(Updates with hearing under way)
By Medina Roshan
FORT MEADE, Md., July 25 (Reuters) - Military prosecutorsdescribed the U.S. soldier accused of the largest leak ofclassified information in the nation's history of releasingdocuments on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with a hope of makinga name for himself.
As the court-martial of Private First Class Bradley Manningwinds down, prosecutors in closing arguments on Thursday saidthat the 25-year-old intelligence analyst had betrayed the trusthis nation put in him.
"The only human PFC Manning ever cared about was himself,"said Major Ashden Fein, the lead prosecuting attorney.
Attorneys for Manning, who faces 21 counts of leaking morethan 700,000 documents through the WikiLeaks anti-secrecywebsite, are due to make their closing remarks later in the day.
Earlier in the case they portrayed Manning as well-meaningbut naive, intending to provoke a broader debate on U.S.military and diplomatic policy by releasing the documents. Themost serious charge he faces, aiding the enemy, carries a lifesentence.
The case has pitted civil liberties groups who seekincreased transparency into the actions of the U.S. military andsecurity apparatus, against the government, which has arguedthat the low-level intelligence analyst, who was stationed inBaghdad at the time, endangered lives.
Army Colonel Denise Lind, who is presiding over the trial,early in the proceedings on Thursday denied a request by thedefense to find Manning not guilty of five of the counts relatedto stealing information from government databases.
She denied a request by the defense to declare a mistrial.
The case, which saw WikiLeaks publish classified files,combat videos and diplomatic cables, serves as a test of thelimits of secrecy in the Internet age.
But it has recently been overshadowed to some degree by thecase of fugitive U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, whorevealed to Britain's Guardian newspaper early last month thedetails of alleged secret U.S. surveillance programs trackingAmericans' telephone and Internet use.
The WikiLeaks website has become controversial both for itspublishing of secret data and for its founder, Julian Assange,who has been sheltering in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London formore than a year to avoid extradition to Sweden for alleged sexcrimes.
Manning was arrested in May 2010 while serving in Iraq.
In February, he pleaded guilty to lesser charges, includingmisusing classified information, such as military databases inIraq and Afghanistan and files pertaining to Guantanamo Baydetainees.
Manning chose to be tried by a military judge, rather thanhave a panel of military jurors hear his case.
The defense attempted to portray Manning as well-intentionedbut young and naive, while the prosecution maintained that hewas a trained intelligence analyst who knew what the fallout ofsuch a major leak would be.
In February, Manning read from a prepared 35-page statementin an attempt to explain why he released classified informationto WikiLeaks.
"I believe that if the general public ... had access to theinformation ... this could spark a domestic debate as to therole of the military and foreign policy in general," Manningsaid.
Fein said that intercepted communications between Manningand Assange showed that he knew he would rile the nation'sleaders.
He quoted one, referring to the secretary of state, assaying, "Hillary Clinton is going to have a heart attack." (Editing by Scott Malone, Gunna Dickson and Nick Zieminski)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
