Former hacker testifies in Manning hearing

Fort Meade, Maryland (CNN) — The former hacker who served as a confidential informant to the Army about Pfc. Bradley Manning’s leaking of classified documents took the stand in Manning’s preliminary hearing Tuesday.

Adrian Lamo testified that he traded e-mails and instant messages with someone identifying themselves as Bradass87, which he believes was the online name used by Manning.

The testimony came on the fourth day of the preliminary hearing, which will determine if Manning proceeds to a full military court martial.

Manning is accused of stealing and leaking more than a quarter of a million classified documents from the State Department and the Defense Department to the WikiLeaks website, the biggest intelligence leak in U.S. history.

Prior to Lamo’s appearance, Criminal Investigation Division Special Agent Antonio Edwards told the military hearing that Lamo served as an informant for the Army from 2010 to last summer, and was not paid for his work, although he was reimbursed for expenses.

When Lamo was asked why he was testifying if he wasn’t promised immunity, he responded that he was there “to assure that the truth is presented.”

Mark Johnson, a contractor for the Army who testified Monday, said he examined Manning’s personal Apple laptop computer, which was seized from his living quarters in Iraq.

Among the files found on that computer were records of an Internet chat with Lamo. One of the chat logs contained references to video of a deadly 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq.

That video was leaked in edited form by WikiLeaks.

In earlier testimony Tuesday, Jihrleah Showman, who served as Manning’s team leader, testified that the Army private once punched her in the face and displayed “uncontrollable behavior” that got him kicked out of the intelligence office where he worked.

Showman, a former Army specialist who is now a civilian, testified via telephone from Italy.

After her questioning by the prosecution, the defense asked for the proceedings to go into closed session for its questioning of the witness.

The defense request was granted, with the investigating officer saying permitted it because it was “important to protect the accused’s rights to a fair trial.”

Earlier, Showman testified that while she was his team leader at Ft. Drum, New York, prior to Manning’s deployment to Iraq, he was late one morning for the physical training (PT) formation. A short time later, as she escorted the private to PT, he saw Master Sgt. Paul Adkins, the senior enlisted man in Manning’s unit. At that time, Showman testified, Manning, who had been very quiet, flew into a screaming fit and flailed his arms violently.

After that, she required Manning to contact the Army’s behavioral health office and she told Adkins that she felt Manning was a threat to himself and others, that he shouldn’t be handling classified information and shouldn’t be deployed to Iraq.

Adkins was called to testify Sunday in the hearing, but refused, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights.

The Army private faces 22 charges, including aiding the enemy. He’s accused of stealing and leaking the cables while serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.

If convicted on all counts, he could face the death penalty. However, Army prosecutors have signaled they will not recommend death in the event of a conviction, and it is unlikely they would be overruled by a senior officer.

Showman testified about another incident in late 2009 or early 2010, after the unit had deployed to Iraq. Manning was speaking with Sgt. Daniel Padgett at a table, she said, when suddenly Manning started screaming and flipped the table over, knocking a computer to the floor. Then, she said, Manning looked around and seemed to notice an M-4 assault rifle against a wall.

Showman said he appeared to be moving toward the rifle, but was grabbed by another soldier and placed in a chair.

Showman said she told Adkins that Manning didn’t belong in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) but he was not reassigned.

About five months after the table incident, Showman found Manning laying in a fetal position on a conference room floor. She told the soldier who subdued Manning in the earlier outburst to “be ready for something to happen again,” she testified.

A few hours later, in the middle of the night when Showman was asleep, she was called back to the SCIF and at some point, she said, Manning punched her. She got up and pinned him to the ground, she said, with Manning saying, “I’m tired of this, I’m tired of this.”

The next day, Manning was reassigned and moved to a job in a supply room.

Before the session was closed, the prosecution also questioned Staff Sgt. Peter Bigelow, who ran the supply room. When asked about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, he asked, “Who?” When pressed, he replied, “I don’t even know who that is.”

The next witness, an Army cybercrimes investigator, Spec. Agent Alfred Williamson, said he examined a computer in the supply room and found evidence that someone using Bigelow’s user profile had searched for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Williamson said that computer was not password protected.

On Monday, a cybercrimes investigator testified that there were more than 100,000 State Department cables on a secondary computer used by Manning.

There was also software that would allow a user to copy data to a writable CD, according to the investigator, Special Agent David Shaver of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.

Prosecutors put forth testimony from Shaver and another cybercrimes investigator in an effort to establish links between Manning, Assange and the stolen State Department cables released on WikiLeaks.

Shaver and Johnson, a Mantech International Contractor who worked for Shaver at the Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit, testified Monday about their examination of the computers Manning used in Iraq and some computer material found at his aunt’s home in Potomac, Maryland, where he stayed when not deployed.

Shaver said he located more than 100,000 full State Department cables on one of two government computers that Manning and other soldiers used to do their jobs as intelligence analysts.

But during questioning by Manning’s attorney, Shaver conceded that he could not say that it was Manning who accessed the cables. He also found no evidence that this information was sent to anyone.

Later, Shaver testified about an SD memory card seized during a search last December of Manning’s aunt’s home. Manning, who was estranged from his father, listed the aunt’s home as his home address in Army records and stayed there around the time he began his Army career.

Shaver found five files on the card. Four of the files had been deleted by the user, but the files were recovered during the investigation. Investigators were able to access the files on the computers, hard drives and the memory card relatively easily because Manning frequently used the same password for various devices.

One file on the card contained 91,000 Defense Department reports of day-to-day actions in Afghanistan, from major battles to meetings between troops and tribal leaders, Shaver said. A second file on that card contained more than 400,000 similar reports from Iraq.

The same SD card contained a text file that had not been deleted. It read in part: “Items of historical significance for two wars. Iraq and Afghanistan Significant Activities (SIGACTS) between 0000 01 Jan 2004 and 2359 31 Dec 2009.

“Extracts from CSV Documents from Dept. of Def. DoD combined info from CIDNE (Combined Information Data Network Exchange) Database, these items have already been sanitized of any source identifying information.

“You might need to sit on the information for 90 to 180 days to figure out how to best send and distribute such a large amount of data to a large audience.

“It is possibly one of the most significant documents or our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare.”

Last year, WikiLeaks released nearly 500,000 documents in two batches that match the description of the documents on the SD card.

During questioning by one of Manning’s attorneys, Capt. Paul Bouchard, Shaver admitted he had no knowledge of what happened to the SD card between Manning’s arrest in May and the search of the aunt’s house in December.

Johnson, who examined Manning’s personal Apple laptop computer, also testified that he also found records of an e-mail exchange between Manning and someone named Eric Schmiedl.

Manning wrote: “Are you familiar with WikiLeaks?”

“Yes I am,” Schmiedl responded.

According to Johnson, Manning then wrote, “I was the source of the 12 JUL 07 video from the Apache Weapons Team which killed two journalists and injured two kids.”

Johnson also testified that he examined a hard drive that was recovered from Manning’s living quarters in Iraq.

On it he found a file that read: “You can currently contact our investigations editor directly in Iceland.”

The message included a phone number and ended, “24 hours service; ask for Julian Assange.”

Earlier testimony in the hearing portrayed Manning as someone troubled by Army discipline during his deployment to Iraq, and a young man who was struggling with sexual orientation and gender identification issues.

CNN’s Charley Keyes and Jethro Mullen contributed to this report