What You Need To Know About The Bradley Manning Verdict

At 1 PM EST, a military court handed down the long-awaited verdict in the case of United States v. Bradley Manning, finding him not guilty of the most serious charge against him, that of “aiding the enemy,” in leaking thousands of government and military documents. Manning has, however, been found guilty of another 19 charges, including 5 counts of espionage.

Manning has been both vilified and lionized during his time in the spotlight and today’s conclusion of his trial will likely bring those two sides back into debate over what Manning’s saga means for the ongoing debate between secrecy and security in the United States. While the sentences for the other charges he was found guilty of remain to be decided, here’s what you need to know about the case:

The Private

Private First Class Bradley Manning joined the U.S. Army in 2008, training as an intelligence analyst after his graduation from basic training. Reports indicate that before and during his service, Manning was dealing with various issues, including a history of depression and possible bullying for being openly gay in a time of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In 2009, Manning was deployed to Iraq’s Forward Operation Base Hammer, from which he had access to the various classified networks that at the time were available to any and all analysts with very few restrictions. It was while in Iraq that Manning was arrested in May 2010 on allegations of passing on documents and videos to Wikileaks. After three years in detention, Manning’s trial finally began in June of this year.

The Leaks

The first leak included videos passed along to Wikileaks showing the U.S. military opening fire on a crowd of mostly unarmed Iraqi civilians. The next, much larger, drop of information showcased a failing war effort in Afghanistan and a flailing U.S. attempt to keep the country together during a time when the U.S. focus was on Iraq. That was soon followed up with a similar drop of documents related to the war in Iraq. Both of the troves were released through a series of agreements among the New York Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel newspapers to redact the names of sources and anything they believed would harm personnel serving in the field.

The final set of documents published from the cache Manning passed to Wikileaks was the massive repository of U.S. diplomatic cables that became known as Cablegate. Ranging from 1966 to 2010, the documents — all of which were classified as Secret or below — painted a clearer picture of the inner workings of international diplomacy than had ever been made public. Several deals between the U.S. and other countries related to counterterrorism — including with Yemen and Pakistan — were brought to light through this document dump, and some observers say they helped spark the protests that would become the Arab Spring.

Critics, however, allege that the release of the diplomatic documents made the conducting of international relations all the more difficult — particularly after the accidental release of all of the cables in full — and that several informants listed in the unredacted Afghan cables have since faced harsh retribution and possibly death at the hands of the Taliban.

More: http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/0…ning-case/