An detailed explanation of Bradley Manning’s plea -he offered to plead guilty to minor offenses and not guilty to “aiding the enemy” and other major offenses, with a now-famous statement on motives to supplement it. Bradley took responsibility for releasing documents to WikiLeaks as an act of conscience.

Pfc. Bradley Manning. Courtroom sketch, credit: Reuters.

By Emma Cape, Bradley Manning Support Network. March 11, 2013.

February 28, 2013, was in many ways the most significant day Bradley Manning has spent in court thus far.  For the first time since his arrest in May 2010, Bradley spoke publicly about his motives in a clear, detailed recounting of his story and his actions.  He admitted releasing the following documents as acts of conscience:

• Iraq and Afghan war logs
• Department of State cables (including one on Reykjavik, Iceland)
• the Collateral Murder video
• the 2006-2007 Rules of Engagement documents
• An investigation of 15 individuals detained by the Baghdad Federal Police
• the Guantanamo Files
• Garani, Farah Province, Afghanistan 15-6 Investigation and Videos

WikiLeaks has released all but the documents concerning the 15 individuals detained by the Baghdad Federal Police and the Garani investigation and videos.

In a risky but courageous move, Bradley chose to plead guilty to several lesser-included offenses of the government’s original 22 charges:

• Unauthorized possession of protected information and willful communication of that protected information to an unauthorized person
• Improper storage of classified information

Bradley pled not guilty to the most serious offenses: the Espionage Act; the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act; larceny; aiding the enemy and the improper use of government information systems.

Some have pointed out that this “naked” guilty plea, in which no bargain is made with the prosecution, is an unusual strategy in a criminal trial.  United States vs. Bradley Manning, however, is not only an unusual case, but in many ways completely unprecedented.

It’s risky because Bradley is effectively eliminating some the government’s work of forensically proving that he violated Army rules in putting classified information on his personal laptop and passing it to WikiLeaks. In admitting guilt, he virtually guarantees at least a conviction on those 10 lesser offenses, which carry a maximum of 20 years in jail total. Despite this plea, the government is pursuing all 22 counts against Bradley, seeking a life sentence without parole. The government already possessed forensic evidence to prove that Bradley was the one who downloaded the documents to his computer and uploaded them to WikiLeaks. Bradley pled guilty to lesser offenses of some of the charges he faces to enable trial litigation to largely shift from what he released to why he released these documents.

The plea is bold because Bradley has not guaranteed anything tangible in return by those bringing charges.  However, in submitting his plea Bradley finally made his whistle-blower defense to the press, the public, and Judge Denise Lind. Once again, at personal risk, Bradley spoke out because it was the right thing to do.

In military court cases, the merits phase is separate from sentencing, so military judges have wide sentencing discretion. The charges to which Bradley has pled guilty carry a maximum of 20 years in prison, but they carry no minimums. Judge Lind is not required to sentence him to any prison time at all. Instead, she will sentence him based on what she feels he deserves. Along with his plea and statement, Bradley confirmed in court that he wishes to be adjudicated by Judge Lind alone instead of a jury of higher military officials and senior non-commissioned officers.

By acknowledging that he broke some military laws as a young idealist in pursuit of the common good, Bradley is appealing to the judge with his honesty.  He’s showing a measure of deference to the system that is trying and imprisoning him, in the hope that the judge will realize the defense is the more reasonable of the two parties.

It may be for that reason that Bradley acknowledged in court there are alternative, system-approved channels for revealing misdeeds in the military.  He did not, however, comment in court on the effectiveness of those channels.  (Many critics of the military justice system have analyzed the insufficient protections provided to military whistle-blowers, in fact.)

Recall that earlier this year, the government successfully prevented the defense from arguing Bradley’s whistle-blowing motives during the merits phase at trial. By unabashedly stating his case at the pretrial hearing last week, and presenting the facts as clearly as he can for the judge, Bradley not only shows himself to be the courageous whistle-blower that people around the world have supported for nearly three years. He also shows the judge in the strongest way possible that he understood he was breaking laws for what he believed was right, but that he was not committing Espionage nor Aiding the Enemy.  That the judge allowed Bradley to read his entire statement in open court, despite strong objections from the government prosecutors, shows us that she now understands there are two sides to this story.

Rather than taking everything the government says at face value, Judge Lind can now carefully evaluate the defense’s arguments moving forward, knowing that Bradley had reason to believe the documents he released could not be used to damage the national security of the U.S., and that these documents were never used to the detriment of the U.S. by its enemies.

In fact, as a trained intelligence analyst, Bradley acted with the utmost care for how his actions would impact people worldwide.

“I believed that the public release of these cables would not damage the United States,” he said of the State Department cables. He believed the Iraq and Afghan war logs were “not very sensitive,” because they recorded past events and wouldn’t give away future plans.

Instead, he hoped they would inform the public and spur discussion.

I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as [missed word] as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment everyday.

While the outcome of his trial remains to be seen, “spark a domestic debate on the military and our foreign policy in general” appears to be something Bradley accomplished with flourish.

The judge may decide that Bradley’s motives make his methods understandable. But the outcome of Bradley’s case will not only be decided in court. Whatever sentence Judge Lind might decide on will have to be approved by the Court Martial Convening Authority, Major General Michael Linnington.

Numerous powerful government officials, including the US Secretary of Defense, Secretary General of the Army, Secretary of State and even the President himself, most likely held secret meetings and decided prior to charges being referred in March 2011 that they wanted to prosecute Bradley’s case to the maximum extent possible. Those officials oversee prosecuting authority Maj. Gen. Linnington, who in turn works with the prosecuting attorneys. Collectively, they’ve decided to charge Bradley with federal larceny and Espionage counts which would carry more than 150 years in prison, in addition to the unprecedentedly broad interpretation of ‘aiding the enemy’ that carries a life sentence on its own. This massive prosecutorial overreach betrays a higher-up desire to send a political message, to make an example of Bradley to deter others from releasing secret government information.

But citizens worldwide, and especially American citizens, have an important role to play as well.  It has always been up to citizens to voice their ideals, organize to defend democracy, and make sure our government leaders are held accountable for their actions.  While Bradley is appealing to the judge, it’s up to us to influence Maj. Gen. Linnington and even those above him. By participating in actions organized by the Bradley Manning Support Network, you can show top US government decision-makers that Bradley does not stand alone in believing in an informed democracy, and in a country that cares about the rule of law, in fairness and human rights for all.  In fact, third-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning has thousands of people standing with him worldwide, and that number is growing faster every day.