Real Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Book III

Chelsea Manning Trial Part II

Evidence presented at Article 32 hearing

In April 2011, a panel of experts, having completed a medical andmental evaluation of Manning, ruled that she was fit to stand trial.An Article 32 hearing, presided over by Lieutenant Colonel PaulAlmanza, was convened on December 16, 2011, at Fort Meade, Maryland;the hearing resulted in Almanza's recommending that Manning bereferred to a general court-martial. She was arraigned on February23, 2012, and declined to enter a plea.

During the Article 32 hearing, the prosecution, led by CaptainAshden Fein, presented 300,000 pages of documents in evidence,including chat logs and classified material. The court heard from twoArmy investigators, Special Agent David Shaver, head of the digitalforensics and research branch of the Army's Computer CrimeInvestigative Unit (CCIU); and Mark Johnson, a digital forensicscontractor from ManTech International, who works for the CCIU. Theytestified that they had found 100,000 State Department cables on aworkplace computer Manning had used between November 2009 and May2010; 400,000 military reports from Iraq and 91,000 from Afghanistanon an SD card found in her basement room in her aunt's home inPotomac, Maryland; and 10,000 cables on her personal MacBook Pro andstorage devices that they said had not been passed to WikiLeaksbecause a file was corrupted. They also recovered 14 to 15 pages ofencrypted chats, in unallocated space on Manning's MacBook harddrive, between Manning and someone believed to be Julian Assange. Twoof the chat handles, which used the Berlin Chaos Computer Club'sdomain (ccc.de), were associated with the names Julian Assange andNathaniel Frank.

Johnson said he found SSH logs on the MacBook that showed an SFTPconnection, from an IP address that resolved to Manning's aunt'shome, to a Swedish IP address with links to WikiLeaks. Also found wasa text file named "Readme", attached to the logs andapparently written by Manning to Assange, which called the Iraq andAfghan War logs "possibly one of the most significantdocuments of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the truenature of 21st century asymmetric warfare". Theinvestigators testified they had also recovered an exchange from May2010 between Manning and Eric Schmiedl, a Boston mathematician, inwhich Manning said she was the source of the Baghdad helicopterattack ("Collateral Murder") video. Johnson saidthere had been two attempts to delete the material from the MacBook.The operating system had been re-installed in January 2010, and on oraround January 31, 2010, an attempt had been made to erase the harddrive by doing a "zero-fill", which involvesoverwriting material with zeroes. The material was recovered afterthe overwrite attempts from unallocated space.

Manning's lawyers argued that the government had overstated theharm the release of the documents had caused and had overchargedManning to force her to give evidence against Assange. The defensealso raised questions about whether Manning's confusion over hergender identity affected her behavior and decision making.

Guilty plea, trial, sentence

United States v. Manning

The judge, Army Colonel Denise Lind, ruled in January 2013 thatany sentence would be reduced by 112 days because of the treatmentManning received at Quantico. On February 28, Manning pleaded guiltyto 10 of the 22 charges. Reading for over an hour from a 35-pagestatement, she said she had leaked the cables "to show thetrue cost of war". Prosecutors pursued a court-martial onthe remaining charges.