FORT MEADE, Md. — A defense lawyer for Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of leaking government secrets, began a frontal attack during Manning’s first court appearance Friday morning, claiming the Army’s investigating officer at the evidentiary hearing was biased and should recuse himself from the case.
The lawyer, David Coombs, said that Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, the investigating officer who works as a Justice Department prosecutor in civilian life, was preventing the defense from calling witnesses to show that little harm was done by the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents provided to WikiLeaks.
“All this stuff has been leaked,” Coombs said. “A year and a half later, where’s the danger? Where’s the harm?”
Almanza said he did not believe that he was biased because he does not currently supervise criminal cases in his job at the Justice Department, and his work concerns child abuse and obscenity, not national security. After a 90-minute break to consider the question, he declined to recuse himself, saying he believed a “reasonable person” would consider him impartial.
At the hearing, the crowd of about 50 people in the unadorned courtroom, including reporters and relatives of Manning, caught their first glimpse of the soldier, who turns 24 today and faces a possible sentence of life in prison.
Manning, a slight figure in black-rimmed glasses, a crew cut and camouflage uniform, answered routine questions from the investigating officer in a quiet but steady voice. “Yes, sir,” he said, when asked whether he was satisfied with his lawyers.
He is accused of aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act by providing WikiLeaks diplomatic cables, military field reports and war videos. His supporters, who demonstrated Friday outside Fort Meade, hail him as a whistle-blower who sought to expose wrongdoing.
The evidentiary proceeding, known as an Article 32 hearing and expected to last about a week, will determine whether the charges proceed to a court-martial or are dismissed. Both prosecutors and Manning’s attorney will present evidence, and the public could learn new details of the origins of the disclosures that shook governments and embarrassed politicians around the world.
The hearing could shed light not just on Manning’s conduct but on the possible role of WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, and other WikiLeaks activists in soliciting the material or facilitating the leak.
Almanza turned down Coombs’ request to postpone the hearing until the Army Court of Criminal Appeals rules on his appeal of the recusal issue. He said the hearing would continue during the appeal.
Coombs offered several grounds for asking Almanza to remove himself from the case, including his civilian role as a prosecutor in handling child exploitation cases.
In addition, Coombs said that Almanza had shown bias by disallowing all but four of the 38 witnesses requested by the defense while granting all the prosecution requests. Among others, the defense requested that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appear to describe any damage done by the leaks.
“This is one of the most interesting military cases of the last 20 years,” said Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale University. Fidell said the case comes at the intersection of advancing technology, making it possible to lay bare a truckload of secrets on the Web with the click of a mouse, and the culture of the Facebook era in which nothing stays secret for long.
Reporters from around the world are covering the hearing, with a dozen at a time in the cramped courtroom and about 50 others following the proceedings on a video link from an adjacent media center. Security is tight at the sprawling Army base, which houses the National Security Agency.
Manning, an intelligence analyst, told friends and family of struggling with Army life and hiding his homosexuality while serving at Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad. He was arrested in Kuwait in May 2010 and accused of exploiting gaping security holes on the military computer system by downloading the secret material onto CDs that he marked as Lady Gaga songs.
Manning is also accused of passing on military reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a quarter-million State Department cables.
Meanwhile, Britain’s Supreme Court said Friday it had agreed to hear Assange’s appeal against extradition to Sweden on sex-crimes allegations.
The court said a panel of three judges had considered a written submission and granted a two-day appeal beginning on Feb. 1, meaning there is no prospect of Assange being sent to Stockholm until at least next year.
Information for this article was contributed by David Stringer, Jill Lawless and Karl Ritter of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 12/17/2011