Witness | US v Pfc. Manning, Unidentified female Sergeant or Specialist, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division

posted December 8, 2011

UPDATE POST COURT-MARTIAL

United States v. Pfc. Manning was conducted in de facto secrecy. The public was not granted contemporaneous access to court filings or rulings during her trial. In addition to reporting on her trial, I transcribed the proceedings, reconstructed the censored appellate list, and un-redacted any publicly available documentation, in order to foster public comprehension of her unprecedented trial.

As a result of a lawsuit against the military judge and the Military District of Washington brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, as well as my own FOIA requests and research, an official court record for US v. Pfc. Manning was released seven months after her trial. That record is not complete.

The official trial docket is published HERE and the entire collection of documents is text searchable at usvmanning.org.

*During the pretrial proceedings, court-martial and sentencing of Pfc. Manning, Chelsea requested to be identified as Bradley and addressed using the male pronoun. In a letter embargoed for August 22, 2013 Chelsea proclaimed that she is female and wished to be addressed from that moment forward as Chelsea E. Manning.

Witness No. 29, an unidentified female Sergeant or Specialist, Second Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, provided a sworn statement for the Secretary of the Army’s 15-6 investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosures. Defense’s account of Witness No. 29’s sworn statement is found in the December 2, 2011 Defense Request for Article 32 Witnesses below.

The Government objected to the defense request for the the unidentified female Sergeant or Specialist, Second Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division at the December 2011 Article 32 Pretrial Hearing, stating Witness No. 29’s testimony was “not relevant to the Article 32 investigation and will only serve to distract from the relevant issues.” While there is no official public record of Almanza’s denial of this witness’ testimony, he did not appear during any open session of the Article 32 Pretrial Hearing. The public record shows that at least fourteen witnesses were granted to defense for the Article 32 Pretrial Hearing. In Lt. Col. Almanza’s ruling on the Defense Request for Article 32 Witnesses, 12 witnesses were granted to the defense, 10 of whom were also requested by the Government. Defense said in open Court on December 16, 2011, that Lt. Col. Almanza granted two additional witnesses to defense that morning.

No. 29 on the December 2, 2011 Defense Request for Article 32 Witnesses

XXXXXXXXXX [UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE SERGEANT OR SPECIALIST] She will testify that she has known PFC Manning since 2008. In the 2008 time frame, PFC Manning told her that he was gay. She will testify that she believes that it was a huge issue for him and that he could not be true to himself without the risk of losing his job. She will testifies that she believed that PFC Manning felt like he had no one to talk to. She believes that PFC Manning was very intelligent and knew a lot about the World issues. She feels that PFC Manning had a few emotional issues and these issues made it difficult for him to adjust to the military life.