Bradley Manning is escorted from a military vehicle to the court facility for his pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, on Monday 19 December. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP
This article titled “Bradley Manning hearing – Tuesday 20 December 2011 as it happened” was written by Dominic Rushe, Matt Williams and Adam Gabbatt, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 20th December 2011 21.58 UTC
5pm: That’s it for today – here’s a summary of events.
• The prosecution has completed laying out its case against Bradley Manning. The pre-trial hearing has been recessed until Wednesday, when the defense will get its turn. It will be at least a month before investigating officer lieutenant colonel Paul Almanza decides whether to recommend a court martial hearing.
• Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned Manning in to the authorities, was called by the prosecution. Lamo said “a reasonable person would conclude” that a printout of his online chats with ‘bradass87′ were conducted with Bradley Manning. The acts Manning was allegedly discussing were “so outrageous” he felt compelled to go to the authorities, he said.
• The hearing was told more about Manning’s worrying behaviour before being deployed to Iraq. His direct supervising officer Jihrleah Showman warned time and again that Manning was exhibiting worrying behavior but was repeatedly ignored. Manning’s behavior may have been tolerated because he had the skills the army needed, the court was told.
• Troy Bettencourt, the special agent who investigated the case, was the defence’s last witness for the day. Bettencourt testified on Saturday and seemed to agree with the defence case that the army failed in its handling of Manning. “I would like to think that had I been in the chain of command, I would have maybe done things differently,” he said.
4.15pm: DR: The prosecution put up Troy Bettencourt, special agent who investigated the case, as their last witness for the day.
Bettencourt testified on Saturday and seemed to agree with the defence case that the army failed in its handling of Manning.
“I would like to think that had I been in the chain of command, I would have maybe done things differently,” he said.
“I would have been aware of everything we now know to prevent him from deploying — but that is with the benefit of hindsight.”
Bettencourt had less to offer this time and was soon dismissed. With that the day ended leaving the defense witnesses for tomorrow.
We are expecting three to be called. After that the two sides will take a break to write up closing arguments and then the hearing is over.
It will be at least a month before investigating officer lieutenant colonel Paul Almanza decides whether to recommend a court martial hearing.
4.03pm: Matt Williams tweets from Fort Meade that proceedings have ended for the day.
3.53pm: MW: The defence has been pressing Lamo on his motivation behind questioning “bradass87″ over specifics on how the leak had been conducted.
“I was asking the questions out of curiosity. I am a curious individual,” Lamo said.
Asked if it was because he was working with federal agencies, the convicted computer fraudster replied: “I have no particular love of law enforcement.”
He added that he thought bradass87 contacted him partly to brag about his exploits, but also for a deeper reason.
“I believe that he was reaching out for affirmation and for a like-minded individual that would act as a similar figure in their life as Julian Assange,” he said.
The defence noted that Lamo considered himself as a reporter. He is also a minister of the Universal Life Church – an organisation that allows anyone to self-appoint themselves to the post.
During their chats, Lamo said to bradass87: “You can treat this as an interview or as a confession.”
The hacker also told the court that he gave a copy of his chat log to Wired magazine because he was “uncertain if I would be coming back from my meeting with the federal authorities”.
3.25pm: DR and MW: The proceedings got a new lease of life with the arrival of Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned Manning in to the authorities.
Lamo was a colourful contrast to the army geeks we have heard from this morning. The man dubbed “the world’s most hated hacker” looks exhausted. He speaks in a monotone and tends toward verbosity.
“Please be seated,” he was instructed. “That I shall,” he replied.
Asked to identify a printout of online chats he spent a long minute silently reading then said:
A reasonable person would conclude that these are logs that occurred between myself and an individual who identified himself on a number of occasions as Bradley Manning.
He told the hearing that he was motivated to turn in Manning to the authorities a day after bradass87 – assumed to be Manning – contacted him via AOL instant messenger.
The acts Manning was allegedly discussing were “so outrageous” he felt compelled to go to the authorities, he said. Manning became more animated – slightly – during Lamo’s testimony. He took notes and stared straight at his betrayer, at one point he gave a dismissive shrug. Lamo confined his gaze to his questioner.
At first Lamo thought he was being misled over the identity of the person sending him the emails, but later received a friend request from the soldier on Facebook.
Asked why Lamo used encryption software, the convicted hacker said: “I value my privacy as a citizen.”
Lamo was asked if he suffered from Asperger’s. “I have been diagnosed thus,” he replied.
But at the time of the alleged chats with Manning he was “functioning more normally than usual” because of the medication he was on.
He was asked by Manning’s lawyer if he had been given immunity or any government assurances in order to appear today.
Lamo said he had not. “I’m here to ensure that the truth is presented,” he added.
The witness was also asked about Jason Katz – a US government employee who had boasted of trying to help Wikileaks decrypt a video of an Afghanistan air strike.
“I am aware of the name and aware of certain circumstances regarding
his life and times,” Lamo told the hearing.
1.38pm: DR: Adrian Lamo, who was Manning’s online confidant before turning him in to the authorities, has just arrived at Fort Meade.
Lamo, 30, was dubbed the “world’s most hated hacker” for his role in passing information on Manning to military intelligence after the soldier befriended him on internet chat.
Here’s Ed Pilkington’s recent interview with him where Lamo said it would be to his “lasting regret” were Manning to be given a lengthy custodial sentence.
1.16pm: DR: So here’s a lunch time take on Day 5 of the Manning hearing. I’m amazed that the army ever allowed Manning to go to Iraq – let alone anywhere near classified information.
His direct supervising officer Jihrleah Showman warned time and again that Manning was exhibiting worrying behavior but was repeatedly ignored. In one incident he was “screaming at the top of his lungs” and “saliva was coming out of his mouth.”
Another time she found him curled up in a foetal position. On one occasion she feared he was going for a gun and Manning had to be restrained. He told her he was paranoid and that people were watching him, that he would be kicked out of the army “if they knew the truth about me.”
Showman reported that information and all the other incidents to her superior officer and was ignored. It wasn’t until Manning punched her in the face that they took action. The reason may be that as Showman said this morning, Manning was the “most knowlegable person in SCIF (sensitive compartmented intelligence facility) with computers.”
Manning’s behavior may have been tolerated because he had the skills the army needed.
It reminds me a little of the horrific error in judgement the US army made with Nidal Malik Hasan, the army psychiatrist responsible for killing 13 people and injuring 29 others at the Fort Hood base.
Here too waning signs were missed. As the Pentagon said in a damning report on the incident: “Some medical officers failed to apply appropriate judgment and standards of officership with respect to the alleged perpetrator,” the report said.
“Some signs were clearly missed,” it said “others ignored.”
12.42pm: MW: Manning used a colleague’s laptop to conduct internet research on Wikileaks and Julian Assange, it was suggested in court.
There was also a search for a global address list belonging to the US government made on the computer within minutes of the suspect’s Gmail and Amazon accounts being accessed.
The owner of the laptop, Staff Sergeant Peter Bigelow, told the court that he was not responsible for the searches.
“Who?”, he asked in reference to Assange, “I have never heard of that person.”
The witness was speaking from a Nato base in Italy, where he had dutifully locked himself inside a bedroom to ensure no-one could disturb him, he told the court.
11.37am: DR: I’m back from the court room while we are in a short recess. It’s a short drive from the media center on this huge army base. Fort Meade covers 5,000 acres and is home to 10,000 people. Some of them appear to be in the court watching the case with their kids. They must be short for entertainment.
Manning looks tiny besides his legal team. He pays very close attention to what’s going on, making notes and switching off his microphone to make sure comments to his lawyers aren’t overheard by the prosecution. He doesn’t react much to questions or answers. There was not so much as a twitch when Jihrleah Showman said he had punched her in the face.
I spoke to Bill Hennessy, the court room artist whose illustrations appear above. He has been watching Manning more closely than anyone over the proceedings.
“He is very controlled and pays close attention to the proceedings. The only I have really seen him react was on the first day of proceedings when they said the penalty for this case was potentially the death penalty. I think it really struck him. He really sunk in his chair,” said Hennessy.
I should note here that the army has said they will not seek the death penalty in this case.
11.11am: MW: Manning’s supervisors were warned prior to his deployment to Iraq that he was paranoid, prone to outbursts and should not be given access to classified information, the court has just heard.
His team leader feared that the young soldier had “psychotic issues” and told a master sergeant that Manning should not be sent to the Middle East.
But nothing was done either then, or even after he appeared to reach for a gun during a tantrum inside the intelligence office in which he worked.
Jihrleah Showman told the military hearing at Fort Meade that she had concerns regarding Manning’s mental state while the pair were training in the US prior to being deployed.
On one occasion he began screaming as loud as he could and began waving his arms around after being hauled out of his bedroom while late for morning exercise.
Showman told Master Sargent Paul Adkins that Manning was a threat to himself and others. But Adkins – who refused to give evidence earlier in the hearing – did nothing, the court heard.
Manning confided in the team leader his fears that other soldiers were listening in to his conversations. But he did not want to seek the help of behaviour health specialists in the army.
He feared that if he told them the truth “he would be removed from the army”, the hearing was told.
During one incident in Iraq, Manning struck Showman in the face, telling her “I’m tired of this, I’m tired of this” after he was subsequently pinned to the ground. On another occasion Showman feared that he was reaching for a gun following an outburst in which he flipped a table over, breaking a computer in the process.
The defence team are seemingly building up an argument that shows Manning’s fragile state of mind at the time of the alleged leaking of confidential documents.
In a testy exchange with prosecution lawyers and the investigating officer, the defendant’s lawyer David Coombs said the prosecution had focused on what happened, but he was “trying to tell why they happened”.
10.45am: A curious feature of the pre-trial hearing is the fact Bradley Manning is being escorted to and from the Fort Meade hearing by a Bradley Manning-lookalike.
The clone is taller, and jowlier, but apart from that it’s a good match. Security reasons? Or just to confuse journalists?
10.11am: Matt Williams (MW) writes from Fort Meade:
Day five of the Bradley Manning hearing has begun and first up giving evidence is the female supervisor he allegedly assaulted.
She says the the alleged WikiLeaks source struck her while they were working together at Forward Operation Base Hammer in Iraq.
“He was removed [from the room] because he punched me in the face unprovoked and he displayed uncontrollable behaviour that was deemed untrustworthy at the time,” Jihrleah Showman, Manning’s former team leader, said.
10am: Good morning, welcome to live coverage of the fifth day of Bradley Manning’s pre-trial hearing.
On Monday US army prosecutors claimed to have found email correspondence between alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing website, Dominic Rushe and Matt Williams reported.
Manning is said to have expressed hope in an email to Assange that publishing a file of hundreds of thousands of classified reports on Iraq and Afghanistan would prove “one of the more significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetrical warfare”.
Prosecutors made the allegation on the fourth day of a hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, on whether the suspect will face a court-martial for alleging leaking thousands of classified documents while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.
The email is said to have been discovered on a memory card found in the soldier’s belongings after they were shipped back to his aunt’s house. It contained 400,000 records of “significant activities” from Iraq and 91,000 from Afghanistan.
The author suggested the recipient might want to “sit on this information to figure out how best to release such a large amount of data”.
Other files found on either the memory stick or Manning’s personal laptop contained contact information for Assange and instructions on how to upload data to WikiLeaks, the court was told.
Mark Johnson, a computer forensics expert, testified that his investigations found computers used by Manning had been used to send information to WikiLeaks.
Johnson said he had also found reference on a chat room “buddy list” to a contact using the alias “Press Association” – the name of a UK news agency. This, it was claimed, was an alias for Assange.
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