1 U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was found not guilty of aiding the enemy by a military judge on Tuesday, the most serious charge in the case surrounding the leak of hundreds of thousands of classified documents that sparked a debate over the balance between military security and the public's right to know.
2 Manning, 25, was accused of the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history for delivering more than 700,00 pages of documents and videos to the Web site WikiLeaks.
3 Manning, who has been in custody for three years and had already pleaded guilty to mishandling classified material, was found guilty of most of the other charges against him, including espionage and theft, which can still end up in a very lengthy prison sentence.
4 The judge, Col. Denise Lind, will determine his sentence on those crimes during a second phase of the military trial, or court martial.
5 But the aiding the enemy charge could have landed Manning in prison for life.
6 That charge has not been used against a leaker since the Civil War, the Washington Post said.
7 Lind did not explain the reasoning behind her verdict, but said she would release detailed written findings, according to the Associated Press.
8 News organizations calculated that the smaller sentences on the charges Manning was convicted of could still add up to roughly 130 years in prison.
9 On Twitter, WikiLeaks called the possible sentence: 'Dangerous national security extremism from the Obama administration'.
10 The sentencing phase will begin Wednesday at Fort Meade, Maryland.
11 Military prosecutors said that Manning, who served as a junior intelligence officer in Iraq in 2009 and 2010, is a 'traitor' for sending the documents to the anti-secrecy Web site, which posted some of the information.
12 Some of the information wound up in the hands of al-Qaida operatives, prosecutors argued.
13 The documents included information on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and U.S. diplomatic messages.
14 The Web site also showed combat videos from an army helicopter gunship in which Reuters TV news cameraman and his driver were killed, among others.
15 One of the prosecutors, Army Maj. Ashden Fein, said that the documents Manning released could give the enemy a 'playbook' of U.S. fighting techniques.
16 Prosecutors also said that Manning wanted to be famous and did not care about the impact the disclosures would have on U.S. security or his fellow soldiers.
17 The defense argued that Manning was a whistle blower who selectively disclosed only certain information that he had access to in order to spark a discussion about U.S. policies.
18 'I believed if the public was aware of the data, it would start a public debate of the wars,' Manning said during his court martial, according to media reports.
19 Some Manning supporters showed up outside Fort Meade, carrying signs and banners.
20 One banner read: 'Stop the Wars Expose the Lies Free Bradley Manning,' a Reuters video showed.
21 One of Manning's lawyers, David Coombs, briefly spoke to the supporters.
22 'We won the battle, now we need to go win the war,' Coombs said of the sentencing phase, the Associated Press reported.
23 'Today is a good day, but Bradley is by no means out of the fire'.
24 The case against Manning has been closely watched for the ramifications it might have for other potential leakers of state secrets in the United States.
25 Some people have been concerned that a guilty verdict on the aiding the enemy charge could frighten other people with access to classified information from leaking to the media.
26 Even the not guilty verdict on that charge offered limited solace, given the lengthy sentence that Manning still faces.
27 'Despite the lack of any evidence that he intended any harm to the United States, Manning faces decades in prison.
28 That's a very scary precedent,' Elizabeth Goitein, a security expert at New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice said in a statement on the program's Web site.
29 The U.S. government is currently embroiled in another high-profile leak case.
30 National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden recently revealed efforts by the NSA to monitor American's cellphone and Internet traffic.
31 Snowden is currently in a Russian airport as he tries to seek asylum to avoid facing U.S. criminal charges.
32 The Guardian newspaper, one of the main outlets that received Snowden's leaks, reported that Snowden said that one of the reasons he fled the country was the way Manning was treated by the military.
33 WikiLeaks has never publicly admitted that Manning was the source of the documents it released on the Afghanistan war in 2010.
34 The huge document disclosure made a household name out of WikiLeaks and brought the international spotlight on its founder, Julian Assange.
35 'We call those types of people that are willing to risk .
36 being a martyr for all the rest of us, we call those people heroes,' Assange told CNN this week.
37 'Bradley Manning is a hero'.

But the aiding the enemy charge could have landed Manning in prison for life .
could have landed
What are the potential sentencing lengths for the crimes he was convicted of?