civilian had been killed in the incident . Coombs said that by releasing material she felt the public should see , Manning had hoped to make a difference . Manning additionally believed that much of the information she released was " already basically in the public domain , " and that it was of historical importance . On July 2 , at the trial ' s 14th day of sessions , prosecutors rested their case , having presented testimony from 80 witnesses and evidence showing that Manning ' s training repeatedly instructed her to not give classified information to unauthorized people . The government also presented evidence that Osama bin Laden asked for and received from an associate the Afghanistan battlefield reports WikiLeaks published , and that al - Qaeda leaders reveled in WikiLeaks ' publication of reams of classified U . S . documents , urging members to study them before devising ways to attack the United States . On July 10 , the defense rested its case after presenting evidence from 10 witnesses . Manning did not take the stand . Attempting to undercut the most serious charge against Manning — aiding the enemy — defense lawyers called Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler , who testified that until WikiLeaks started publishing the material Manning leaked , even The Pentagon apparently viewed the anti - secrecy website as a legitimate journalistic enterprise . Thereafter , said Benkler , the public , the military and traditional news media perceived WikiLeaks as a group that supported terrorism . On July 18 , Judge Lind rejected a defense motion to dismiss the charge of aiding the enemy , citing Manning ' s extensive training as an intelligence analyst and the sheer volume of records that were leaked as reasons to allow the charge to proceed . In its rebuttal case , the prosecution entered three tweets from WikiLeaks that Manning may have viewed to show that the organization was not a legitimate journalistic enterprise . In surrebuttal , the defense entered articles into evidence depicting WikiLeaks as an important journalism outlet , a platform " just as important as " the Freedom of Information Act ( United States ) . On July 25 , chief prosecutor Maj . Ashden Fein delivered the government ' s closing argument , portraying Manning as an " anarchist " who sought to " make a splash " by providing vast archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks . Arguing that Manning must be found guilty of aiding the enemy , Fein said , " He was not a whistleblower . 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 . " Fein contended that Manning ' s " wholesale and indiscriminate compromise of hundreds of thousands of classified documents " for release by the WikiLeaks staff , whom he called " essentially information anarchists , " was not an ordinary journalistic disclosure but a bid for " notoriety , although in a clandestine form . " Fein addressed the court for nearly six hours . The next day , defense attorney Coombs countered with his own closing argument , portraying Manning as " a young , naïve , but good - intentioned soldier who had human life and his humanist beliefs center to his decisions , whose sole focus was , ' Maybe I just can make a difference , maybe make a change . Coombs said his client released only files she believed would cause no harm yet spark debate and prompt change , and that if Manning had not been selective , she would have leaked much more . Playing excerpts from the Baghdad helicopter attack ( " Collateral Murder " ) video that Manning admitted supplying to WikiLeaks , Coombs told Judge Lind : " When the court looks at this , the defense requests that you not disengage , that you not look at this from the eyes of ' this happened on a battlefield . ' Did they all deserve to die ? That is what Private Manning is thinking as he is watching this video he is seeing , and he ' s questioning . " With closing arguments concluded , Col . Lind began her deliberations . Manning chose to have her court - martial heard by the judge only instead of a jury . Findings . On July 30 , 2013 , Judge Lind issued her findings regarding the charges . Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy by knowingly giving out intelligence through indirect means , and was convicted of 19 of the 21 or 22 specified charges , including theft and six counts of espionage . The hearing on sentencing began on July 31 , 2013 . Manning initially faced a maximum sentence of as much as 136 years ' imprisonment . This was subsequently reduced to 90 years after the defense successfully filed a motion to merge some of the 20 counts that Manning was being charged with on the grounds that they overlapped . Sentencing . The judge ruled in January 2013 that Manning ' s sentence would be reduced by 112 days because of treatment during confinement at Quantico . The sentencing phase of the trial began on July 31 . A military psychologist who had treated Manning , Capt . Michael Worsley , testified that Manning had been left isolated in the army , trying to deal with gender - identity issues in a " hyper - masculine environment . " On August 14 during the sentencing hearing , Manning apologized for past actions , telling the court : " I am sorry that my actions hurt people . I ' m sorry that they hurt the United States . I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions . When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people , not hurt people . . . . At the time of my decisions I was dealing with a lot of issues . " On August 21 , 2013 , Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison . Manning was given credit of 1 , 293 days ( 3 years and 6 months ) served in pre - trial confinement , and may be eligible for parole after serving one - third of the sentence . Manning was also sentenced to reduction in rank from Private First Class to Private , forfeiture of all pay and allowances , and a dishonorable discharge . Request for presidential pardon and automatic appeal . On September 3 , 2013 , Manning ' s attorney announced that he had filed on his client ' s behalf a Petition for Commutation of Sentence , submitted with a letter to the Secretary of the Army and , through the Department of Justice ' s Office of the Pardon Attorney , to President Obama , seeking a presidential pardon . In the meantime , Manning ' s case will be reviewed by the court - martial convening authority , Major General Jeffrey S . Buchanan , commander of the Military District of Washington , who has discretion to dismiss the court ' s findings of guilt or reduce , but not increase its sentence . Should Buchanan uphold confinement for at least a year and / or dishonorable discharge , the case will be automatically appealed to the intermediate Army Court of Criminal Appeals .