Manning has admitted to being a source for several of WikiLeaks’s disclosures. | REUTERS Manning prosecution sums up

FORT MEADE, Md. — The prosecution blasted Private First Class Bradley Manning as a traitor and anarchist Thursday in closing arguments at the Army intelligence analyst’s court martial for providing hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and military reports to WikiLeaks.

“Private First Class Manning was not a humanist. He was a hacker,” the chief prosecutor, Army Maj. Ashden Fein, said at the conclusion of his almost day-long presentation. “Your honor, he was not a troubled young soul … He was not a whistleblower. He was a traitor.”


Manning has admitted to being a source for several of WikiLeaks’s disclosures and pleaded guilty to many of the charges against him, undercutting much of the usual air of drama and suspense at such a trial. The defense has also waived the military equivalent of a jury, allowing a military judge to resolve Manning’s guilt or innocence on the remaining charges, as well as his sentence.

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That appeared to lead Fein to focus his arguments on Manning’s motivations and undercutting the defense’s suggestion that the young soldier was motivated by a desire to expose civilian casualties as well as military misdeeds.

“Private First Class Manning had no allegiance to the United States and the flag it stands for,” Fein argued. “He made deliberate decisions to break ranks with his nation.”

Manning’s defense is scheduled to present its closing arguments to the judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, at 9:30 a.m. Friday.

The most serious charge in dispute between the two sides is a count of aiding the enemy, which carries a possible sentence of up to life in prison. Prosecutors contend that Manning is guilty of the charge because knew what he sent to WikiLeaks would wind up in the hands of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

“He did this knowing that the enemy would retrieve this valuable information from WikiLeaks,” Fein said. “The public included the enemy.”

The defense and First Amendment advocates have expressed concern about the aiding-the-enemy charge, saying it could convert almost any leak of classified information to the media into an aiding-the-enemy case since terrorist groups have access to most media reports and websites via the Internet.

Earlier in the case, Fein answered a question from Lind by saying the Army would have brought the same charges even if the information at issue had been leaked to the New York Times.

However on Thursday, Fein seemed to seek to draw a distinction between news organizations that edit information before posting it and WikiLeaks, which he said publishes data onto the Internet without any concern for the consequences.

The prosecutor said Manning was familiar with and in fact leaked to WikiLeaks an Army intelligence report that said WikiLeaks posts “all the information they receive without editorial oversight.”

Fein said Manning disclosed to WikiLeaks a Microsoft Outlook address list with about 78,000 contacts for military personnel and positions in Iraq. The prosecutor said sending WikiLeaks the unclassified list, which included names, units and e-mail addresses, endangered U.S. personnel.

“Private First Class Manning exposed the personal information of his brothers-in-arms, including civilian personnel, in Iraq,” Fein said.

In painting a picture of Manning on Thursday, Fein drew often on online chats the soldier had with hacker Adrian Lamo and with a man prosecutors say was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Fein said Manning described the massive scope of the nearly 300,000 State Department cables he released as “beautiful and horrifying” in a chat with Lamo.

“These are not the words of a humanist,” the prosecutor said, referring to the religious affiliation Manning had listed on his dog tags. “These are the words of an anarchist.”

Fein quoted from a chat in which Manning referred to “worldwide anarchy” when discussing release of the diplomatic cables. However, Manning supporters said he was describing governmental misdeeds chronicled in the cables, not something he was trying to unleash.

The day began Thursday with Lind ruling against the defense on a couple of significant motions, which contended that theft charges were not legally appropriate in cases involving intangible items such as data.

While Fein repeatedly said Manning acted out of a desire for “future notoriety,” near the end of Thursday’s argument the prosecutor took a notably different tack.

“He actually thought he would get away with what he did and wouldn’t get caught,” Fein said.