Chelsea Manning

Bradley Manning

Manning in Cambridge, MA, September 2009
Born	(1987-12-17) December 17, 1987 Crescent, Oklahoma, United States
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	Since 2007
Rank	Private First Class
Unit	2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division
Awards	National Defense Service Medal
Parents	Brian Manning Susan Fox

Bradley Edward Manning (born December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. He was charged over the following months with a number of offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and aiding the enemy, a capital offense, though prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.

Manning had been assigned as an intelligence analyst in October 2009 to an army unit based near Baghdad, where he had access to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, told the FBI that Manning had confided during online chats that he had extracted material from SIPRNet and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material included two videos – one of a July 2007 Baghdad airstrike and the other of the May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan – as well as over 250,000 United States diplomatic cables, and around 500,000 army reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public.

He was held from July 2010 in the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, in maximum custody conditions with Prevention of Injury status, which entailed de facto solitary confinement and other restrictions that caused international concern. In April 2011, 295 academics signed a letter arguing that the detention conditions violated the United States Constitution. Later that month the Pentagon transferred him to a medium-security jail at Fort Leavenworth, allowing him to interact with other detainees. He was arraigned in February 2012 at Fort Meade, Maryland, where he declined to enter a plea. No trial date was set.

Reaction to Manning's arrest – and to the news that he may face life imprisonment – was mixed. Some commentators have said that he is the most significant whistleblower since ex-Marine Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, while United States Navy Admiral Michael Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the leaks had placed the lives of American soldiers and Afghan informants in danger. One of the key issues was why a young, and apparently very unhappy, Army private had access to sensitive material, and why classified material could be copied through unauthorized downloads.

Background

Early life

Manning was born to Susan Fox, originally from Wales, and her American husband, Brian Manning, in Crescent, Oklahoma, a small town already associated with a famous whistleblower, Karen Silkwood. His father had joined the United States Navy in 1974 when he was 19 and served for five years as an intelligence analyst, meeting Susan when he was stationed in Wales at Cawdor Barracks. Manning's sister, eleven years his senior, was born in 1976. The couple returned to the United States in 1979, moving at first to California, then to a two-story house several miles north of Crescent, with an above-ground swimming pool and five acres of land where they kept pigs and chickens. Manning's father later worked as an IT manager for a rental car agency, which saw him regularly travel overseas.

photograph

Manning in elementary school in Crescent, Oklahoma, in the early 1990s.

Manning was small for his age – as an adult, he reached just 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and weighed 105 lb (47.6 kg) – good at the saxophone and science, and even in elementary school said he wanted to join the army. He was a straight-A student who was particularly good with computers. Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post writes that, when he was seven or eight, his father taught him how to use the C++ programming language, and his father told PBS that Manning created his first website when he was ten years old. He taught himself how to use Powerpoint, won the grand prize three years in a row at the local science fair, and in sixth grade took top prize at a state-wide quiz bowl. By the age of 13 he was rewriting lines of video-game code to change the appearance of the characters.

His mother had difficulty adjusting to life in the United States and suffered from poor health; she was living several miles out of town, never learned to drive, had not learned to read or write well, and developed a drinking problem. She was by all accounts too soft with her son, while his father veered in the opposite direction, to the point where Manning seemed to fear him. With his father away much of the time, Manning was largely left to fend for himself; Nakashima writes that he was dressing himself and preparing his own breakfast by the time he was six. His father would stock up on food for the house before his business trips, and leave pre-signed checks for the children to pay the bills. A neighbor told The New York Times that, when the school went on field trips, she would give her own son extra food or money so he could make sure Manning had something to eat.

Rick McCombs, now his school's principal and then a teacher, told Denver Nicks that Manning always had an opinion about things, even in middle school, and it was clear he had a mind of his own. This sometimes translated itself into behavioral problems, and by the age of nine or ten, he had started to lose his temper and throw things when crossed, according to an aunt and a former classmate. He was openly opposed to religion; he would refuse to do homework related to the Bible, and remained silent during the parts of the Pledge of Allegiance that refer to God. His father's strictness may have contributed to his becoming introverted and withdrawn, something that deepened when at age 13 he began to question his sexual orientation.

Move to Wales and return to the United States

His father moved out of the family home in 1999. Manning told Lamo there had been a big fight, where his father had pulled out a gun, and social workers became involved. The couple divorced in 2000 when Manning was 13, and his father remarried; Manning and his mother moved out of the house to a rented apartment in Crescent. His father's second wife was also called Susan, and Manning apparently took it hard when the second's wife son by a previous relationship changed his surname to Manning. His mother had to call a family friend round to the apartment one day in 2001, when Manning was 13, to help calm him down when he found out about it; he started taking running jumps at the walls, and told his mother: "I'm nobody now."

High Street in Haverfordwest, Wales, where Manning went to secondary school.

Part of the old Tasker Milward secondary school in Haverfordwest

In November 2001 Manning and his mother left the United States and moved overseas to Haverfordwest, Wales, where his mother had family. Manning attended the town's Tasker Milward secondary school, where they nicknamed him "Bradders." A schoolfriend there, James Kirkpatrick, told Ed Caesar for The Sunday Times that Manning's personality was "unique, extremely unique. Very quirky, very opinionated, very political, very clever, very articulate." His interest in computers continued, and in 2003 he and a friend set up a website, angeldyne.com, a message board that offered games and music downloads.

He became the target of bullying at the school because he was the only American. The students would imitate his accent, and they apparently abandoned him once during a camping trip. His aunt told The Washington Post: "[H]e woke up, and all the tents around him were gone. They left while he was sleeping." He was also targeted for being effeminate. Denver Nicks writes that he had told two of his friends in Oklahoma that he was gay, but he was not open about it at school in Wales.

He was miserable there, and feared that his mother was becoming too ill to cope with him, so he decided in 2005 when he was 17 to return to the United States after sitting his General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSEs). On his way through London to renew his passport for his return home, he arrived at the King's Cross underground station on the day of the July 7, 2005 London bombings, and said he heard the sirens and the screaming. He moved in with his father in Oklahoma City, where his father was living with his second wife and her child, and got a job as a developer with a software company, Zoto. He was apparently happy for a time, but was let go after four months. His boss, Kord Campbell, told The Washington Post that on a few occasions Manning had "just locked up," and would simply sit and stare, including once when Campbell was teaching him to drive, and in the end communication became too difficult. Campbell told the newspaper he felt that "nobody’s been taking care of this kid for a really long time."

Manning was by then living as a gay man, which his father accepted, but there were problems in the relationship with his stepmother. In March 2006, Manning reportedly threatened her with a knife during an argument about his failure to get another job; she called the police, and he was asked to leave the house. He decided to strike out on his own, and drove to Tulsa in a pick-up truck his dad had given him, sleeping in it for a while, then moving in with a friend from school. Manning had to sleep in an upstairs closet because the friend's father was not aware that he had moved in. The two of them got jobs at Incredible Pizza in April, then Manning spent some time in Chicago, before he called his mother in desperation, having run out of money and with nowhere to stay. His mother in turn called his father's sister, Debra, a lawyer in Potomac, Maryland, and it was agreed that Manning could stay there for awhile. Denver Nicks writes that the 15 months he spent with his aunt were among the most stable of his life. He had his first relationship, took several low-paid jobs – including in July 2007 with Starbucks, then Abercrombie & Fitch – and spent a semester studying history and English at Montgomery College, though he left after failing an exam.

Enlistment in the U.S. Army

In October 2007, he decided to enlist in the army. His father had spent weeks persuading him to consider it because he was concerned about his son's future, and Manning, for his part, hoped to gain a college education and saw no other way to get it – according to Ellen Nakashima he wanted to study for a PhD in physics. When he told his aunt his plans, she tried to stop him, but he had already signed up.

Manning as a Private First Class in 2008 or 2009

He went through basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, but six weeks after enlisting, he was sent to the discharge unit after doubts arose about his stability. He was allegedly being bullied, and in the opinion of a soldier who spent time with him there, he was having a breakdown. The soldier told The Guardian: "The kid was barely five foot ... He was a runt, so pick on him. He's crazy, pick on him. He's a faggot, pick on him. The guy took it from every side. He couldn't please anyone." Denver Nicks writes that Manning, who was used to being bullied, fought back – if the drill sergeants screamed at him, he would scream at them – to the point where they started calling him "General Manning."

The decision to discharge him was revoked, and he was "recycled," because the army needed his IT skills. He started basic training again in January 2008 and after graduating in April moved to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he trained as an intelligence analyst and was given top-secret security clearance. Nicks writes that he was reprimanded while there for posting three video messages to friends on YouTube, in which he described the inside of the "Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility," or SCIF, that he was working in; according to Nicks, the videos showed he was taking pride in his work, though the army ordered him to remove them.

In August 2008, he was sent to Fort Drum in Jefferson County, New York, where he joined the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, and trained for deployment to Iraq. It was while stationed there in the fall of 2008 that he met Tyler Watkins, who was studying neuroscience and psychology at Brandeis University, near Boston. Watkins was his first serious relationship, and he posted happily on Facebook about it, regularly traveling to Boston on visits. Watkins introduced him to a network of friends and the university's hacker community. He also visited Boston University's "hackerspace" workshop, and met its founder, David House, the computer scientist and MIT researcher who was later allowed to visit him in jail. In November 2008, he gave an anonymous interview to a high-school reporter during a rally in Syracuse in support of gay marriage, telling her: "I was kicked out of my home and I once lost my job. The world is not moving fast enough for us at home, work, or the battlefield. I've been living a double life. ... I can't make a statement. I can't be caught in an act. I hope the public support changes. I do hope to do that before ETS [Expiration of Term of Service]."

Nicks writes that Manning would travel back to Washington, D.C. for visits, where an ex-boyfriend helped him find his way around the city's vibrant gay community, introducing him to lobbyists, activists, and White House aides. Back at Fort Drum, according to Fishman, he continued to display emotional problems, falling out with roommates and screaming at superior officers, and by August 2009 had been referred to an Army mental-health counselor. A friend of his told Nicks that Manning could be emotionally fraught, describing an evening where they watched two movies together – The Last King of Scotland, a film about Idi Amin, and a Danish film, Dancer in the Dark – which reduced Manning to tears for the rest of the evening. By September 2009, his relationship with Watkins had ended, though for several months Manning seemed not to accept that it was over.

Deployment to Iraq

In October 2009, despite doubts about his fitness to be deployed, he was sent to Iraq, where he was based at Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad. Two of his superiors had discussed not taking him to Iraq, because, as one of them said, it was felt he was "a risk to himself and possibly others," but again the shortage of intelligence analysts held sway. Just a month later, in November 2009, he was promoted from Private First Class to Specialist. That same month, according to his chats with Lamo, he made his first contact with WikiLeaks.

The 10th Mountain Division's shoulder sleeve insignia

By all accounts, he continued to feel unhappy and isolated. Because of the army's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, he was not allowed to be openly gay, though he apparently made no secret of it; Ellen Nakashima writes that he kept a fairy wand on his desk. The working conditions did not help his mental health. Fishman writes that he was spending 14–15 hours at a time in a secure room, which Manning described to a friend as "a dimly lit room crowded to the point you cant move an inch without having to quietly say 'excuse me sir,' 'pardon me sergeant major'  ... cables trip you up everywhere, papers stacked everywhere ..."

In December 2009, he was carried out of the room after he overturned a table, damaged a computer, and reportedly tried to grab a gun from a gun rack, in what witnesses described as a fit of rage. The following month, he began posting on Facebook – from an account he had set up in July 2007 – in a way that signaled distress. He wrote that he felt alone, and over the next few months posted comments such as "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," that he was "beyond frustrated with people and society," and "livid" after being "lectured by ex-boyfriend despite months of relationship ambiguity ..."

During the same month, January 2010, he traveled to the United States via Germany for a two-week holiday, arriving on January 24, and attended a party at Boston University's hacker space. After the arrest, Manning's former partner, Tyler Watkins, told Kevin Poulsen of Wired that Manning had said during the January visit that he had found some sensitive information and was considering leaking it. Investigators believe it was during this period that he uploaded the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs to the WikiLeaks server, or downloaded them and may have handed them over to someone while on leave. WikiLeaks referred in a tweet on January 8 to having obtained video of a U.S. bomb strike in Afghanistan. Manning later told Adrian Lamo he had uploaded the Apache Baghdad attack ("Collateral murder") video to WikiLeaks in February 2010.

Gender identity disorder, demotion and discharge

In November 2009 – the same month he allegedly first contacted WikiLeaks – Manning wrote to a gender counselor in the United States, said he felt female, and discussed having surgery. The counselor later told Steve Fishman that it was clear Manning was in crisis, partly because of his gender confusion, but also because he was opposed to the kind of war he found himself involved in.

In April 2010, he sent an e-mail to his master sergeant, Paul Adkins, saying he was suffering from gender identity disorder and attaching a photograph of himself dressed as a woman; he had lived for a few days as a woman while on leave in Boston in January 2010. Capt. Steven Lim, Manning's commander, said he first saw the e-mail after Manning's arrest – when information about hormone replacement therapy was found in his room in Baghdad – and learned that he had been calling himself Breanna Manning, which his lawyers later called a "female alter-ego." (Manning told Adrian Lamo, on or around May 23, that his commander had found out about the gender confusion before his arrest, after looking at his medical files at the beginning of May.) He told Lamo he had set up Twitter and YouTube accounts in Breanna's name to give her a digital presence. After acknowledging his involvement in the leaks, he wrote in the chat: "i wouldn't mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility of having pictures of me ... plastered all over the world press ... as [a] boy ... the CPU is not made for this motherboard ..."

On May 7, he seemed to spiral out of control. According to army witnesses, he was found curled into a fetal position in a storage cupboard, with a knife at his feet, and had carved the words "I want" into a chair. Then he had an altercation with a female intelligence analyst, Specialist Jihrleah Showman, during which he punched her in the face. The brigade psychiatrist referred to an "occupational problem and adjustment disorder," and recommended a discharge. His master sergeant removed the bolt from his weapon, and he was sent to work in the supply office, though at this point his security clearance remained in place. He was demoted from Specialist to Private First Class just two days before his arrest on May 26.

Ellen Nakashima writes that, on May 9, Manning contacted Jonathan Odell, a gay American novelist in Minneapolis, via Facebook, leaving a message that he wanted to speak to him in confidence, saying he had been involved in some "very high-profile events." Twelve days later, he began the series of chats with Adrian Lamo, which has been reported to be about leaking of material to WikiLeaks.

Disclosure of classified material

WikiLeaks

Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg at the Chaos Communication Congress, Berlin, December 2009.

WikiLeaks was set up in late 2006 as a disclosure portal, initially using the Wikipedia model, where volunteers would write up and analyze classified or restricted material submitted by whistleblowers, or material that was in some other way legally threatened. Julian Assange, the de facto editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, had the idea of creating what he saw as an "open-source, democratic intelligence agency." The open-editing aspect of Wikileaks was soon abandoned, but the site remained open for the anonymous submission of material.

The New York Times wrote in December 2010 that the U.S. government was trying to discover whether Assange had been a passive recipient of material from Manning, or had encouraged or helped him to extract the files; if the latter, Assange could be charged with conspiracy. According to Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks spokesman, part of the WikiLeaks security concept was that they did not know who their sources were. WikiLeaks did not identify Manning as the source of the material, and as of January 2011 the U.S. government could find no evidence of direct contact between Manning and Assange. Manning told Lamo during their chats in May 2010 that he had developed a relationship with Assange, communicating directly with him using an encrypted Internet conferencing service, but knew little about him.

Access to SIPRNet, material released by WikiLeaks

See also: Information published by WikiLeaks

Manning said he first contacted WikiLeaks in late November 2009, just after it had posted 570,000 pager messages from the 9/11 attacks, which it released on November 25. From his workstation in Iraq, he had access to SIPRNet and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, and there he found the Apache helicopter video of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike, which WikiLeaks later called the "Collateral Murder" video. He told Lamo: "At first glance it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by a helicopter. No big deal ... about two dozen more where that came from, right? But something struck me as odd with the van thing, and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer’s directory. So I looked into it."

Manning said he gave WikiLeaks the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike (so-called "Collateral Murder") video in early 2010. Unedited version and edited version

On February 18, 2010, WikiLeaks posted the first of the material allegedly from Manning, a diplomatic cable dated January 13, 2010, from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, a document now known as Reykjavik13. In the chat log, Manning called it a "test" document. On March 15, it posted a 32-page report written in 2008 by the U.S. Department of Defense about WikiLeaks itself. On March 29, it posted U.S. State Department profiles of politicians in Iceland.

On April 5, Julian Assange called a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and released what he called the "Collateral Murder" video showing an American helicopter over Baghdad firing on a group of around 12 men, one of whom was carrying an anti-tank grenade launcher (an RPG-7) and two of whom were Reuters employees carrying cameras that the pilots mistook for guns. A further attack targeted a van, injuring two children and killing their father. The Washington Post wrote that it was this video, viewed by millions, that "put WikiLeaks on the map" On July 25, it released the Afghan war documents, and in October the Iraq War documents, military war logs and diaries.

Manning told Lamo he was also responsible for the United States diplomatic cables leak – 251,287 State Department cables, written by 260 embassies and consulates in 180 countries – which were passed by Assange to several news organizations. Several thousand of them were published in stages, the first by WikiLeaks in February 2010 (the Reykjavik13 document), then from November 29 in redacted form by The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, El País, and others. The remainder were published unredacted by WikiLeaks on September 1, 2011, after David Leigh and Luke Harding of The Guardian inadvertently published the passphrase for a file that was still available online. WikiLeaks said it was the largest set of confidential documents ever released into the public domain. Manning was also thought to have been the source of the Guantanamo Bay files leak, originally obtained by WikiLeaks and published by The New York Times over a year later on April 24, 2011.

Chats with Adrian Lamo

Manning had been told on May 7, 2010, that he was about to be discharged. On May 20, he contacted Adrian Lamo, a former "grey hat" hacker convicted in 2004 of having accessed The New York Times computer network two years earlier without permission. Lamo had been profiled on May 20 by Kevin Poulsen in Wired magazine; the story said he had been involuntarily hospitalized and diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.

Adrian Lamo (left) and Wired's Kevin Poulsen (right), taken in 2001 when Poulsen was an editor at SecurityFocus. Poulsen, a former hacker himself, had been using Lamo as a source since 2000.

Poulsen, by then a reporter, was himself a former hacker who had used Lamo as a source several times since 2000. Indeed, it was Poulsen who in 2002 had told The New York Times, on Lamo's behalf, that Lamo had gained unauthorized access to its network. Poulsen then wrote the story up for SecurityFocus. Lamo would often hack into a system, tell the organization he had done it – using Poulsen as an intermediary – then offer to fix their security.

According to Fishman, Lamo had worked on a task force for gay, lesbian, and transgender youth, and this, combined with his fame as a hacker, would have encouraged Manning to confide in him. Lamo said Manning sent him several encrypted e-mails on May 20 after seeing a tweet from Lamo about WikiLeaks. Lamo said he was unable to decrypt the e-mails but replied anyway, not knowing the recipient or being able to read the content, and invited the e-mailer to chat on AOL IM. Manning sent him more e-mails, also encrypted. Lamo said he later turned the e-mails over to the FBI without having read them.

In a series of chats from May 21 until May 25/26, Manning – using the handle "bradass87" – told Lamo that he had leaked classified material. He began by introducing himself as an army intelligence analyst, and within 17 minutes, without waiting for a reply, began a tentative discussion about the leaks.

May 21, 2010:

(1:41:12 PM) bradass87: hi

(1:44:04 PM) bradass87: how are you?

(1:47:01 PM) bradass87: im an army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern baghdad, pending discharge for "adjustment disorder" in lieu of "gender identity disorder"

(1:56:24 PM) bradass87: im sure you're pretty busy…

(1:58:31 PM) bradass87: if you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?

Lamo replied several hours later. At first they chatted about Manning's gender confusion. Before Manning had made his admissions about the material, Lamo told him: "I'm a journalist and a minister. You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection." They chatted about restricted material in general, then Manning made his first explicit reference to the leaks: "This is what I do for friends." He linked to a section of the May 21, 2010, Wikipedia article about the WikiLeaks release in March that year of a Department of Defense report on WikiLeaks itself. He added "the one below that is mine too"; the section below in the same article refers to the leak of the Baghdad airstrike video. Manning told him he felt isolated and fragile, and was reaching out to someone he hoped might understand: "im very isolated atm ... lost all of my emotional support channels ... family, boyfriend, trusting colleagues ... im a mess."

May 22:

(11:49:02 AM) bradass87: im in the desert, with a bunch of hyper-masculine trigger happy ignorant rednecks as neighbors... and the only safe place i seem to have is this satellite internet connection

(11:49:51 AM) bradass87: and i already got myself into minor trouble, revealing my uncertainty over my gender identity ... which is causing me to lose this job ... and putting me in an awkward limbo [...]

(11:52:23 AM) bradass87: at the very least, i managed to keep my security clearance [so far] [...]

(11:58:33 AM) bradass87: and little does anyone know, but among this "visible" mess, theres the mess i created that no-one knows about yet [...]

(12:15:11 PM) bradass87: hypothetical question: if you had free reign [sic] over classified networks for long periods of time ... say, 8–9 months ... and you saw incredible things, awful things ... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC ... what would you do? [...]

(12:21:24 PM) bradass87: say ... a database of half a million events during the iraq war ... from 2004 to 2009 ... with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures ...? or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective? [...]

(12:26:09 PM) bradass87: lets just say *someone* i know intimately well, has been penetrating US classified networks, mining data like the ones described ... and been transferring that data from the classified networks over the “air gap” onto a commercial network computer ... sorting the data, compressing it, encrypting it, and uploading it to a crazy white haired aussie who can't seem to stay in one country very long =L [...]

(12:31:43 PM) bradass87: crazy white haired dude = Julian Assange

(12:33:05 PM) bradass87: in other words ... ive made a huge mess :’(

Manning said he had started to help WikiLeaks around Thanksgiving in November 2009 – which fell on November 26 that year – after WikiLeaks had released the 9/11 pager messages; the messages were released on November 25. He told Lamo he had recognized the messages had come from an NSA database, and said it made him feel comfortable about stepping forward. Lamo asked what kind of material he was dealing with, and Manning replied: "uhm ... crazy, almost criminal political backdealings ... the non-PR-versions of world events and crises ..." Although he dealt with Assange directly, he said Assange had adopted a deliberate policy of knowing very little about him. He said Assange had told him: "lie to me."

He said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and finds [sic] an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public ... everywhere there's a US post ... there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed ... Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madascar, if its a country, and its recognized by the US as a country, its got dirt on it."

May 22:

(1:11:54 PM) bradass87: and ... its important that it gets out ... i feel, for some bizarre reason

(1:12:02 PM) bradass87: it might actually change something

(1:13:10 PM) bradass87: i just ... dont wish to be a part of it ... at least not now ... im not ready ... i wouldn't mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility of having pictures of me ... plastered all over the world press ... as [a] boy ...

(1:14:11 PM) bradass87: i've totally lost my mind ... i make no sense ... the CPU is not made for this motherboard ... [...]

(1:39:03 PM) bradass87: i cant believe what im confessing to you :’(

At that point, Lamo again assured him that he was speaking in confidence. Manning wrote: "but im not a source for you ... im talking to you as someone who needs moral and emotional fucking support," and Lamo replied: "i told you, none of this is for print."

He said the incident that had affected him the most was when 15 detainees had been arrested by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing anti-Iraqi literature. He was asked by the army to find out who the "bad guys" were, and discovered that the detainees had printed what he called a scholarly critique of the Iraqi prime minister that followed what Manning said was a corruption trail within the Iraqi cabinet. He reported this to his commanding officer, but said "he didn't want to hear any of it"; he said the officer told him to help the Iraqi police find more detainees. Manning said it made him realize, "i was actively involved in something that i was completely against ..." He explained that "i cant separate myself from others ... i feel connected to everybody ... like they were distant family," and cited Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and Elie Wiesel. He said he hoped the material would lead to "hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. if not ... than [sic] we're doomed as a species."

He said he had downloaded some of the material onto music CD-RWs that he had brought to work; he would erase the music and replace it with a compressed split file. Part of the reason no-one noticed, he said, was that staff were working 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and "people stopped caring after 3 weeks."

May 25:

(02:12:23 PM) bradass87: so ... it was a massive data spillage ... facilitated by numerous factors ... both physically, technically, and culturally

(02:13:02 PM) bradass87: perfect example of how not to do INFOSEC

(02:14:21 PM) bradass87: listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltratrating [sic] possibly the largest data spillage in american history [...]

(02:17:56 PM) bradass87: weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis ... a perfect storm [...]

(02:22:47 PM) bradass87: i mean what if i were someone more malicious

(02:23:25 PM) bradass87: i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?

(02:23:36 PM) info@adrianlamo.com: why didn't you?

(02:23:58 PM) bradass87: because it's public data [...]

(02:24:46 PM) bradass87: it belongs in the public domain [...]

Lamo's approach to FBI, publication of chat logs

Lamo told Wired he had given money to WikiLeaks in the past, and that the decision to go to the authorities had not been an easy one. He said he believed lives were in danger. He told The Sunday Times: "I get approached by people [hackers] on pretty much a daily basis confessing to crimes. I don't turn them in, because most of them are crimes of curiosity and have no real impact on people's lives or livelihoods. It's when someone comes to me and says, 'Hi, my name's Brad, and I'd like to tell you about my state treason' that the issue becomes fuzzy. I believed he was leaking stuff that was endangering lives."

Jonathan V. Last wrote that Lamo discussed what Manning had said with Chet Uber of the volunteer group, Project Vigilant, which researches cyber crime. He also discussed it with Project Vigilant's general counsel at the time, Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime Unit, who was involved in prosecuting Poulsen for computer offenses in 1994. Both men reportedly advised Lamo to go to the FBI. He said he also spoke to a friend who had worked in military intelligence, and asked him about a code word Manning had used. Ed Caesar writes that the friend replied: "[N]ever repeat those words again," at which point Lamo said he knew Manning was the real thing.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon strongly criticized Wired's failure to release the full chat logs.

Lamo contacted the FBI shortly after the first chat with Manning on May 21. On May 25, Lamo met with FBI and Army CID officers at a Starbucks near his home in California, where he showed them the chat logs. On or around that date, he passed the story to Poulsen, and on May 27 gave him the chat logs and Manning's name under embargo. He also saw the FBI again that day, at which point they told him Manning had been arrested in Iraq the day before. Poulsen and Kim Zetter broke the news of the arrest in Wired on June 6, described by Daniel Domscheit-Berg as the worst moment in the history of WikiLeaks. Wired published around 25 percent of the chat logs on June 6 and June 10, saying the remainder either infringed Manning's privacy or compromised sensitive military information. Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post published excerpts on June 10 that she obtained from Lamo, and on June 19 BoingBoing published what it said was a more complete version.

Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon in December 2010, called the failure by Wired to publish the logs in full "easily one of the worst journalistic disgraces of the year," writing that Poulsen and Wired had helped conceal the truth about the arrest. "In doing so," he argued, "they have actively shielded Poulsen's longtime associate, Adrian Lamo – as well as government investigators – from having their claims about Manning's statements scrutinized, and have enabled Lamo to drive much of the reporting of this story by spouting whatever he wants about Manning's statements without any check." Greenwald wrote this before material had leaked out about Manning's gender identity confusion; Wired's editor, Evan Hansen, replied that there was sensitive personal information in the logs, and that it would serve no purpose to publish it. Wired did publish the full logs in July 2011, after some of the personal material had appeared elsewhere.

Legal proceedings

Arrest and charges

See also: List of charges against Bradley Manning

Manning was arrested on May 26, 2010, and held at first in a military jail at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. He was charged on July 5 under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) with violations of UCMJ Articles 92 and 134 for "transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system in connection with the leaking of a video of a helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007," and "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source and disclosing classified information concerning the national defense with reason to believe that the information could cause injury to the United States." The offenses are alleged to have taken place between November 19, 2009, and May 27, 2010.

On March 1, 2011, an additional 22 charges were preferred, including wrongfully obtaining classified material for the purpose of posting it on the Internet, knowing that the information would be accessed by the enemy; and aiding the enemy. In all, he stood accused of leaking over half a million documents and two videos. Prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty, though aiding the enemy is a capital offense, but if convicted he would face life imprisonment, reduction in rank to the lowest enlisted pay grade, a dishonorable discharge, and loss of pay and allowances.

Detention at Marine Corps Base Quantico

On July 29, 2010, Manning was moved from Kuwait to the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, and classified as a maximum custody detainee. He was assigned Prevention of Injury (POI) status, though according to a letter from Manning to the army, the brig psychiatrist repeatedly recommended that the POI status be removed. Manning complained that he regarded the decision to prolong his maximum-custody and POI status as examples of pre-trial punishment.

POI status is one stop short of suicide watch, entailing checks by guards every five minutes. His lawyer, David Coombs, a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve and former military attorney, said he was not allowed to sleep between 5 am (7 am at weekends) and 8 pm, and was made to stand or sit up if he tried to. He was required to remain visible at all times, including at night, which entailed no access to sheets, no pillow except one built into his mattress, and a blanket designed not to be shredded. He was required to sleep in boxer shorts, and said he had experienced chafing of the skin from the heavy blanket.

His cell was 6 x 12 ft with no window, containing a bed, toilet, and drinking fountain. The jail had 30 cells built in a U shape, and although detainees could talk to one another, they were unable to see each other. His lawyer said the guards behaved professionally, and had not tried to harass or embarrass Manning. He was allowed to walk for up to one hour a day – usually in an empty room – meals were taken in the cell, and he was shackled during visits. There was access to television when it was placed in the corridor, and he was allowed to keep one magazine and one book – Denver Nicks writes that he had a subscription to Scientific American, and that one book on his request list was Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781) – but otherwise no writing materials, though he had limited access to them. Because he was in pre-trial detention, he continued to receive full pay and benefits.

David Coombs, Manning's lawyer

On January 18, 2011, the jail classified him as a suicide risk, after an altercation with four of the guards. Manning wrote to the army that they began issuing conflicting commands to him, such as "turn left, don't turn left," and upbraiding him for responding to commands with "yes" instead of "aye." There was a protest outside the jail that day organized by his supporters; Manning wrote that he believed the guards were responding to that. Shortly afterwards, he was placed on suicide risk, had his clothing and eyeglasses removed, and was required to remain in his cell 24 hours a day. The suicide risk status was lifted on January 21.

On March 2, 2011, he was informed that a request by his lawyer that he be removed from maximum custody and Prevention of Injury status had been denied. His lawyer said Manning subsequently joked to the guards that, if he wanted to harm himself, he could do so "with the elastic waistband of his underwear or with his flip-flops." The comment resulted in him having his clothes removed again at night, though he was not formally classified as a suicide risk – the brig psychiatrist subsequently deemed him at low risk of suicide – and had to present himself outside his cell naked one morning for inspection. Although he was soon given a wrap-around smock to sleep in, the news that his clothes had been removed again triggered more protests.

Complaints about detention, move to another jail

The detention conditions prompted national and international concern. The army said he was being held under a Prevention of Injury order for his own safety, and President Obama confirmed he had received assurances from the Pentagon to this effect. A Quantico spokesman said Manning was able to talk to guards and other prisoners, though he could not see the prisoners from his cell, and left his cell for a daily hour of exercise, as well as for showers, phone calls, meetings with his lawyer, and weekend visits by friends and relatives. Nevertheless, there were allegations of impropriety. Daniel Ellsberg, the ex-Marine who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers – a Department of Defense study of the United States involvement in Vietnam – and himself a WikiLeaks supporter, said the treatment amounted to "no-touch torture," intended to demoralize Manning so he would implicate Julian Assange.

Manning was transferred to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility in April 2011.

Juan E. Mendez, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, requested a meeting with the State Department, later publishing a report that the detention conditions had been "cruel, inhuman and degrading." In January 2011, Amnesty became involved, asking the British government to intervene because of Manning's status as a British citizen by descent, and the case was raised in the British parliament, though Manning's lawyer said he did not regard himself as a British citizen. The controversy claimed a casualty in March 2011, when State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley, speaking to a small audience, called Manning's treatment "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid," and resigned two days later.

In early April 2011, 295 academics (most of them American legal scholars) led by Yochai Benkler of Harvard Law School and Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School, signed a letter arguing that the treatment was a violation of the United States Constitution, specifically the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against punishment without trial. On April 20, the Pentagon transferred Manning to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, a new medium-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Prevention of Injury order was lifted, and he was placed in an 80-square-foot cell with a window and a normal mattress, able to mix with other pre-trial detainees, write whenever he wanted, and keep personal objects in his cell.

Article 32 hearing

See also: United States v. Bradley Manning

In April 2011, a panel of experts who examined the medical and mental-health issues ruled that Manning was fit to stand trial. An Article 32 hearing was convened on December 16, 2011, at Fort Meade, Maryland, to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to proceed to a court martial. He was represented by both military and civil attorneys, Maj. Matthew Kemkes and David Coombs respectively. During the hearing, his lawyers raised the issue of his gender identity disorder, and whether it had affected his judgment. The most serious of the charges is "aiding the enemy," for which Manning could face life imprisonment. The prosecution argued that he had "[given] enemies unfettered access" to the documents, and displayed an "absolute indifference" to classified information. The defense argued that U.S. officials had overstated the harm the release of the documents had caused.

The presiding officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, recommended that Manning be referred to a general court-martial. On January 18, 2012, Col. Carl Coffmam of Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, concurred with the recommendation, and on February 3, Major General Michael Linnington, commanding general of the Military District of Washington, the court-martial convening authority, ordered him to stand trial on all 22 charges, including aiding the enemy. He was arraigned on February 23, and declined to enter a plea. No trial date was set.

Impact and reception

Manning and WikiLeaks were among those viewed as catalysts for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010.

Manning himself has not confirmed that he chatted with Adrian Lamo or was responsible for the leaks, but journalists regard the chats and Manning's acknowledgements within them as authentic. Denver Nicks, author of Private (2012), the first major biography of Manning, writes that the possibility of the logs being fabricated is highly unlikely, and he regards them as accurate records. Although Manning is innocent until proven guilty, Nicks writes that the stock phrase "alleged" was used so frequently of him that it began to lose all meaning. The media were hungry for any personal detail about him, such was the global impact of the leaks. Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, said: "I can't think of a time when there was ever a story generated by a news organisation where the White House, the Kremlin, Chávez, India, China, everyone in the world was talking about these things. All over the world there were board meetings and intelligence meetings about this. I've never known a story that created such mayhem that wasn't an event like a war or a terrorist attack."

Billboard erected in Washington, D.C., by the Bradley Manning Support Network

Demonstration in Frankfurt, Germany, in January 2012.

Manning and WikiLeaks were credited as catalysts for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, when waves of protesters threatened or toppled rulers across the Middle East and North Africa after the leaked cables exposed government corruption. Heather Brooke writes that, in Tunisia, where the uprisings began on December 17 with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in protest at being unable to make a living, the cables showed that the President's daughter and her husband had their ice-cream flown in from Saint-Tropez. As Time magazine designated "the protester" as its 2011 person of the year, Brooke writes that WikiLeaks came under tremendous pressure, experiencing distributed denial-of-service attacks that shut down their servers, and finding themselves unable to receive donations when PayPal, banks, and credit card companies refused to process them.

Nicks writes that Manning's name "appended like a slogan to wholesale denunciations and exultations alike" – he was either a "Tiananmen Square Tank Man" or "the worst kind of traitor." United States Navy Admiral Michael Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the leaks had placed the lives of American soldiers and Afghan informants in danger, while liberal commentators argued that Manning was the most important whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The Washington Post focused on why a young and apparently unstable Army private was allowed to access and transfer sensitive material in the first place.

Manning's friend, David House, and Mike Gogulski, an American expatriate in Slovakia, formed the Bradley Manning Support Network in June 2010, and several notable figures joined the advisory board, including Ellsberg and filmmaker Michael Moore. Rallies were held, as well as protests outside the jail – Ellsberg, by then in his 80s, was one of 30 protesters arrested during one of them – and by the beginning of 2012 around 7,000 people had donated over $500,000, including $15,100 from WikiLeaks. Manning also had support from the hacker group, Anonymous, which threatened in March 2011 to disrupt activities at Quantico by cyber-attacking communications if he was not given access to clothing, bed clothes, reading material, and a ball. They called it "Operation Bradical."

Manning was one of 241 candidates listed for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, and was nominated again in 2012 by the Oklahoma Center for Conscience and Peace Research and three members of the Icelandic parliament. Graham Nash and James Raymond wrote a song in his support in 2011, naming it after a phrase Manning's lawyer had used to describe his mental health, "Almost Gone."

See also

• Classified information in the United States
• Espionage Act of 1917
• Freedom of Information
• Incarceration in the United States
• Information security
• Information sensitivity
• Journalism sourcing
• McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950
• Reception of WikiLeaks
• Uniform Code of Military Justice

Material associated with Manning

• Afghan War documents leak
• Granai_airstrike#Video of the airstrike
• Guantanamo Bay files leak
• Iraq War documents leak
• July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike#Leaked video footage
• United States diplomatic cables leak
• Contents of the United States diplomatic cables leak
• Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak

Notes

• Note: Articles used as references repeatedly, or which are central to the story, are presented in shortened form in this section, as are books; for full citations for those sources, see the References section below. Other references are cited in full in this section.

References

Books

• Brooke, Heather. The Revolution Will Be Digitised. William Heinemann, 2011.
• Domscheit-Berg, Daniel. Inside WikiLeaks. Doubleday, 2011.
• Fowler, Andrew. The Most Dangerous Man in the World. Skyhorse Publishing, 2011.
• Leigh, David and Harding, Luke. WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy. Guardian Books, 2011.
• Nicks, Denver. Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History. Chicago Review Press, 2012.

Key articles

• Caesar, Ed. "Bradley Manning: Wikileaker", The Sunday Times, December 19, 2010; archived from the original on April 7, 2012.
• Fishman, Steve. "Bradley Manning’s Army of One", New York Magazine, July 3, 2011.
• Greenwald, Glenn. "The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks", Salon, June 18, 2010.
• Last, Jonathan V. "The Left's Canonization of St. Bradley Manning", CBS News, January 11, 2011.
• Manning, Bradley. "Memorandum", released by David Coombs, March 10, 2011; archived from the original on April 6, 2012.
• Nakashima, Ellen. "Bradley Manning is at the center of the WikiLeaks controversy. But who is he?", The Washington Post, May 4, 2011; archived from the original on April 7, 2012.
• Nicks, Denver. "Private Manning and the Making of Wikileaks", This Land, September 23, 2010.
• PBS Frontline. "Bradley Manning's Facebook Page", March 2011; archived from the original on April 7, 2011.
• Thompson, Ginger. "Early Struggles of Soldier Charged in Leak Case", The New York Times, August 8, 2010.

Key articles regarding the Lamo-Manning chat log, in order of publication

• Poulsen, Kevin. "Ex-Hacker Adrian Lamo Institutionalized for Asperger’s", Wired magazine, May 20, 2010.
• Poulsen, Kevin and Zetter, Kim. "U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in WikiLeaks Video Probe", Wired magazine, June 6, 2010.
• Poulsen, Kevin and Zetter, Kim. 'I Can't Believe What I'm Confessing to You': The WikiLeaks Chats", Wired magazine, June 10, 2010.
• Nakashima, Ellen. "Messages from alleged leaker Bradley Manning portray him as despondent soldier", The Washington Post, June 10, 2010.
• Greenwald, Glenn. Email exchange between Glenn Greenwald and Kevin Poulsen, June 14–17, 2010.
• Poulsen, Kevin and Zetter, Kim. "Three Weeks After Arrest, Still No Charges in WikiLeaks Probe", Wired magazine, June 16, 2010.
• Xeni, Jardin. "WikiLeaks: a somewhat less redacted version of the Lamo/Manning logs", Boing Boing, June 19, 2010.
• Greenwald, Glenn. "The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired", Salon, December 27, 2010.
• Hansen, Evan and Poulsen, Kevin. "Putting the Record Straight on the Lamo-Manning Chat Logs", Wired magazine, December 28, 2010.
• Greenwald, Glenn. "Wired's refusal to release or comment on the Manning chat logs", Salon, December 29, 2010.
• Firedoglake. "Manning/WikiLeaks timeline", published as a complete version of the released excerpts, accessed March 14, 2011; archived from the original on March 28, 2012.
• Hansen, Evan. "Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed", Wired magazine, July 13, 2011; archived from the original on March 28, 2012.

Audio/video

• Broom, Kyle. "Prevention of Injury (POI)", a short dramatization of the account given by Manning in his letter to the army (Manning, March 10, 2011); also see ImDb, accessed April 8, 2012.
• Nicks, Denver. "Private Manning Speaks", This Land, September 22, 2010 (audio).
• Smith, Martin. "The Private Life of Bradley Manning", PBS Frontline, March 7, 2011.

• "Interview Brian Manning", March 7, 2011 (transcript).
• "Interview Jordan Davis", March 7, 2011 (transcript).

• Smith, Teresa et al. "The madness of Bradley Manning?", The Guardian, May 27, 2011.

Further reading

Articles

• Khatchadourian, Raffi. "No Secrets", The New Yorker, June 7, 2010.

Books

• Assange, Julian and O'Hagan, Andrew. Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography. Canongate, 2011.
• Madar, Chase. The Passion of Bradley Manning. OR Books, 2012.
• Mitchell, Greg and Gosztola, Kevin. Truth and Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning. Sinclair Books, 2012.

Video

• Gonzales, Juan and Goodman, Amy. "Glenn Greenwald on the Assange Extradition Ruling, the Jailing of Bradley Manning ...", Democracy Now!, February 24, 2011.
• Miller, Michelle. "Private", CBS News, 26 April 2012; interview with Denver Nicks, author of Private (2012), Manning's biography.

Legal documents

• "U.S. v Bradley Manning", scribd.com, accessed April 7, 2012.