GI admits leaking classified material
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (left) and former NBA player Dennis Rodman watch North Korean and U. S. players in an exhibition basketball game. Rodman arrived in North Korea on Monday to shoot an episode on North Korea for HBO.
FORT MEADE, Md. — Bradley Manning, the Army private arrested in the biggest leak of classified material in U. S. history, pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that could send him to prison for 20 years, saying he was trying to expose the American military’s “bloodlust” and disregard for human life in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Military prosecutors said they plan to move forward with a court-martial on 12 remaining charges against him, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.
“I began to become depressed at the situation we found ourselves mired in year after year. In attempting counterinsurgency operations, we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists,” the 25-year-old former intelligence analyst in Baghdad told a military judge.
He added: “I wanted the public to know that not everyone living in Iraq were targets to be neutralized.”
It was the first time Manning directly admitted leaking the material to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and detailed the frustrations that led him to do it.
The judge, Col. Denise Lind, accepted his plea to 10 charges involving illegal possession or distribution of classified material. Manning was allowed to plead guilty under military regulations instead of federal espionage law, which knocked the potential sentence down from 92 years.
He will not be sentenced until his court-martial on the other charges is over.
Manning admitted sending hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports, State Department diplomatic cables, other classified records and two battlefield video clips to WikiLeaks in 2009 and 2010. WikiLeaks posted some of the material, embarrassing the U.S. and its allies.
Manning said he was disturbed by the conduct of the wars.