Pfc. Bradley Manning’s court-martial continued Monday, with his attorneys beginning to presenting their case for a man they painted as competent with a computer but less so when it came to analytic ability.

The trial, being held at Fort Meade in Maryland, began about a month ago. Prosecutors rested their case last week before the trial recessed for the Independence Day holiday. They had called 80 witnesses in their attempt to portray Manning as improperly handling sensitive material and aiding the enemy, among the 22 charges filed against him.

The defense opened with a screening of a video that Manning is alleged to have given to WikiLeaks, which then posted it on the Internet in 2010. The video was from a cockpit recording of a 2007 helicopter attack by U.S. forces in Baghad that led to 12 casualties, including that of a Reuters cameraman.

According to the Guardian’s report, Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, used portions of a book by David Finkel, a Washington Post report, to support his contention that releasing the video was not as major a violation as the government was portraying. The British newspaper says that the point was “to show that the Apache video had not been ‘closely held’ by the US government – in other words, it was not regarded as so secret that it must never be made public. Manning had earlier stated that part of his rationale for releasing it in the first place was due to reading a description of it in Finkel’s book.

Coombs is expected to call over 30 witnesses as he attempts to paint Manning as “naive” in his attempt to right the wrongs he saw. The defense is also seeking to get the charges that Manning “aided the enemy” and stole government dismissed, having filed four motions over the weekend. They have not been decided on, but that is expected to come later this week. Trial judge Col. Denise Lind gave the government until July 11 to respond.

In yesterday’s testimony, one of Manning’s former superiors, Chief Warrant Officers 2 Joshua Ehresman, called Manning “our best analyst by far. Most soldiers, you would have to spell it out. He would come up with exactly what you were looking for.”

Meanwhile, Col. Morris Davis, who was once the chief military prosecutor at the Guantanamo Bay facility, described some of the documents that Manning gave to WikiLeaks and which pertained to detainees at Guantanamo, as “background information” and “wildly inaccurate.”

If the charge of aiding the enemy stands and Manning is convicted, he could face a life sentence.