Key witness in Bradley Manning trial: Guantánamo files just 'baseball cards'

A key defence witness at the trial of Bradley Manning has told the court that in his expert opinion as a former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay, the assessment files on detainees passed by the young soldier to WikiLeaks would have had no value to enemy groups and would not have harmed US national security.

Colonel Morris Davis, who served as chief prosecutor in the Guantánamo military commissions between 2005 and 2007, told the court that he had compared a sample of the detainee files leaked by Manning to WikiLeaks against public information that was freely available at the time of the disclosure. He said he found considerable overlap and repetition, and even passages in the official detainee assessments that were almost verbatim copies of publicly-available material.

"A lot of the information was repetitive of comparable open-source information that was available in print," Davis said. "You could read the open-source information and sit down and write a substantial version of what was in the DAB [detainee assessment brief]."

Manning has pleaded guilty to passing more than 750 of the Guantánamo files, or DABs, to WikiLeaks in 2010, a limited admission that carries a maximum sentence of two years in military jail. The files were published in their first instance by the Guardian.

But the US government has persisted in prosecuting the army private for a higher level of offence – in the case of the detainee assessments that he violated the 1917 Espionage Act, an offence carrying 10 years in custody. Manning stands accused of having leaked the documents "with reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the US or to the advantage of any foreign nation".

In total, Manning has pleaded guilty to lesser offences carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years. The US government is prosecuting him for 22 counts that bear a maximum sentence of 149 years in military custody.

Davis's testimony was intended by the defence to rebut the allegation that the soldier had wilfully communicated classified information "with reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the US or to the advantage of any foreign nation". The witness said that he had compared the five leaked Guantánamo assessment files for which Manning has been specifically charged with information released by the government itself, including Pentagon publications from 2006-07 on the combatant status of the detainees.

Davis said he had also checked against information provided in newspaper articles, a docu-drama called The Road to Guantánamo and a book, The Guantánamo Files, that was published three years before the WikiLeaks disclosures. He said he had concluded that "if you watch the movie, read the book and the articles, you would know more about them than if you read the detainee assessment briefs".

Manning's defence lawyer, David Coombs, also quizzed Davis as to whether or not the information contained in the briefs could have been useful to enemy groups. The inquiry related to the most serious charge levelled against the soldier: that he "aided the enemy" by transmitting damaging intelligence to a website that could be accessed by al-Qaida.

Davis said that his review found that the Guantánamo files did not contain intelligence on sources or military methods that would have had potential value to the enemy. "As far as providing sensitive information, it doesn't do that – it is just background information. We described them as 'baseball cards' – it was just who the individual was, a 'Who's John Smith?'-type description of the individual."

In cross-examination, the lawyer for the prosecution, Joe Morrow, led the witness into a surreal discussion of the nature of baseball cards. "You're familiar with them from your youth?" Morrow asked.

"Wish I'd kept them," Davis replied.

Baseball cards carried the player's name, team, height and weight, where they were born, runs scored and other career records. Morrow said that the detainee assessment files not only listed the detainees' names but the aliases they used.

The detainee files gave assessments of the individuals, Morrow went on, such as where they had been trained and what missions they had been sent on. "Baseball cards don't assess players, they don't have scouting reports, don't say 'this guy can't get around a fastball'," the prosecutor said.

Davis said the term "baseball card" had not been initiated by him as an analogy for the detainee files. To which Morrow replied: "I know it's not your analogy, but it's kind of a bad analogy."

Davis was the fifth of 21 witnesses the defence intends to call during the trial proper. Once the verdict has been achieved – handed down by the judge, Colonel Denise Lind, sitting in the absence of a jury – there will be more testimony in mitigation aimed at reducing the soldier's sentence.

This week, Coombs filed four motions with the court, calling for seven of the 22 counts to be dismissed for lack of evidence. The motions, which were published on a military website on Tuesday, give an insight into the defence's strategy in trying to fend off the most aggressive prosecution of an official leaker in a generation.

One of the four motions calls for the most serious charge, "aiding the enemy", to be thrown out. It points out that by Lind's own ruling the prosecution must prove that Manning "actually knew that he was giving intelligence to the enemy".

But, Coombs argues in the motion, the government has failed to produce evidence that shows that the soldier had "actual knowledge" that by leaking to WikiLeaks he was giving information to an enemy group. One of the main prosecution witnesses, Troy Moul, who had trained Manning as an intelligence analyst ahead of his deployment to Iraq, had testified that he had never even heard of WikiLeaks.

Another prosecution witness, Captain Casey Fulton, told the court that the only websites that intelligence analysts had been warned about were social networking sites, such as Facebook.

"The government has introduced no evidence to suggest that PFC Manning was independently aware that the enemy uses WikiLeaks," the motion states.