GI Hit With Charges Over Wikileaks Video

An American Soldier confined by the military since May for allegedly providing a website with video showing U.S. helicopters firing on several Iraqis -- including a journalist -- will be charged criminally, an Army spokesman for the U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad confirmed to Military.com this morning.

Pfc. Bradley Manning of Potomac, Md., allegedly gave Wikileaks a 38-minute video from a 2007 AH-64 Apache helicopter attack on a group of men who may have been wrongly identified as insurgents watching American ground troops engaged in combat in a Baghdad neighborhood. One of the men was a journalist for Reuters and another was his driver. Wikileaks labeled the video "Collateral Murder" and uploaded it onto the Web in April.

RELATED LINKS:
Video Spurs Questions About '07 Attack
Ex-GIs Sorry for 'Collateral Murder' Deaths

Manning, 22, was arrested by the Army in May while stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, about 40 miles from Baghdad, according to a report by Wired magazine in June, which said he was then held in confinement in Kuwait.

According to a redacted version of the charge sheet provided to Military.com, the Army says Manning wrongfully placed classified video and documents onto his personal computer and added unauthorized software onto a secret government network computer. The Army also alleges that Manning then transferred video and documents, including more than 50 classified U.S. State Department cables, to unauthorized sources.

Manning is assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.

The Army reportedly eyed Manning as a suspect after he boasted to a former computer hacker that he was the source of the Wikileaks video.

On the gun camera video, the helicopter crew with the 227th Aviation Regiment mistakenly identified a camera held by the Reuters photographer as a rocket-propelled grenade. The video also showed the Apache crew firing on wounded individuals and a van that stopped to help the injured. Several people in the van were killed and two children were injured.

The Army eventually cleared the Soldiers involved in the attack.

Wired, which has closely followed Assange's operation, recently reported that the site's secure submission page -- which has permitted sources to send documents to Wikileaks -- "stopped working after the site failed to renew its SSL certificate, a basic web protection that costs less than $30 a year and takes only hours to set up," the magazine said.

Earlier reports indicated Assange was preparing to release thousands of classified State Department cables that Manning also had reportedly sent him. The release never occurred. But one of the counts against Manning is that he pulled from a secret government network computer more than 150,000 diplomatic cables.

He faces a separate count of accessing a State Department cable entitled "Reykjavik 13." The charge sheet does not explain "Reykjavik 13," though a New York Times article speculates it is one from a January 13 conversation between U.S. deputy chief of mission in Iraq, Sam Watson, and Iceland's leadership over financial losses in the banking industry.

In all, Manning faces 12 counts of illegally accessing or passing on information to unauthorized sources, according to the Army. All the allegations occurred between November 2009 and May 2010.

In a statement, the Army said the criminal investigation remains open.