Bradley Manning military trial updates: live-blogs, who to follow on Twitter, and analysis

Army private Bradley Manning pleaded guilty on Thursday to 10 of the 19 total charges made by the US that he leaked unprecedented amounts of classified material to Wikileaks, the anti-secrecy organization run by Julian Assange.

Manning entered a not guilty plea to the government’s more serious charge of “aiding the enemy,” which carries a possible maximum sentence of life in prison. In a statement before the military court today, Manning said he leaked the classified information to “spark a domestic debate.”

Liveblog coverage of his trial: Mother Jones, Reuters.

Ed Pilkington at the Guardian reports Manning first contacted the Washington Post about providing them with some of the classified material while he was on leave in January 2010; the the woman who answered the phone said the “paper would only be interested [in the documents] subjected to vetting by senior editors.”

Kevin Gosztola has an analysis here of Manning’s claims that he first attempted to leak the material to WaPo and the New York Times, before connecting with Wikileaks. A related article at Huffpo explores this further.

At New York magazine, a roundup of tweeted coverage from the courtroom. The New York Times told them they have no record of having been contacted by Manning before he reached out to Wikileaks.

Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told Daily Intelligencer, “This is the first we’re hearing of it. We have no record of Manning contacting The Times in advance of WikiLeaks.”

It appears Manning uploaded many of the classified documents from a Barnes and Noble location near Rockville, Maryland.

Matthew Keys has a curated list of who to follow for live coverage from the courtroom in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Bradley Manning’s statement before the court today has not been published online in entirety, but here’s a Storified series of tweets from trial observer Alexa O’Brien.