Soldier defers plea in WikiLeaks case

FORT MEADE, Md. -- Army Pfc. Bradley Manning declined to enter a plea yesterday to charges he engineered the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history.

He also deferred a choice of whether to be tried by a military jury or by a judge alone.

Military judge Col. Denise Lind, who presided over the hearing at Fort Meade, near Baltimore, scheduled another court session for March 15-16.

Defense attorney David Coombs proposed a trial date sometime in April. He said the government's proposed calendar could push the start of the trial to Aug. 3, a date he said could jeopardize his client's right to a speedy trial.

Manning, 24, of Crescent, Okla., has been in pretrial confinement since May 2010. He faces 22 counts, including aiding the enemy, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. The others carry a combined maximum of more than 150 years. Manning allegedly gave the anti-secrecy website more than 700,000 documents and video clips.

Defense lawyers say Manning was emotionally troubled and shouldn't have had access to classified material or have been sent to Iraq for a tour of duty.

A court-martial defendant can defer entering a plea until the start of the trial and defer choosing a judge or jury until shortly before the trial date. Doing so could buy the defense more time to investigate prospective jurors or negotiate a deal, said Eugene R. Fidell, a former Coast Guard judge advocate.

At a preliminary hearing in December, prosecutors produced evidence that Manning downloaded and electronically transferred to WikiLeaks nearly half a million sensitive battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, including hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables. They presented excerpts of online chats found on Manning's personal computer that allegedly document collaboration between him and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.