Patrick Semansky / AP

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted into a courthouse at Fort Meade, Md., Tuesday, June 4, 2013, before the second day of his court martial. Manning is charged with indirectly aiding the enemy by sending troves of classified material to WikiLeaks. He faces up to life in prison.

A former computer hacker who turned Pfc. Bradley Manning in to federal authorities for the alleged leak of classified documents testified Tuesday that the young Army analyst never indicated that he wanted to help the enemy.

Adrian Lamo testified that Manning sought him out in May 2010 and sent him a message revealing he had access to vast amounts of sensitive information. Lamo alerted authorities following the interaction, but continued exchanging messages with Manning for nearly a week. 

Manning's defense team pressed Lamo on cross examination, asking if the soldier ever communicated a desire to help American adversaries.

"At any time, did Pfc. Manning ever say he wanted to help the enemy?" defense attorney David Coombs said. 

"Not in those words, no," Lamo said. 

The convicted hacker's testimony came on the second day of Manning's high-profile court martial. The 25-year-old is charged with violating the Espionage Act and helping the enemy when he provided thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in what was the the largest leak of classified information in American history.

In opening statements on Monday, Manning's lawyers said that he was "naive, but good intentioned" and that his goal was to select information he thought would make a would help the world.

But military prosecutors counter that Manning simply wanted notoriety and his actions help enemy combatants and put fellow soldiers at risk. The government is expected to introduce evidence showing Osama bin Laden studied the leaked information. 

Though Manning did not know Lamo personally, the well known hacker said his online notoriety is likely what caused Manning to seek him out.

In one of the messages Manning wrote, “If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wrote in a statement late Monday: "This is not justice; never could this be justice. The verdict was ordained long ago. Its function is not to determine questions such as guilt or innocence, or truth or falsehood. It is a public relations exercise, designed to provide the government with an alibi for posterity."

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning arrives for the second day of his court-martial at Fort Meade, Md.

Julian Assange, founder of the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, says that Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of aiding the enemy by leaking military secrets, is “the most prominent political prisoner in modern U.S. history” whose alleged crime is "telling the truth." 

In a lengthy statement posted late Monday on the WikiLeaks site and emailed to reporters covering Manning’s court-martial, Assange said that Manning is being subjected to a show trial.

“Those invested in what is called the ‘U.S. military justice system’ feel obliged to defend what is going on, but the rest of us are free to describe this travesty for what it is,” he wrote. “No serious commentator has any confidence in a benign outcome.”

In an opening statement Monday at the court-martial, at Fort Meade, Md., a military prosecutor said that Manning put fellow soldiers at risk when he sent huge classified databases to WikiLeaks.

His lawyer said that Manning was “hoping to make the world a better place,” was troubled by the killing of Iraqi civilians and carefully selected which documents to leak so that they could not be used to harm the United States.

Manning said at a pretrial hearing in February that he sent the documents because he wanted the world to know the truth about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a diplomatic standoff, Assange has holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for a year. Britain wants to extradite him to Sweden, where authorities want to question him about sexual assault and rape allegations. He denies those allegations.

In his statement, Assange cited “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of Manning at a Marine base in Virginia where he was held for nine months before he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The military judge overseeing the court-martial has said any sentence will be reduced four months to compensate for the harsh treatment.

Assange called the court-martial a “fully choreographed extravaganza” and said that rulings from the judge have compromised Manning’s ability to mount a complete defense.

The real defendant, Assange wrote, is the United States: “A runaway military, whose misdeeds have been laid bare, and a secretive government at war with the public. They sit in the docks. We are called to serve as jurists. We must not turn away.”

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 4, 2013 10:22 AM EDT

WASHINGTON - A U.S. Army officer is recommending that Pfc.  Bradley E. Manning face a general court-martial for the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history -- the WikiLeaks case.

After an Article 32 hearing under the military legal system, the investigating officer concluded that the "charges and specifications are in the proper form and that reasonable grounds exist to believe that the accused committed the offenses alleged," according to a statement by the U.S. Army Military District of Washington.

The recommendation will now be forwarded up the chain of command for a final determination. Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington will make the ultimate decision on whether Manning will stand trial. The military did not provide a timeline for those actions.

Manning faces 22 counts, including aiding the enemy, alleging that he gave more than 700,000 secret U.S. documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Prosecutors say WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange collaborated with Manning.

Defense lawyers say Manning, 24, was clearly a troubled young soldier who suffered from psychological problems stemming from gender confusion. They say the Army never should have sent him to Iraq or given him access to classified material. 

If convicted of all charges, Manning would face a maximum punishment of confinement for life; reduction to the lowest enlisted pay grade, E-1; total forfeiture of all pay and allowances; and a dishonorable discharge.

The investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, presided over Manning's seven-day preliminary hearing, called an Article 32 investigation, in December at Fort Meade, Md. During that hearing, military prosecutors produced evidence that Manning downloaded and electronically transferred to WikiLeaks nearly half a million sensitive battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, and video of a deadly 2007 Army helicopter attack that WikiLeaks shared with the world and dubbed "Collateral Murder."

Manning's lawyers countered that others had access to Manning's workplace computers. They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.

Manning's apparent disregard for security rules during stateside training and his increasingly violent outbursts after deployment were red flags that should have prevented him from having access to classified material, the defense claims. Manning's lawyers also contend that military computer security was lax; and that the material WikiLeaks published did little or no harm to national security.

Jeff Paterson, a founding member of the Bradley Manning Support Network, said the recommendation was what he expected.

This article includes reporting from msnbc.com staff and The Associated Press.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• First winter blast hits Northeast, Midwest
• Judge: Natalee Holloway legally dead
• Inside the industry of inmate-staffed call centers
• Man's marimba stops Mahler symphony dead
• Lost at sea: Japan's tsunami debris is scattering