FT. MEADE, Md. (CN) - Pfc. Bradley Manning's disclosures to WikiLeaks mark one of the "high points" in the history of journalism, a Harvard professor testified Wednesday as the last defense witness in the landmark court-martial.
Manning has freely admitted his responsibility for the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history: a more-than-700,000-file stash of battlefield reports from two war zones, diplomatic cables and footage of airstrikes on civilians.
Prosecutors claim that the 25-year-old soldier "aided the enemy" and committed espionage, theft and computer fraud through these disclosures.
Harvard professor Yochai Benkler countered that the soldier enriched the "Networked Fourth Estate," a phrase that he coined in the subtitle of his paper, "A Free Irresponsible Press."
The last witness to testify for the defense, Benkler is considered an academic authority in the evolution of media in the age of the Internet, and the most widely cited scholar on WikiLeaks.
His concept of a "networked" Fourth Estate describes not only how traditional journalism outlets use online resources, but how the Internet forced the newsgathering process to evolve.
The military judge, Col. Denise Lind, admitted him as an expert on this topic, for the first time in U.S. jurisprudence.
Benkler testified that neither Manning, nor anybody else, would have had any reason to consider WikiLeaks a terrorist-enabler before overheated rhetoric against it came from Washington.
In its early days, WikiLeaks set its sights on authoritarian regimes, publishing about the Chinese government's use of "Green Dam" software, Benkler noted. The program had been billed as anti-pornography software, but it also censored political dissent.
Other early scoops included evidence of a tax shelter scam at the Swiss bank, Julius Baer; toxic waste dumping off the Ivory Coast by Trafigura, a Dutch multinational corporation; and extrajudicial killing by the Kenyan government.
The latter expose won WikiLeaks an award by Amnesty International and solidified its reputation as a whistle-blowing website, Benkler said.
As the accolades poured in, a Pentagon counterintelligence official wrote and published a paper, "WikiLeaks.org - An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups?"
Prosecutors argue that Manning, who leaked this document, knew about the organization's supposedly secret nature and threat.
But Benkler said that even the paper's author, Michael Horvach, never answered that question. The paper meanwhile describes WikiLeaks and its employees in traditional journalistic terms like "staff writers," "editors" and "analysis of documents," the professor noted.
"These are the things that are at the very core of investigative journalism," Benkler said.
Horvach's concern about WikiLeaks, moreover, stemmed from the "false, simply mistaken" assertion that it does not authenticate its documents, Benkler added.
In reality, verification procedures at WikiLeaks have differentiated it from short-lived competitors like LiveLeaks, Benkler said.
Noting that WikiLeaks never issued a significant retraction, Benkler quipped: "Dan Rather, I'm sure, would like to say the same thing."
Perhaps the most prominent of the Manning's leaks is the footage of an Apache helicopter's footage of a Baghdad airstrike that killed two Reuters employees, which WikiLeaks titled "Collateral Murder."
By unveiling this at the venerable National Press Club, WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange signaled "a bridge between new media and old media," Benkler said.