The Passion of Bradley Manning (5 page)

(03:11:07
PM
) bradass87:
i kept that in my mind for weeks… probably a month and a half… before i forwarded it to them

The “them” was WikiLeaks.

It is not clear when Bradley Manning allegedly began transmitting documents to WikiLeaks; the government in its charge sheet against the private claims it was November 2009. By then, the anti-secrecy group had already achieved celebrity in tech-libertarian and media circles by publishing the “ClimateGate” emails from a British university; the Yahoo email account of Sarah Palin; and various 9–11 text messages sent from inside the burning towers. Founded in 2006, the website offers a place for whistleblowers around the world to post important revelations, with source anonymity protected by the latest encryption technology. The site's content is backed up by mirror-sites around the world. WikiLeaks is by no means the first such site; before it came Cryptome—and it will surely not be the last.

On April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks premiered the helicopter video at the National Press Club in Washington DC, slapping the gratuitous title “Collateral Murder” on the clip. In days, millions of people around the world watched the video, and for the most part responded in horror and disgust. America's international lawyers rushed to provide the disquieting assurance that the aerial assault was in perfect conformity with the laws of armed conflict. A few members of the helicopter crew stepped forward to apologize to the families of the Iraqi dead and wounded. America still had 98,000 troops in Iraq (not counting mercenaries and other contractors), and their purpose there was questioned anew. Bradley Manning saw all of this. He became Facebook friends with the American infantryman, Ethan McCord, who at the scene of the aerial attack went back to the shot-up van to retrieve two wounded children and rushed them to a hospital. Manning felt a loop had been closed:

(02:07:41
AM
) bradass87:
event occurs in 2007, i watch video in 2009 with no context, do research, forward information to group of FOI activists, more research occurs, video is released in 2010, those involved come forward to discuss event, i witness those involved coming forward to discuss publicly, even add them as friends on FB… without them knowing who i am

(02:08:37
AM
) bradass87:
they touch my life, i touch their life, they touch my life again… full circle

The “Collateral Murder” video is only the beginning of what Manning allegedly exfiltrated to WikiLeaks. There are the Afghan War Logs, 91,731 “Significant Action” military field reports that provide a mosaic for a pacification campaign going poorly. There are the Iraq War Logs, 391,832 more SigAct field reports, another pointillist portrait of a failed campaign. And 251, 287 State Department cables, most of which are not classified, many of which are “confidential” and some six percent of which are “secret.” (Not one of the documents that Bradley Manning has allegedly disclosed is “top secret.”)

How might he have done it? In fact, sending hundreds of thousands of documents from the SCIF at FOB Hammer would have been easy. The “infosec”—information security—at FOB Hammer was not so much faulty as nonexistent. As former FOBbit Jacob Sullivan remembered:

And Manning himself in these unauthenticated chatlogs is even more candid about the wholesale absence of security at the SCIF.

(02:00:12
PM
) bradass87:
everyone just sat at their workstations… watching music videos / car chases / buildings exploding… and writing more stuff to CD/DVD… the culture fed opportunities

(02:01:44
PM
) bradass87:
hardest part is arguably internet access… uploading any sensitive data over the open internet is a bad idea… since networks are monitored for any insurgent/terrorist/militia/criminal types

(01:52:30
PM
) bradass87:
funny thing is… we transffered [sic] so much data on unmarked CDs…

(01:52:42
PM
) bradass87:
everyone did… videos… movies… music

(01:53:05
PM
) bradass87:
all out in the open

(01:53:53
PM
) bradass87:
bringing CDs too [sic] and from the networks was/is a common phenomeon

(01:54:14
PM
) [email protected]:
is that how you got the cables out?

(01:54:28
PM
) bradass87:
perhaps

(01:54:42
PM
) bradass87:
i would come in with music on a CD-RW

(01:55:21
PM
) bradass87:
labelled with something like “Lady Gaga”… erase the music… then write a compressed split file

(01:55:46
PM
) bradass87:
no-one suspected a thing

(01:55:48
PM
) bradass87:
=L kind of sad

(01:56:04
PM
) [email protected]:
and odds are, they never will

(01:56:07
PM
) bradass87:
i didnt even have to hide anything

(01:56:36
PM
) [email protected]:
from a professional perspective, i'm curious how the server they were on was insecure

(01:57:19
PM
) bradass87:
you had people working 14 hours a day… every single day… no weekends… no recreation…

(01:57:27
PM
) bradass87:
people stopped caring after 3 weeks

Career foreign service member Peter Van Buren condemned the lack of security to me. “It's lax that no ever disabled the disk drives in the SCIF computers, and the idea that anyone could
burn
a disc in there is insane, and breaks every single security rule.”

This amazing lack of “infosec” has been a major point among pundits and journalists horrified that the leaks' information was brought to light. For those who welcome the disclosures, what is more disturbing still is how it took so long for these documents to be leaked. After all, some three million Americans have a security clearance: did none of these people who came into contact with the “Collateral Murder” video see fit to release it to the public? Until Manning's alleged leaks, there apparently was no need for infosec measures, given how thoroughly those with a security clearance had internalized the government's mindset.

Back at base, Bradley Manning's career as a soldier—his only ticket to the university education he craved—was fast disintegrating. By May 5, his superiors thought he was behaving erratically; they removed the bolt from his service rifle. He was more and more intent on gender transition, which he could only commence outside the military. On May 7, Manning slugged a female superior in the face: he was demoted back to Private First Class, sent to work in the supply room—but retained his security clearance. He was soon to be discharged, for adjustment disorder (“in lieu of ‘gender identity disorder',” he'd later say), and he was very, very lonely.

Pfc. Bradley Manning reached out to a stranger.

On May 21, Bradley Manning contacted Adrian Lamo, a renowned computer hacker whose name was accidentally released in a WikiLeaks fundraising missive. Surely Lamo, a famous hacker, once convicted on felony charges for his digital mischief, would understand the greatness of Manning's alleged achievement. Besides, Lamo was bi; he has an ex who is male-to-female transgender; he has another ex who was counterintelligence in the army. Manning and Lamo flirted a little. Manning related his life story, his aspirations, his reasons for disclosing the documents. They joked about Lamo turning Manning in to the authorities.

What Manning didn't know was that two days into the conversation, Lamo in fact went to the federal authorities. And his handlers were obviously feeding him questions to ask Manning—“in all seriousness, would you shoot if MP's showed up?” On May 29, military police came to FOB Hammer to arrest Bradley Manning, who was soon taken to Kuwait for further interrogation under detention.

For turning in Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo has been cast both as a responsible, patriotic citizen and a duplicitous snitch. (He introduced himself to Manning as a journalist and a minister, free to take confessions in confidentiality. Was this a joke, or sarcasm? Did Manning ever believe it?) Famous as Lamo is inside hacking circles, to those outside that sphere he simply resembles other police informants: a convicted felon with a history of mental illness. (Lamo was involuntarily committed in California just a few weeks before his chats with Manning.) Lamo has defended his decision to turn in Manning with a mix of faux-worldly cynicism and high-minded patriotism, neither quite ringing true. Adrian Lamo had much to lose from being implicated in another felony, especially the greatest security breach in United States history. He most likely turned in his new and unsolicited acquaintance to protect himself from a prison sentence. How many of us, in Lamo's situation, would do otherwise?

The lengthy chatlogs between Lamo and Manning are the primary document of Manning's life, his alleged leaks and motives. But for the amazing deeds they recount, the chatlogs read like the typical diary of an intelligent, intense, earnest twenty-two-year-old. The intel analyst's intent is conscious, coherent, historically informed and above all it is
political
. These segments of the chatlogs are worth quoting at length, as they have for the most part been studiously ignored by a mass media determined not to comprehend Bradley Manning's motives.

(12:15:11
PM
) bradass87:
hypothetical question: if you had free reign 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?

(12:16:38
PM
) bradass87:
or Guantanamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC for that matter…

(12:17:47
PM
) bradass87:
things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people

(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?

[…]

(12:52:33
PM
) bradass87:
Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and finds an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public… =L

(12:53:41
PM
) bradass87:
s/Hilary/Hillary

(12:54:47
PM
) [email protected]:
What sort of content?

[…]

(12:59:41
PM
) bradass87:
uhm… crazy, almost criminal political backdealings… the non-PR-versions of world events and crises… uhm… all kinds of stuff like everything from the buildup to the Iraq War during Powell, to what the actual content of “aid packages” is: for instance, PR that the US is sending aid to pakistan includes funding for water/food/ clothing… that much is true, it includes that, but the other 85% of it is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing instead of americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis