[Updated at 11:54 a.m. ET] The Army private accused of leaking millions of government files has offered to plead guilty to some of the charges against him, his attorney announced Thursday.
Pfc. Bradley Manning has been jailed for more than two years on allegations that he downloaded hundreds of thousands of pages of documents while serving as a military intelligence analyst in Iraq and handed that trove to website WikiLeaks. The offer was made in a hearing held on Wednesday, his attorney, David Coombs, wrote on his firm's website.
"To clarify, PFC Manning is not pleading guilty to the specifications as charged by the government. Rather, PFC Manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses," the lawyer's website posting said. "The court will consider whether this is a permissible plea."
WikiLeaks has never confirmed that Manning was the source of the documents, which the site began publishing in 2010. He has been accused of wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet, knowing that it was accessible to the enemy and multiple counts of theft of public records.
Check out this CNN Security Clearance post on why Manning might make this type of plea offer.
