By Charlie Savage, New York Times, August 13/14, 2013

FORT MEADE, Md. — A former leader of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s Army intelligence unit in Iraq allowed him to keep working with classified information despite recurring concerns about his mental health because the unit was understaffed and Private Manning was playing an irreplaceable role in analyzing insurgent threats, according to testimony at his court-martial trial on Tuesday.

While in Iraq, where he downloaded 700,000 secret government files that he sent to WikiLeaks, Private Manning responded with angry outbursts when he was chastised over minor misconduct, went “catatonic” at times while talking, e-mailed a photograph of himself dressed as a woman to a supervisor, and was found in the fetal position with a knife, witnesses said.

Yet through it all, the supervisor, Paul Adkins, then a master sergeant, did not pull Private Manning from the secure facility where he had access to classified information, nor did he recommend that commanders file a report that could have revoked Private Manning’s security clearance. The reason, he said, was that Private Manning’s work was helping save soldiers’ lives [....]