FORT MEADE, Md., June 11 (UPI) -- Two archived Twitter posts were submitted into evidence in the trial against the U.S. Army private charged with conspiring to leak documents to WikiLeaks.
When submitting the two posts Monday at the start of week two of the trial against Pfc. Bradley Manning, prosecutors said they support their version of the disputed events, Courthouse News Service reported.
Months before his court-martial at Fort Meade, Md., Manning acknowledged he sent the whistle-blowing website more than 700,000 files, including diplomatic cables, incident reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, profiles of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison detainees, and a video of an airstrike in Baghdad.
He generally doesn't deny he is the source of the disclosures, but maintains prosecutors got wrong some details about the substance of the documents, insisting he never sent WikiLeaks a "Global Address List" of contact information for 74,000 troops stationed in Iraq.
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Manning also said the government got wrong the timeline of when he uploaded a video of an airstrike in Afghanistan's Farah province that reportedly killed civilians.
However, a Jan. 8, 2010, Twitter post said, "Have encrypted videos of US bomb strikes on civilians http://bit.ly/wlafghan2 we need super computer time http://ljsf.org."
A second post, dated May 7, 2010, said, "We would like a list of as many .mil email addresses as possible. Please contact [email protected]."
One of Manning's military legal counsel, Capt. Joshua Tooman, tried to block the posts as inadmissible hearsay, Courthouse News Service said. Tooman told military judge Col. Denise Lind that the tweets couldn't be authenticated because they were found on cached servers.
Lind provisionally accepted the Tweets into the record, but invited the parties to submit written arguments before she issues a final ruling, CNS said.
The tweets also provide the prosecution support for its narrative that Manning acted at the behest of WikiLeaks early in his deployment, CNS said.
Manning's defense attorneys said the evidence for such a claim is thin.
