Bradley Manning military trial updates: live-blogs, who to follow on Twitter, and analysis

Army private Bradley Manning pleaded guilty on Thursday to 10 of the 19 total charges made by the US that he leaked unprecedented amounts of classified material to Wikileaks, the anti-secrecy organization run by Julian Assange.

Manning entered a not guilty plea to the government's more serious charge of "aiding the enemy," which carries a possible maximum sentence of life in prison. In a statement before the military court today, Manning said he leaked the classified information to "spark a domestic debate."

Liveblog coverage of his trial: Mother Jones, Reuters.

Ed Pilkington at the Guardian reports Manning first contacted the Washington Post about providing them with some of the classified material while he was on leave in January 2010; the the woman who answered the phone said the "paper would only be interested [in the documents] subjected to vetting by senior editors."

Kevin Gosztola has an analysis here of Manning's claims that he first attempted to leak the material to WaPo and the New York Times, before connecting with Wikileaks. A related article at Huffpo explores this further.

At New York magazine, a roundup of tweeted coverage from the courtroom. The New York Times told them they have no record of having been contacted by Manning before he reached out to Wikileaks.

Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told Daily Intelligencer, "This is the first we're hearing of it. We have no record of Manning contacting The Times in advance of WikiLeaks."

It appears Manning uploaded many of the classified documents from a Barnes and Noble location near Rockville, Maryland.

Matthew Keys has a curated list of who to follow for live coverage from the courtroom in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Bradley Manning's statement before the court today has not been published online in entirety, but here's a Storified series of tweets from trial observer Alexa O'Brien.

#Manning corrected Judge Lind on the correct pronunciation of the Tor anonymizer. It was awesome.

— Andrew Panda Blake (@apblake) February 28, 2013

• [euansmith]

  Are there any pictures of how Bradley Manning looks after years on “Suicide Watch”?

  • [oasisob1]

    Wasn’t that recent video of Private Manning above?

    • [euansmith]

       Ooops, thank you. Blimey he still looks so young. Poor sod.

• [Cowicide]

  Wow, this is a very extensive post.  Thank you, Xeni!

• [rtb61]

  Aiding the enemy. Hiding the failures of the US military because public awareness of those failures will harm the war effort ie preserving the lie that hiding incompetence and negligence will ensure the war progresses more effectively
  This versus the truth that effective public prosecution of all and I repeat “ALL” failures through incompetence and negligence is by far the most effective way of demonstrating the effectiveness justice and the application of law and the benefit of law.
  The US government is attempting to argue that hiding the repeated failures of the US military, as a result of incompetence and negligence, aided the effort of conducting of that war and any attempt to disclose the truth of what was actually happening would aid the enemy.
  What the were really doing was protecting each other and hiding criminal activities to prevent prosecution for those crimes with the claim the truth would aid the enemy
  Everyone knows there is no better demonstration of law and justice than the effective prosecution of your own when they commit crimes and that is how you prove justice works.
  You do not kill random suspects from afar and ignore the innocent victims who get in the way, you do not hide your own criminal failures, you adhere to the law and you strive to prove to the public that it works.

• [Carsten Agger]

  Bradley Manning is a hero, and the way he’s being treated shows what may happen to people who are willing to risk all to make a difference in our day and age. He deserves a medal of honour, not incarceration. May many follow in his footsteps.

• [Wiki-Truths]

  How about TIME SERVED – YOU ARE FREE TO GO!