Ashden Fein reflects on the case that capped his career as a military prosecutor in the second installment of a Courthouse News series about cybersecurity in the Pentagon and corporate America.
MANHATTAN (CN) - Nearly two years have passed since Chelsea Manning was convicted of what had been the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history.
Opening up for the first time on the landmark court-martial he led, former Army Maj. Ashden Fein said in an exclusive interview that he had believed Manning's disclosures merited the military equivalent of treason.
At trial, Fein's team argued that WikiLeaks solicited specific U.S. military and diplomatic files from Manning, and that the Osama bin Laden raid illustrated the dangers of such intelligence disclosures.
"Once we realized that Osama bin Laden had the information sitting off the net in the dark, and yet he asked for the WikiLeaks information and received it, and we had the evidence in our hands of the material that was found in his possession in Abbottabad, we definitely felt beyond a reasonable doubt that her actions had aided the enemy," said Fein who moved to the private sector last year after 13 years in the Army.
Manning ultimately got 35 years for violating the Espionage Act, among other laws, but she was acquitted of the top charge Fein had championed.
"Now, whether the judge thought so or not, we know that she did not," said Fein, now an associate with Covington & Burling. "She found [Manning] not guilty, which was a just result."
At 36, just nine years older than Manning, the D.C. attorney has stacked an already-hefty resume.
Before serving as the Military District of Washington's lead prosecutor, Fein worked as judge advocate for the 4th Combat Aviation Brigade in Iraq, heading legal services for a 3,000-strong deployment with a fleet of Black Hawk, Chinook, Medivac and Apache helicopters.
The job had Fein advising on a "full spectrum" of legal services, including "law-of-war issues."
"Can you shoot, should you shoot?" Fein said. "What is permitted under the rules of engagement? That type of advice."
WikiLeaks would later spark a global debate on these questions by releasing footage of an Apache helicopter's July 12, 2007, airstrike in Baghdad, under the title "Collateral Murder."
Where WikiLeaks saw gunners itching to open fire on two Reuters reporters and others, Fein perceived "the complexities behind split-second decisions that a soldier [makes] who has a finger on the trigger."
Deployed to Iraq a year after that airstrike, Fein said he never saw the video until the Manning case.
The footage was part of the hundreds of thousands of files Manning uploaded to WikiLeaks - a trove that also included Department of State cables, Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports, and Guantanamo Bay detainee profiles.
Before Manning, Fein's highest-profile case had been the court-martial of Terrence Lakin, the ex-Walter Reade doctor whose belief that President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen made him a cause célèbre for the birther movement.