What a farce (via Politico):
The federal government’s vigilance at preventing anything relating to… WikiLeaks… from appearing on a government computer has tripped up military prosecutors, causing them to miss important emails from the judge and defense involved in the case against an Army intelligence analyst accused of… leaking hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and military reports… to the web-based transparency organization.
At a hearing last month, prosecutors in the case against… Pfc. Bradley Manning… noted that they didn’t receive the messages but could not explain why. Chief prosecutor Capt. Ashden Fein said at a hearing Thursday that the messages had been “blocked by a spam filter for security.” However, it fell to defense attorney… David Coombs to explain precisely why the e-mails about evidence issues in the Manning case never made it.
“Apparently, they were blocked… because the word ‘WikiLeaks’ was somewhere in the e-mail,” Coombs said.
Fein said there is now a procedure in place to check the spam filter on a daily basis for errant e-mails. In addition, military Judge Col. Denise Lind said prosecutors had set up an alternate e-mail account that shouldn’t encounter the same problem.