Chelsea Manning

This article is about the life of Bradley Manning. For the trial, see United States v. Bradley Manning.

Bradley Manning

Manning in April 2012
Born	(1987-12-17) December 17, 1987 Crescent, Oklahoma, U.S.
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	Since 2007
Rank	Private First Class
Unit	2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division
Military awards	National Defense Service Medal Iraq Campaign Medal Global War on Terrorism Service Medal Army Service Ribbon Overseas Service Ribbon
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 website WikiLeaks. He was ultimately charged with 22 offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source and aiding the enemy.

Assigned to an army unit based near Baghdad, Manning had access to databases 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 downloaded material from these databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 250,000 United States diplomatic cables; and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. Much of it was published by WikiLeaks or its media partners between April and November 2010.

Starting in July 2010 Manning was held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, under Prevention of Injury status, which entailed de facto solitary confinement and other restrictions that caused international concern. In April 2011 he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he could interact with other detainees. He pleaded guilty in February 2013 to 10 of the 22 charges, which could carry a sentence of up to 20 years. The trial on the remaining charges, including aiding the enemy, began on June 3, 2013.

Reaction to his arrest was mixed. Denver Nicks, one of Manning's biographers, writes that the leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, was widely seen as a catalyst for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, and that Manning was viewed as both a 21st-century Tiananmen Square Tank Man and an embittered traitor. Several commentators focused on why an apparently very unhappy Army private had access to classified material, and why security measures did not prevent his unauthorized downloading.

Background

Early life

Manning was born to Susan Fox, originally from Wales, and her American husband, Brian Manning, in Crescent, Oklahoma. 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 outside Crescent, with an above-ground swimming pool and five acres of land where they kept pigs and chickens.

Manning's father took a job as an IT manager for a rental car agency, which meant he had to travel. His mother suffered from poor health – she developed a drinking problem, was living several miles out of town, unable to drive – and as result Manning was largely left to fend for himself. His father would stock up on food before his trips, and leave pre-signed checks for the children to pay the bills. A neighbor told The New York Times that whenever the school went on field trips, she would give her son extra food or money so he could make sure Manning had something to eat.

Manning was small for his age – as an adult, he reached 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and weighed 105 lb (47.6 kg) – and excelled at the saxophone, science, and computers. 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.

Parents' divorce, move to Wales

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

Those who knew Manning told Denver Nicks, author of Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History (2012), that he always had a mind of his own; he was openly opposed to religion, for example, and remained silent during the part of the Pledge of Allegiance that refers to God. When he was 13 he began to question his sexual orientation, and around this time his parents divorced. 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 reacted badly when the second wife's son by a previous relationship changed his surname to Manning. When he found out about it, he started taking running jumps at the walls, and told his mother: "I'm nobody now."

In November 2001 Manning and his mother left the United States and moved 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 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 because of being considered "effeminate." 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.

Return to the United States

Manning feared that his mother was becoming too ill to cope with him, so he returned to the United States in 2005, when he was 17. 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 told The Washington Post that on a few occasions Manning had "just locked up," and would simply sit and stare, and in the end communication became too difficult. The boss 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 an openly gay man. His relationship with his father was apparently good, but there were problems between Manning and his stepmother. In March 2006 he 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 drove to Tulsa in a pick-up truck his father had given him, at first sleeping in it, then moving in with a friend from school. The two of them got jobs at Incredible Pizza in April, then Manning spent some time in Chicago before he ran out of money and again had nowhere to stay. His mother arranged for him to live with his father's sister, Debra, a lawyer in Potomac, Maryland. Nicks writes that the 15 months Manning spent with his aunt were among the most stable of his life. He had a boyfriend, took several low-paid jobs, and spent a semester studying history and English at Montgomery College, though he left after failing an exam.

Enlistment in the U.S. Army

Manning went through basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, but six weeks after enlisting was sent to the discharge unit. He was allegedly being bullied, and in the opinion of another soldier 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 started basic training again in January 2008. After graduating in April, he moved to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he trained as an intelligence analyst, receiving a TS/SCI security clearance (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information). According to Nicks, this security clearance, combined with the digitization of classified information and the government's policy of sharing it widely, gave Manning access to an unprecedented amount of material. Nicks writes that he was reprimanded while at Fort Huachuca for posting three video messages to friends on YouTube, in which he described the inside of the "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility" (SCIF) where he worked.

Move to Fort Drum

Manning in September 2009

In August 2008, Manning 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 300 miles 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, known as "Builds," and met its founder, David House, the 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]."

Denver 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 gay community, introducing him to lobbyists, activists, and White House aides. Back at Fort Drum, he continued to display emotional problems and, by August 2009, had been referred to an Army mental-health counselor. A friend told Nicks that Manning could be emotionally fraught, describing an evening they had watched two movies together – The Last King of Scotland and Dancer in the Dark – after which Manning cried for hours. By September 2009, his relationship with Watkins was in trouble, and although they reconciled for a short time, it was effectively over.

Deployment to Iraq, discussion with counselor

After four weeks at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Fort Polk, Louisiana, he was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, arriving in October 2009. From his workstation there, he had access to SIPRNet (the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) and JWICS (the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System). Two of his superiors had discussed not taking him to Iraq – it was felt he was "a risk to himself and possibly others," according to a statement later issued by the army – but again the shortage of intelligence analysts held sway.

The 10th Mountain Division's shoulder sleeve insignia

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, shortly after it posted 570,000 pager messages from the 9/11 attacks, which it released on November 25. Also in November, Manning wrote to a gender counselor in the United States, said he felt female, and discussed having sex reassignment surgery. The counselor told Steve Fishman of New York Magazine that it was clear Manning was in crisis, partly because of his gender concerns, but also because he was opposed to the kind of war in which he found himself involved.

He was by all accounts unhappy and isolated. Because of the army's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy (known as DADT, which was repealed in September 2011), he was not allowed to be openly gay, though he apparently made no secret of it; his friends said he kept a fairy wand on his desk. When he told his roommate he was gay, the roommate responded by suggesting they not speak to each other. His working conditions – 14–15 hour night shifts in a dimly lit secure room – did not help his emotional well being. On December 20, 2009, after being told he would lose his one day off a week for being persistently late, he overturned a table in a conference room and damaging a computer that was sitting on it before his arms were pinned behind his back. Several witnesses to the incident believed his access to sensitive material ought to have been withdrawn at that point. The following month, he began posting on Facebook that he felt alone and hopeless.

Army investigators told a pre-trial hearing (see below) that they believed Manning downloaded the Iraq and Afghan war logs around this time, in January 2010. WikiLeaks tweeted on January 8 that year that they had obtained "encrypted videos of US bomb strikes on civilians," and linked to a story about the May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan. Manning put the files on a digital storage card for his camera and took it home with him on a leave in early 2010. During the same month, Manning 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. It was during this visit that Manning first lived for a few days as a woman, dressing in women's clothes, wearing a wig and going out. After his arrest, his 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.

Loss of rank and recommended discharge

Manning told Lamo he passed the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral murder") video to WikiLeaks shortly after this incident, in February 2010. In April, just as WikiLeaks published the video, Manning sent an e-mail to his master sergeant, Paul Adkins, saying he was suffering from gender dysphoria and attaching a photograph of himself dressed as a woman. Captain 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 Manning had been calling himself Breanna. Manning told Lamo that his commander had found out about the gender issue before his arrest, after looking at his medical files at the beginning of May. He said he had set up Twitter and YouTube accounts in Breanna's name to give her a digital presence, writing in the Lamo 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 April 30, he posted on Facebook that he was utterly lost, and over the next few days that "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," that he was "beyond frustrated," and "livid" after being "lectured by ex-boyfriend despite months of relationship ambiguity ..." 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 cut the words "I want" into a vinyl chair. A few hours later he had an altercation with a female intelligence analyst, Specialist Jihrleah Showman, during which he punched her in the face. The brigade psychiatrist recommended a discharge, referring to an "occupational problem and adjustment disorder." 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 three days before his arrest on May 27.

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; he said he had been involved in some "very high-profile events, albeit as a nameless individual thus far." On May 19, according to army investigators, he e-mailed Eric Schmiedl, a mathematician he had met in Boston, and told him he had been the source of the "Collateral Murder" video. Two days later, he began the series of chats with Adrian Lamo that led to his arrest.

Disclosure of classified material

WikiLeaks

Further information: 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 restricted or legally threatened material submitted by whistleblowers. It was Julian Assange – an Australian Internet activist and journalist, and the de facto editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks – who had the idea of creating what Ben Laurie called an "open-source, democratic intelligence agency." The open-editing aspect was soon abandoned, but the site remained open for anonymous submissions.

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. 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. Manning told Lamo 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. WikiLeaks did not identify Manning as their source. Army investigators told a pre-trial hearing that they had found 14–15 pages of chats between Manning and someone they believed to be Assange, but Nicks writes that no decisive evidence was found of Assange offering Manning any direction.

Material obtained by WikiLeaks

Reykjavik13

Further information: Information published by WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks posted the first of the material allegedly from Manning on February 18, 2010, 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, WikiLeaks 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.

Baghdad airstrike

Further information: July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike

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

Manning told Lamo that he gave WikiLeaks the video of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike after finding it in a Judge Advocate's directory. WikiLeaks named it "Collateral Murder," and Assange released it during a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 2010. The video showed an American helicopter firing on a group of men in Baghdad. One of the men was a journalist, and two other men were Reuters employees carrying cameras that the pilots mistook for an anti-tank grenade launcher (RPG-7). The helicopter also fired on a van that stopped to help the injured members of the first group; two children in the van were wounded and their father killed. The Washington Post wrote that it was this video, viewed by millions, that put WikiLeaks on the map. According to Nicks, Manning e-mailed a superior officer after the video aired and tried to persuade her that it was the same version as the one stored on SIPRnet. Nicks writes that it seemed as though Manning wanted to be caught.

Afghan War logs, Iraq War logs

Further information: Afghan War documents leak and Iraq War documents leak

On July 25, WikiLeaks and three media partners – The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel – began publishing the 91,731 documents that became known as the Afghan War logs. This was followed on October 22 with 391,832 classified military reports covering the period January 2004 to December 2009 that became known as the Iraq War logs. Nicks writes that the publication of the former was a watershed moment, the "beginning of the information age exploding upon itself."

Diplomatic cables, Guantanamo Bay files

Further information: United States diplomatic cables leak and Guantanamo Bay files leak

Manning told Lamo he was also responsible for the "Cablegate" leak of 251,287 State Department cables, written by 271 American embassies and consulates in 180 countries, dated December 1966 to February 2010. The cables were passed by Assange to his three media partners, plus El País and others, and published in stages from November 28, 2010, with the names of sources removed. WikiLeaks said it was the largest set of confidential documents ever released into the public domain. The rest of the cables 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 online; Nicks writes that one Ethiopian journalist had to leave his country and the U.S. government said it had to relocate several sources. Manning is also thought to have been the source of the Guantanamo Bay files leak, originally obtained by WikiLeaks in 2010, and published by The New York Times over a year later on April 24, 2011.

Granai airstrike

Further information: Granai airstrike

According to Manning's written memo to the court, he also provided Wikileaks with a classified video of the Granai airstrike. The airstrike occurred on May 4, 2009, in the village of Granai, Afghanistan, killing 86–147 Afghan civilians. In March 2013, Julian Assange said that Wikileaks had received the video from Manning and described the airstrike as a "war crime," but said it was lost when Daniel Domscheit Berg left the organization.

Manning and Adrian Lamo

First contact

Adrian Lamo (left) and Wired's Kevin Poulsen (right) in 2001. The man in the middle, Kevin Mitnick, had no involvement in the Manning case.

On May 20, 2010, Manning 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 that day by Kevin Poulsen in Wired magazine; the story said he had been involuntarily hospitalized and diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. 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 that Lamo had gained unauthorized access to its network; Poulsen then wrote the story up for SecurityFocus. Lamo would hack into a system, tell the organization, then offer to fix their security, often using Poulsen as a go-between.

Lamo said Manning sent him several encrypted e-mails on May 20. He said he was unable to decrypt them but replied anyway and invited the e-mailer to chat on AOL IM. Lamo said he later turned the e-mails over to the FBI without having read them.

Chats

In a series of chats between May 21 and 25, Manning – using the handle "bradass87" – told Lamo that he had leaked classified material. He introduced himself as an army intelligence analyst, and within 17 minutes, without waiting for a reply, alluded to 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. He said: "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 talked 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, version of Wikipedia's article on WikiLeaks, which described 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 referred to the leak of the Baghdad airstrike ("Collateral Murder") video. Manning said he felt isolated and fragile, and was reaching out to someone he hoped might understand.

May 22, 2010:

(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 that the messages came from an NSA database, and that seeing them had made him feel comfortable about stepping forward. Lamo asked what kind of material Manning was dealing with; Manning replied: "uhm ... crazy, almost criminal political backdealings ... the non-PR-versions of world events and crises ..." Although he said he dealt with Assange directly, Manning also said Assange had adopted a deliberate policy of knowing very little about him, telling Manning: "lie to me."

May 22, 2010:

(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 :’(

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."

Manning 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 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 the material onto music CD-RWs, erased the music and replaced 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, 2010:

(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 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 (02:25:15 PM) bradass87: Information should be free

Lamo's approach to FBI, publication of chat logs

Lamo first discussed the chat with Chet Uber of the volunteer group, Project Vigilant, which researches cyber crime, and a friend who had worked in military intelligence. Both men advised Lamo to go to the FBI, and they reported what he had told them to the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command. Lamo contacted the FBI shortly after the first chat on May 21; he said he believed Manning was endangering lives. He was largely ostracized by the hacker community afterwards. Nicks argues, on the other hand, that it was thanks to Lamo that the government had months to ameliorate any harm caused by the release of the diplomatic cables.

Lamo met with FBI and Army investigators on May 25 in California, where he showed them the chat logs. On or around that date he also passed the story to Kevin Poulsen of Wired, and on May 27 gave him the chat logs and Manning's name under embargo. He 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. Wired published around 25 percent of the chat logs on June 6 and 10, and the full logs in July 2011, after the personal material about Manning had appeared elsewhere.

Legal proceedings

Arrest and charges

Further information: List of charges against Bradley Manning

Manning was arrested on May 27, 2010, and transferred four days later to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. He was charged with several offences in July 2010, replaced by 22 charges in March 2011, including violations of Articles 92 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and of the Espionage Act. The most serious charge is "aiding the enemy," a capital offense. Prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty, but if convicted he would face life imprisonment.

Detention

While in Kuwait he was placed on suicide watch after his behavior caused concern. He was moved from Kuwait to the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, on July 29, 2010, and classified as a maximum custody detainee, with Prevention of Injury (POI) status. POI status is one stop short of suicide watch, entailing checks by guards every five minutes. His lawyer, David Coombs, a 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. Manning complained that he regarded it as pre-trial punishment.

His cell was 6 × 12 ft with no window, containing a bed, toilet, and sink. 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, 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. Because he was in pre-trial detention, he received full pay and benefits.

On January 18, 2011, the jail classified him as a suicide risk after an altercation with the guards. Manning said the guards began issuing conflicting commands, such as "turn left, don't turn left," and upbraiding him for responding to commands with "yes" instead of "aye." 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 watch was lifted on January 21 after a complaint from his lawyer, and the brig commander who ordered it was replaced. On March 2, 2011, he was told that his request that his POI status be removed had been denied. His lawyer said Manning joked to the guards that, if he wanted to harm himself, he could do so with his underwear or his flip-flops. The comment resulted in him having his clothes removed at night, and he had to present himself naked one morning for inspection.

The detention conditions prompted national and international concern. Juan E. Mendez, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, published a report saying the detention conditions had been "cruel, inhuman and degrading." In January 2011, Amnesty asked the British government to intervene because of Manning's status as a British citizen by descent, though Manning's lawyer said he did not regard himself as a British citizen. The controversy claimed a casualty in March that year when State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley criticized Manning's treatment and resigned two days later. In early April, 295 academics (most of them American legal scholars) signed a letter arguing that the treatment was a violation of the United States Constitution. On April 20, the Pentagon transferred Manning to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, a new medium-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was placed in an 80-square-foot cell with a window and a normal mattress, able to mix with other pre-trial detainees and keep personal objects in his cell.

Evidence presented at Article 32 hearing

In April 2011, a panel of experts ruled that Manning was fit to stand trial. An Article 32 hearing, presided over by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, was convened on December 16, 2011, at Fort Meade, Maryland; the hearing resulted in Almanza recommending that Manning be referred to a general court-martial. He was arraigned on February 23, 2012, and declined to enter a plea.

During the Article 32 hearing, the prosecution, led by Captain Ashden Fein, presented 300,000 pages of documents in evidence, including chat logs and classified material. The court heard from two army investigators, Special Agent David Shaver, head of the digital forensics and research branch of the army's Computer Crime Investigative Unit (CCIU), and Mark Johnson, a digital forensics contractor from ManTech International, who works for the CCIU. They testified that they had found 100,000 State Department cables on a workplace computer Manning had used between November 2009 and May 2010; 400,000 military reports from Iraq and 91,000 from Afghanistan on an SD card found in his basement room in his aunt's home in Potomac, Maryland; and 10,000 cables on his personal MacBook Pro and storage devices that they said had not been passed to WikiLeaks because a file was corrupted. They also recovered 14–15 pages of encrypted chats, in unallocated space on Manning's MacBook hard drive, between Manning and someone believed to be Julian Assange. Two of the chat handles, which used the Berlin Chaos Computer Club's domain (ccc.de), were associated with the names Julian Assange and Nathaniel Frank.

Johnson said he found SSH logs on the MacBook that showed an SFTP connection, from an IP address that resolved to Manning's aunt's home, to a Swedish IP address with links to WikiLeaks. There was also a text file named "Readme" attached to the logs, a note apparently written by Manning to Assange, which called the Iraq and Afghan War logs "possibly one of the most significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare." The investigators testified they had also recovered an exchange from May 2010 between Manning and Eric Schmiedl, a Boston mathematician, in which Manning said he was the source of the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral Murder") video. Johnson said there had been two attempts to delete material from the MacBook. The operating system was re-installed in January 2010, and on or around January 31, 2010, an attempt was made to erase the hard drive by doing a "zero-fill," which involves overwriting material with zeroes. The material was overwritten only once, which meant it could be retrieved.

Manning's lawyers argued that the government had overstated the harm the release of the documents had caused, and had overcharged Manning to force him to give evidence against Assange. The defense also raised the issue of his gender identity disorder, whether it had affected his judgment, and whether the "don't ask, don't tell" policy had made it difficult for Manning to serve in the army.

Guilty plea on 10 charges

Further information: United States v. Bradley Manning

In December 2012 the judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, accepted terms that would allow Manning to plead guilty to lesser charges in exchange for a maximum sentence of 16 years. In January 2013 she ruled that any sentence should be reduced by 112 days because of his treatment at Quantico, but that the dismissal of charges was not appropriate. On February 28, 2013, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges, and thus faces a possible 20 year imprisonment. Reading for over an hour from a 35-page statement, he said he had leaked the cables "to show the true cost of war." Prosecutors will pursue a court-martial on the remaining charges, including aiding the enemy. The trial began on June 3, 2013.

Reactions to disclosure

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

Frankfurt, Germany, January 2012

The publication of the leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, attracted in-depth coverage across the globe, with several governments blocking websites that contained embarrassing details. 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. ... I've never known a story that created such mayhem that wasn't an event like a war or a terrorist attack."

Denver Nicks wrote that Manning's name "appended like a slogan to wholesale denunciations and exultations alike." 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. Glenn Greenwald argued that Manning was the most important whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

Manning and WikiLeaks were credited as catalysts for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, when waves of protesters rose up against 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, one of the cables – published around 10 days earlier – 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.

A Washington Post editorial asked why an apparently unstable Army private had been able to access and transfer sensitive material in the first place. According to Nicks, Manning's sexuality came into play too. "Don't ask, don't tell" was repealed not long after his arrest, with Manning illustrating for the far right that gays were unfit for military service, while the mainstream media presented him as a gay soldier driven mad by bullying.

Bradley Manning’s pending court martial for disclosure of classified information has become a cause célèbre. In June 2013, a video showing support of Manning by numerous celebrities and prominent journalists was released [78][79] , and numerous online petitions calling for Manning’s pardon have been posted on Avaaz.org , Change.org , and We the People the White House website.

See also

• Classified information in the United States
• Freedom of Information
• Incarceration in the United States
• Information security
• Information sensitivity
• Journalism sourcing
• McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950
• Reception of WikiLeaks

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.
• Zetter, Kim. "Jolt in WikiLeaks Case: Feds Found Manning-Assange Chat Logs on Laptop", Wired, December 19, 2011.

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. Retrieved 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

• Smith, Martin. "The Private Life of Bradley Manning", PBS Frontline, March 7, 2011.

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

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

Further reading

External links

• Chelsea Manning at IMDb
• Bradley Manning Support Network

Articles

• Khatchadourian, Raffi. "No Secrets", The New Yorker, June 7, 2010.
• The Guardian. "Afghanistan: The War Logs". Retrieved May 9, 2012.
• The Guardian. "Iraq: The War Logs". Retrieved May 9, 2012.
• The New York Times. "The War Logs. Retrieved May 9, 2012.
• Wired. "Bradley Manning". Retrieved May 8, 2012.

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.
• Price, Tim. The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012 (play).

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. Retrieved April 8, 2012.
• Democracy Now. Bradley Manning video archive, 2011–present.
• 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, April 26, 2012, interview with Denver Nicks, author of Private (2012), Manning's biography.
• Nicks, Denver. "Private Manning Speaks", This Land, September 22, 2010.
• Price, Tim and McGrath, John. "The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning", National Theatre Wales, April 12–28, 2012.

Legal documents

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