Captain Casey Fulton testified at the end of yesterday\u2019s Bradley Manning\u2019s trial proceedings that there were no specific websites, other than social media sites, that intelligence analysts knew that America\u2019s enemies visited. Capt. Fulton deployed to Iraq with Bradley in November 2009 and was in charge of Bradley\u2019s intelligence section.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s aiding the-enemy charge relies on the claim that Bradley knew that giving intelligence to WikiLeaks meant giving it to Al Qaeda. Prosecutors have cited several times this\u00a0Army Counterintelligence Special Report<\/a>, which asks,<\/p>\n Will the Wikileaks.org Web site be used by FISS, foreign military services, foreign insurgents, or terrorist groups to collect sensitive or classified US Army information posted to the Wikileaks.org Web site?<\/p>\n But when defense lawyer David Coombs asked Capt. Fulton which websites the enemy was known to visit gathering intelligence, she merely said that it was general knowledge that the enemy goes to \u201call sorts\u201d of websites. Pressed to name something specific, Capt. Fulton said that they were briefed on social media sites like Facebook, where people generally post lots of personal information, and Google and Google Maps. Once more Coombs asked if there were any specific websites that she and her fellow analysts had \u201cactual knowledge\u201d that the enemy visited, and Capt. Fulton said no.<\/p>\n Intelligence work for Army, not WikiLeaks<\/b><\/p>\n She also provided more information on an Excel spreadsheet that Bradley created as an analyst in Baghdad, which included all of the Significant Activities (SigActs) later released in the Iraq War Logs. The government has referred to this spreadsheet as an indication that Bradley was culling information and preparing it to be sent to WikiLeaks. But Capt. Fulton said that the spreadsheet was used for an intelligence analyst assignment: she had asked him to compile all SigActs from the entire Iraq War to discern any patterns and increases or decreases in violence throughout the war. Bradley was simply doing his job.<\/p>\n That testimony corroborates what we heard from other witnesses today. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Hondo Hack and Warrant Officer Kyle Balonek testified to Bradley\u2019s exceptional organizational abilities and impressive work for such an inexperienced analyst.<\/p>\n CW3 Hack rarely saw Bradley since they had opposite work shifts, so he looked into the shared drive where analysts posted reports and files they were researching. He called Bradley\u2019s folder perhaps the most organized he\u2019d ever seen, providing far more detail than more experienced analysts.<\/p>\n That revelation came after government questioning that attempted to paint Bradley as neglectful of his duties, presenting an email from him to CW3 Hack providing the name of a high-value target several months after he started his work. Prosecutors admitted when prompted by Judge Denise Lind that they were trying to show a dereliction of duty, and Coombs recalled their effort to characterize him as working for WikiLeaks when he should have been doing his job.<\/p>\n But CW3 Hack said he was frustrated with the entire intelligence analyst squad, and didn\u2019t expect Bradley, as a junior analyst, to provide \u201cactionable\u201d information and in fact expected more from his more senior colleagues.<\/p>\n War Log reports didn\u2019t reveal source names<\/b> CW Balonek was one of those more experienced analysts, who worked in Bradley\u2019s division. He testified about keeping classified information secret, since he witnessed Bradley\u2019s signing of the Non-Disclosure Agreement vowing to protect sensitive documents. He told government lawyers that it wasn\u2019t common practice for those in Iraq to look at Afghanistan SigActs or other files, but he told the defense that there wasn\u2019t any provision that he knew of prohibiting it.<\/p>\n He gave more insight into what those SigActs or HUMINT (Human Intelligence) files contained. The SigActs typically provided the 5 Ws: who, what, when, where, and why an incident occurred, documenting basic information about incidents like IED attacks. Both types of files didn\u2019t refer U.S. sources by name\u2013HUMINT reports cited sources by number, and SigActs would protect the source from identification as well. SigActs have some names, but those are witnesses, for example, to violent incidents, and not reliable sources with exact information.<\/p>\n Supervisor Showman\u2019s conversations with Bradley<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Specialist Jihrleah Showman was Bradley\u2019s team leader at Ft. Drum before he deployed to Iraq, interacting with him daily. She testified with slight but visible disdain about their personal conversations, which she said typically involved \u201chis topic of choosing,\u201d and that he talked about social interests including \u201cmartini parties\u201d in the D.C. area, having friends with influence in the Pentagon, and his interest in shopping.<\/p>\n She also said he liked to talk about politics, and that he would often debate with others about broad U.S. policy and that she found him \u201cvery political\u201d and on the \u201cextreme Democratic side,\u201d responding affirmatively to Coombs\u2019s phrasing.<\/p>\n When she oversaw him at Ft. Drum, most soldiers uploaded video games, movies, and music to their computers, which weren\u2019t explicitly authorized but which she believed her superiors knew about. Bradley was so \u201cfluent\u201d with computers, she said, that she asked him to install the military chat client mIRC to her computer, and that he once mentioned that military portals\u2019 passwords \u201cweren\u2019t complicated\u201d and that he could always get through them.<\/p>\n Because the government moved through its witnesses so quickly, court is in recess for the week and will resume Monday, June 10.<\/p>\n Nathan Fuller<\/strong>, a writer for the\u00a0Bradley Manning Support Network<\/a>, where this dispatch also appeared. He can\u00a0be reached at\u00a0Nathan@bradleymanning.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
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