Bradley Manning's Wikileaks hearing opens

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U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, right, is escorted during his arrival to military court on the first day of a three-day motion hearing Wednesday in Fort Meade, Maryland.

By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

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FORT MEADE, Md. ? WikiLeaks suspect Pvt. Bradley Manning appeared at a military court outside Washington on Wednesday for a three-day pretrial hearing at which his lawyers were seeking dismissal of 10 of the 22 counts against him.

Agence France Presse news agency described Manning as frail-looking while seated between two members of his defense team when the hearing got under way, after an hour-long closed door meeting between lawyers for both sides.

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Manning, a 24-year-old Crescent, Okla., native, faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge: aiding the enemy. He allegedly sent to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and war logs downloaded from government computers while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad in late 2009 and early 2010.

Motions filed by defense attorney David Coombs before the hearing said the U.S. government used "unconstitutionally vague" or "substantially overbroad" language in eight counts of their indictment, in which Manning is accused of "possession and disclosure of sensitive information."

For two other counts, in which Manning is accused of "having knowingly exceeded authorized access" to a secret Defense Department computer network, defense lawyers said the government failed to state an offense.

The defense team also asked the court to compel the government to produce material including investigation reports by the White House and House of Representatives.

One?motion?accused?the government of responding "in its typical nonsensical, smoke-and-mirrors fashion."

NBC News reported that a judge ruled that the government must give Manning's defense team a redacted version of the Defense Intelligence Agency's WikiLeaks Damage Assessment Report. The team will receive the report "almost in its entirety," as only specific classified information shall be removed, NBC News reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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