Witness | US v Pfc. Manning, SGT (former Specialist) Lorena Cooley, 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. 32, an SGT (former Specialist) Lorena Cooley, 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. 32’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 SGT (former Specialist) Lorena Cooley, Second Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division at the December 2011 Article 32 Pretrial Hearing, stating Witness No. 32’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. 32 on the December 2, 2011 Defense Request for Article 32 Witnesses

XXXXXXXXXX [SGT (former Specialist) Lorena Cooley] will testify that she believes that PFC Manning was picked on by others because they assumed that he was gay. She will testify that XXXXXXXXXX [Master Sergeant Adkins (now Sergeant First Class due to an administrative action)] minimized a lot of things with PFC Manning and tried to keep things within the shop. XXXXXXXXXX [SGT (former Specialist) Lorena Cooley] will testify that PFC Manning should have probably gotten help before they deployed. Finally, she will testify that Soldiers brought in CDs for music and movies and that this information was placed on SIPRNet computers.