Under the Radar Blog Archives Select Date… August, 2020 July, 2020 June, 2020 May, 2020 April, 2020 March, 2020 February, 2020 January, 2020 December, 2019 November, 2019 October, 2019 September, 2019

Blocking WikiLeaks emails trips up Bradley Manning prosecution

The federal government's vigilance at preventing anything relating to WikiLeaks from appearing on a government computer has tripped up military prosecutors, causing them to miss important emails from the judge and defense involved in the case against an Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and military reports to the web-based transparency organization.

At a hearing last month, prosecutors in the case against Pfc. Bradley Manning noted that they didn't receive the messages but could not explain why. Chief prosecutor Capt. Ashden Fein said at a hearing Thursday that the messages had been "blocked by a spam filter for security." However, it fell to defense attorney David Coombs to explain precisely why the e-mails about evidence issues in the Manning case never made it.

"Apparently, they were blocked because the word 'WikiLeaks' was somewhere in the e-mail," Coombs said.

Fein said there is now a procedure in place to check the spam filter on a daily basis for errant e-mails. In addition, military Judge Col. Denise Lind said prosecutors had set up an alternate e-mail account that shouldn't encounter the same problem.

At the hearing Thursday at Fort Meade, Md., Lind rejected two defense motions, one seeking a bill of particulars with more detail about the charges and another seeking to use arguments that prosecutors would not have access to in order to bolster the defense's demands to produce additional evidence before trial.

However, much of the information the defense sought emerged at the hearing. For instance, the prosecution indicated that the "enemy" in the most serious charge Manning faces—aiding the enemy—is Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. That came as no great surprise based on earlier disclosures in the case. However, some had speculated that the U.S. Government had deemed WikiLeaks itself to be an enemy of the U.S.

In addition, prosecutors appeared to indicate that they did not plan to argue that Manning broke into government computers, but simply that he used his assigned password to initiate computer sessions during which he downloaded information he planned to send to WikiLeaks.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misstated Coombs's first name.