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Bradley Manning, the solider accused of the biggest unauthorised disclosure of state secrets in US history, has admitted for the first time to being the source of the leak, telling a military court that he passed the information to a whistleblowing website because he believed the American people had a right to know the "true costs of war".

At a pre-trial hearing on a Maryland military base, Manning, 25, who faces spending the rest of his life in military custody, read out a 35-page statement in which he gave an impassioned account of his motives for transmitting classified documents and videos he had obtained while working as an intelligence analyst outside Baghdad.

The US government is planning to call 141 witnesses to the trial of Bradley Manning, including 15 people who would testify that the information he passed to WikiLeaks caused harm to US national interests.

The gigantic scale of the prosecution plans were revealed during pre-trial legal argument over how sensitive secret information would be handled. The trial, scheduled to start on 3 June and pencilled in for 12 weeks, is the most prominent prosecution of the source of an official leak for at least a generation.

A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo thinks of himself as a killer _ and he carries the guilt every day.

"I can't forgive myself," he says. "And the people who can forgive me are dead."

With American troops at war for more than a decade, there's been an unprecedented number of studies into war zone psychology and an evolving understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder. Clinicians suspect some troops are suffering from what they call "moral injuries" _ wounds from having done something, or failed to stop something, that violates their moral code.

Supporters of Bradley Manning, the US soldier who is accused of being behind the largest leak of state secrets in America's history, held a series of rallies across the US and the world on Saturday.

The demonstrations in more than 70 locations were aimed at marking Manning's 1,000th day in jail and came as the young soldier prepares to appear again before a military court next week. Manning is being prosecuted by the US government for allegedly transmitting confidential material to the anti-secrecy campaigner Julian Assange's web organisation WikiLeaks.

The Pentagon's No. 2 official, Ashton Carter, picked a telling time to discuss the US military's plans for its new strategic focus on the Asia-Pacific.

At Europe's premier security conference in Munich, Germany, this month, Mr. Carter took the opportunity to reassure concerned NATO allies, among others, that America's focus on Asia would not mean its abandonment of Europe. Some US partners have been concerned that even the phrase "pivot to Asia" implies that the United States would be turning its back on Europe.

Obama administration officials say they are considering shifting some of the CIA's covert drone operations to the U.S. military.

John Brennan, Obama's nominee to be CIA director, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in written comments he favors having the Pentagon handle the bulk of drone missions.

The Los Angeles Times said Sunday the military operates under a more-transparent set of rules, which in some cases could mean more public disclosure about missions.

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