But in her verdict, Col. Denise Lind found Army Pvt. First Class Manning, 25, guilty of 19 of the other 20 criminal counts in the biggest breach of classified information in the nation's history. The U.S. government was pushing for the maximum penalty for the intelligence analyst's leaking of information that included battlefield reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
It viewed the action as a serious breach of national security, while anti-secrecy activists praised it as shining a light on shadowy U.S. operations abroad. Army prosecutors contended during the court martial that U.S. security was harmed when the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website published combat videos of an attack by an American Apache helicopter gunship, diplomatic cables, and secret details on prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay that Manning provided to the site while he was a junior intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010."
'via Blog this'
