{"id":13326,"date":"2011-07-11T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=13326"},"modified":"2011-07-05T22:05:11","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T21:05:11","slug":"bradley-manning%e2%80%99s-army-of-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/07\/bradley-manning%e2%80%99s-army-of-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Bradley Manning\u2019s Army of One"},"content":{"rendered":"

How a lonely, five-foot-two, gender-questioning soldier became a WikiLeaks hero, a traitor to the U.S., and one of the most unusual revolutionaries in American history.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the night of February 21, 2009, a year before Army private Bradley E. Manning allegedly leaked the largest cache of classified information in American history, he sat at a computer in his barracks at Fort Drum in upstate New York. It was a Saturday in midwinter, and the barracks were nearly empty. He pulled a chair up to the computer in his cinder-block room, briefly debated between a pizza and a sandwich from Domino\u2019s, went with the sandwich, and passed over into his \u201cdigital existence,\u201d as he thought of it. He logged on to AOL\u2019s instant-messenger service under the handle Bradass87, and off he went to transform himself. On the web, he could be whomever he chose.<\/p>\n

It was 8:27 p.m. at Fort Drum when he popped up on the computer screen of ZJ Antolak.<\/p>\n

\u201chi,\u201d he began.<\/p>\n

\u201chi,\u201d ZJ responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know me, i apologize, i got this [address] from your youtube channel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo problem, there\u2019s a reason I put it on there :P,\u201d wrote ZJ, adding an emoticon to indicate her playful tone\u2014or his, depending on your frame of reference. ZJ was Zachary Antolak, a 19-year-old gay activist and web designer. On YouTube, he went by the name Zinnia Jones. On the Internet, he was a she who called herself Queen of the Atheists, wearing her auburn hair below her shoulders and painting her lips a bold red.<\/p>\n

Manning was an atheist himself\u2014\u201cI\u2019m godless,\u201d he told an acquaintance. But even more, he identified with ZJ\u2019s self-\u00adinvented life. \u201cI saw your more personal stuff and figured you were on the same page \u2026 as me,\u201d Manning wrote. \u201cYou \u00adremind me of \u2026 well \u2026 me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among fellow soldiers, Manning had to conceal the basic facts of his sexual orientation. On the web, he was proudly out and joined a \u201cRepeal Don\u2019t Ask Don\u2019t Tell\u201d group. He\u2019d even begun to explore switching his gender, chatting with a counselor about the steps a person takes to transition from male to female.<\/p>\n

On the web, being one thing didn\u2019t mean you couldn\u2019t be another. And for all of his boundary-crossing and self-\u00adexploration online, he was, at first, a committed soldier. In fact, he was gung ho, eager to put his technical expertise to use for the cause\u2014he had the skills of a \u00adhacker, though at that point, he didn\u2019t yet have the ideology. The Army had trained him at Fort Huachuca as an intelligence analyst. \u201cWith my current position,\u201d he wrote to ZJ with a new graduate\u2019s earnestness, \u201ci can apply what i learn to provide more information to my officers and commanders, and hopefully save lives \u2026 i feel a great responsibility and duty to people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not that Manning\u2019s conception of patriotic duty would have met with the approval of his superiors. His methods were hardly standard operating procedure. \u201cIn public eye, US intel services are mysterious; in the real world, intelligence is a goofy, clunky, and annoying process,\u201d he wrote to ZJ. \u201cdrives me NUTS \u2026 luckily i use my DC contacts from Starbucks and get the word out to those higher up in the chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

ZJ played along with Manning\u2019s espionage narrative. \u201cI can imagine two guys in sunglasses meeting at a starbucks to quickly hand over an envelope \u2026 just to get some minor bug repaired,\u201d she wrote, according to logs provided to New York <\/em>Magazine.<\/p>\n

Manning, though, had followed a different script. \u201cLol … glamorous, but no \u2026 it\u2019s more like i knew this lt colonel from the DIA\u201d\u2014Defense Intelligence Agency\u2014\u201cat starbucks before i was in the military \u2026 slept with him once or twice, then i get in the military, i notice the problems, call him and say, hey, find someone who can fix this.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the gravityless world of the web, Manning could be all he wanted to be\u2014gay, patriotic, and powerful, too. \u201cI have long arms and a wide footprint,\u201d he wrote from his deserted barracks.<\/p>\n

When the computer was turned off and his Army comrades returned, his superpowers disappeared. The members of his platoon didn\u2019t consider Manning a warrior, not like them. He\u2019s five foot two and 105 pounds, as \u201ctiny as a child,\u201d one former soldier said. Military policy dictated that he hide his sexual orientation, but it probably wasn\u2019t a secret to his platoon. \u201cIt took them a while, but they started figuring me out, making fun of me, mocking me, harassing me,\u201d he wrote to ZJ, \u201cheating up with one or two physical attacks.\u201d Though, he assured ZJ, \u201cI fended [it] off just fine.<\/p>\n

Over time, the pressures took a toll. At Fort Drum, Manning was losing control, lashing out at his tormentors. He had trouble with roommates, screamed at superior officers, his fists in balls. His master sergeant wasn\u2019t sure he was mentally fit to deploy to Iraq, fearing he could do harm to himself or others. By August 2009, the month of Manning\u2019s last chats with ZJ, he\u2019d been referred to an Army mental-health counselor. Even online, his bravado slipped away. On August 7, 2009, almost six months after he first reached out to ZJ, he popped up on her screen. It was 11:30 p.m., a Friday night at Fort Drum. \u201ci don\u2019t mean to sound over\u00addramatic, but im quite lonely,\u201d he told her.<\/p>\n

Aww,\u201d ZJ responded sympathetically.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m okay,\u201d he said bravely.<\/p>\n

Two months later, Manning shipped out to Iraq with a top security clearance, his multiple identities held close inside him. There was abundant evidence that Manning was having trouble keeping it together psychologically, but the Army brushed aside doubts\u2014it desperately needed intel analysts with Manning\u2019s computer skills. After all, the Army was wired; in fact, the whole government had never been more networked, a development that had been pushed partly by the desire to improve information-sharing and shorten reaction time after 9\/11. Much of the war was fought remotely; triggers were pulled by people in Langley, Virginia, or outside Las Vegas or field offices near Baghdad, where Manning was eventually posted. Military engagement had turned into a video game\u2014but with real bullets. Manning was built for this sort of combat. In the modern Army, Manning\u2019s skill set made him a highly useful soldier, and a dangerous one.<\/p>\n

In Iraq, the torments Manning suffered at the hands of his fellow soldiers, his loneliness and concern over his gender, and the hours and hours he would spend in the airless intel office watching the brutal inner workings of the war bore down on him. He was unmoored in a way he hadn\u2019t been before: angrier, less afraid, more certain of what was good and what was evil, and more compelled to act on this dawning righteousness. It was while in Iraq that Manning came across WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange\u2014a charismatic authority figure who, far from rejecting him, as had so many others, took a passionate interest in him and what he had to contribute. Manning had an awakening\u2014and he became, says the U.S. govern\u00adment, a traitor.<\/p>\n

It was Bradley Manning\u2019s father who pushed him to join the military. The afternoon I reached Brian Manning, he was at home in Oklahoma City, in a room in his ranch house that Bradley had briefly used as a bedroom. He\u2019s out of work, his job at Hertz outsourced after 23 years. He\u2019s in the midst of a second divorce, though on advice of counsel he\u2019d refused to move out. Brian wanted to tell me about Bradley, though it was quickly clear his son was a mystery to him, and one he\u2019d never been particularly interested in penetrating. Still, he wanted me to know that he\u2019d tried to save his son, as a father would.<\/p>\n

Physically, Bradley bears a certain resemblance to his father\u2014both are \u201cpetit<\/em>,\u201d as Brian put it\u2014but in other ways they couldn\u2019t have been more different. Growing up, Brian was a \u201cparty animal.\u201d He was raised in Chicago and left home when he was 17, commencing an epic sequence of benders that ended one Monday morning in 1974, when, on the heels of another drunken weekend, a 19-year-old Brian Manning found himself at a Navy recruiting office. The Navy trained him as an intel analyst, gave him secret clearance, and shipped him to Wales, where he married the first girl he met, a friendly, easygoing, semi-literate Welsh woman two years his senior.<\/p>\n

After five years, Brian quit the service. He eventually took his wife and 6-year-old daughter to a dusty stretch of Oklahoma four miles from Crescent, a tiny conservative community with an Evangelical bent. He had five acres, pigs, chickens, and a big garden, and at first he and his wife enjoyed living like farmers. But then Brian\u2019s priorities took another turn. He\u2019d started a career in IT and was determined to climb a few rungs up the corporate ladder. By the early nineties, Brian was traveling frequently overseas for Hertz, leaving his family behind. \u201cFor me, it was a good career move,\u201d he said<\/p>\n

For Bradley, who was born in 1987, eleven years after his sister, his father sometimes seemed like a stranger. \u201cOne time, I came home after six weeks away and Bradley [then 3 or 4] didn\u2019t recognize me,\u201d Brian said. Bradley excelled at school, an A student and a math and science whiz who won the school\u2019s science fair three years running. He did make a few friends among the smarter crowd, though in his father\u2019s mind, Bradley was a loner who refused to make an effort, which perplexed his sociable father. \u201cHe\u2019d get off the school bus, and he\u2019d either go upstairs \u2026 or be downstairs on the computer,\u201d he explained. \u201cBasically, to put it in a nutshell, Bradley never showed any interest in anything outside [the house].\u201d By the late nineties, Brian had essentially moved overseas for his job. \u201cI\u2019d call home every day and talk for a few minutes with my wife, but I don\u2019t think I ever talked to Bradley, because usually he was busy on the computer doing something.<\/p>\n

Bradley\u2019s mother tried to compensate for his absent father. She adored her son. \u201cShe wanted a boy so bad,\u201d Brian said. \u201cShe doted on him terribly. You know, over here we\u2019d say, \u2018Spoil him rotten.\u2019\u2005\u201d But she could barely cope with day-to-day life, let alone a family\u2019s needs. She didn\u2019t drive and didn\u2019t write well enough to make out a check. She soon slid into alcoholism, starting early in the day, and couldn\u2019t always remember to give Bradley money for school trips.<\/p>\n

Susan Manning divorced her husband in 2000, the year Bradley turned 13, and the next year, she took him to Wales, where she has a large family. (Bradley\u2019s sister, then 24, stayed behind.) There, Bradley became the man of the house; on financial matters, his mother said, \u201cAsk Bradley.\u201d Bradley made some friends and showed some intellectual talent, even taking second place in a national math contest, as he boasted to ZJ. But he didn\u2019t fit in. Students would be mean to him, abandoning him once on a camping trip, and teachers reminded him he was \u201ca Yank.\u201d \u201ci hadn\u2019t really assimilated,\u201d he told ZJ. For Bradley, loneliness would always hover nearby; in Wales, it closed in on him. He imagined his sickly mother getting even sicker. Then he\u2019d be completely alone. \u201cat 17 y\/o in desperation i called my father,\u201d Bradley told ZJ.<\/p>\n

His son\u2019s call confused Brian, who\u2019d all but written Bradley out of his life. They\u2019d barely spoken in four years\u2014except when the alimony check was late. Then his mother put Bradley on the phone to demand the money. And Brian had new loyalties. He was remarried, to a former co-worker, and his new wife had brought along her child, just a year younger than Bradley.<\/p>\n

But Brian couldn\u2019t turn Bradley down. \u201cHe\u2019s my son,\u201d Brian said, and that bond meant something to him. Perhaps there was a chance to make up for lost time. By then he\u2019d moved to a ranch house in Oklahoma City\u2014the homesteading experiment had ended, as had the European postings. In 2005, Bradley moved in, and for several months, everyone coexisted peacefully. Bradley landed a great job as a developer for Oklahoma City\u2013based Zoto.com, which once hoped to compete with Flickr. The job earned him not only a paycheck but also his father\u2019s respect. Brian said, \u201cI took him for the interview, and \u2026he comes out with the president, who told me, \u2018Sir, you\u2019ve got an extremely intelligent son here. I\u2019m going to hire him on the spot.\u2019 I felt really good about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bradley loved the job at first, and two years later, he boasted to ZJ, \u201cthey\u2019re still using designs I developed.\u201d He told ZJ he was let go after about four months over manpower issues, though the press reported his erratic behavior was a contributing factor\u2014reportedly, at times he just stared into space.<\/p>\n

With Bradley out of work, life at home deteriorated. He was sullen and depressed\u2014the family doctor prescribed Lexapro. Soon his father\u2019s long-simmering resentments surfaced. As Brian saw it, \u201cHaving \u2026 complete power over his mother, Bradley became very assertive. And he comes back over here and he finds out he\u2019s no longer the head bull. He didn\u2019t like that at all.\u201d Bradley\u2019s stepmother was busy with her own son, who also made demands on Brian\u2019s attentions, which tormented Bradley. To her, Bradley was a freeloader, and his father backed her. \u201cWhen he lost his job, he just felt like we should just take care of him,\u201d said Brian. \u201cThat didn\u2019t go across very well.\u201d Bradley was by then living openly as a gay man. Brian accepted it, he said, but his wife thought he was faking, playing gay to get attention. Bradley \u00adresponded by throwing it in her face. He sometimes applied eye makeup before going out to a gay club and even brought a boyfriend home to spend the night.<\/p>\n

On March 29, 2006, tensions boiled over. His stepmother said something about him getting a job. In anger, Bradley grabbed a butcher\u2019s knife and threatened her. His father, who was recovering from prostate surgery at the time, tried to get involved but slipped and fell. Bradley\u2019s stepmother called the police. \u201cGet away from him,\u201d she can be heard yelling at Bradley on a 911 call, though in the background, Bradley seemed calm. \u201cAre you okay, Dad?\u201d he asked plaintively.<\/p>\n

His stepmother wanted him out, and the police escorted Bradley from his father\u2019s home. The next day, he was an 18-year-old on his own, driving the country in a vehicle his father had given him. \u201cLived in a pickup truck, sleeping in the ohare parking lot, commuting downtown during the day \u2026 LONG story,\u201d he wrote to ZJ, who lives outside Chicago. He worked at a bunch of dead-end jobs: a pizza store, a guitar center, an Abercrombie & Fitch, and a Starbucks in the D.C. area, where he\u2019d moved in with his father\u2019s sister, \u00adDebra Manning. She wanted to help him along in the world. He was no bother. \u201cHe was not used to having anyone do anything for him,\u201d said his aunt. \u201cHe didn\u2019t ask for anything,\u201d mostly keeping to himself, listening to music or surfing the web. Sometimes he\u2019d break out of his shell, and then words came quickly. \u201cHe\u2019s high-strung, talks fast, talks at people, and he\u2019s impatient with people who don\u2019t pick up quickly,\u201d his aunt said with affection. And he was a know-it-all. She laughed, adding, \u201cHe knows what\u2019s best for everybody.\u201d Bradley liked playing the authority, which made admitting failure difficult. He made a halfhearted stab at a local college but quit after failing a final. \u201cHe was used to everything coming easily and seemed shocked that he didn\u2019t know every\u00adthing,\u201d said his aunt. To ZJ, however, he related a more flattering version. \u201ci spent a semester at montgomery college in maryland \u2026 shuffling 2 and 1\/2 jobs and covering old topics, and still not being able to afford it \u2026 it didnt pay off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bradley was adrift, which in his father\u2019s view, at least gave them something in common. \u201cYou know, I was going nowhere when I was your age,\u201d he told Bradley. To Brian\u2019s mind, the military had set him straight: \u201cEverything\u2019s been fine since.\u201d Bradley had no desire whatsoever to enlist, said Brian. \u201cI spent weeks and weeks and weeks talking to him, encouraging him, because this, you know, falls back to my days,\u201d he told me. \u201cI finally convinced Bradley to talk to the Army recruiter.\u201d<\/p>\n

From his barracks in Fort Drum, Bradley concocted a more satisfying story for ZJ\u2014on the web, he controlled the narrative. \u201csomehow one of my resumes ended up in an army recruiters\u2019 hands \u2026 and came knocking at my door.\u201d<\/p>\n

Either way, Bradley followed in his father\u2019s footsteps, and in 2008, he graduated from intel school, just as Brian had. \u201cI was as happy as a father could be. I was so proud. And patting myself on the back, saying, \u2018I made the right decision in doing this,\u2019\u2005\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

Then, having set him on course, Brian dropped out of his son\u2019s life again. \u201cI didn\u2019t hear one word from him when he was in Fort Drum. So I never knew exactly when he went to Afghanistan. I\u2019m sorry\u2014Iraq. I didn\u2019t even know that he\u2019d gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bradley entered the Army with a plan. He was going to use the system and not vice versa. The Army would pay for college. He\u2019d \u201cget credentials so creepy conservatives can\u2019t attack me.\u201d But the Army had its own agenda. Bradley believed in the mission, but the Army seemed creepy to him, like a brainwashing cult intent on breaking him down, \u201ccorrecting every eyetwitch,\u201d he wrote. To begin, it set out to suppress his digital self. \u201cthe army took me, a web dev, threw me into a rigid schedule, removed me from my digital self,\u201d he wrote to ZJ. \u201cThe army \u2026 threw me in the forests of Missouri for 10 weeks with an old M-16 Reagan-era load-\u00adbearing equipment, and 50 twanging people hailing from places like Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi \u2026 joy,\u201d he told ZJ, and later added, \u201cwhat the hell did I put myself through?\u201d<\/p>\n

Manning was desperate to escape Army life, even for a few hours, as he told ZJ. And on weekends, he would slip out from under the Army\u2019s watchful eye. He road-tripped to Boston, where he fell in with a friendlier crowd, some of whom were gay. Manning, who\u2019d been rewriting video-game code since he was a teenager, met intense, idealistic young programming wizards, many from M.I.T., a school he\u2019d dreamed of attending. They styled themselves \u201cethical hackers.\u201d They were awkward, proudly unbathed young coders who nonetheless gave off the cool vibe of people sure of their power. They didn\u2019t damage the digital systems they sneaked into, though they could have. We can \u201cbend networks to do practically anything,\u201d one hacker told me.<\/p>\n

In Boston, Manning found another \u00adescape. He met Tyler Watkins, a neuro\u00adscience major at Brandeis University\u2014\u00adanother science nerd\u2014and fell in love: \u201che\u2019s so zany and cute,\u201d he told ZJ. \u201che bought me a dozen roses, and i bought us matching equality bracelets to wear\u201d for Valentine\u2019s Day. From Fort Drum, \u00adManning obsessed about every detail of the long-distance romance. At 1:18 a.m. one Monday in March 2009, he \u00adconfided in ZJ.<\/p>\n

\u201cI discovered something about my boyfriend tonight,\u201d Manning wrote. \u201cWe took a quiz together \u2026 well, when it came to who is most important [person] to our lives, i answered with his name.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watkins didn\u2019t reciprocate.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis response was god,\u201d Manning wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh dear,\u201d said ZJ.<\/p>\n

\u201cAwkward?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201ci just hope itll be okay, because i love him.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Manning, nothing was okay. In \u00adOctober 2009, he arrived at Forward \u00adOperating Base Hammer, a dusty back\u00adwater 40 miles from Baghdad. There, Manning felt more isolated than ever\u2014\u201cit\u2019s awfully stressful, lonely.\u201d Intel analysts sometimes worked fourteen-to-fifteen-hour stretches in \u201ca dimly lit room crowded to the point you cant move an inch without having to quietly say \u2018excuse me sir,\u2019 \u2018pardon me sergeant major,\u2019\u200a\u201d he wrote. \u201ccables trip you up everywhere, papers stacked everywhere \u2026\u201d Usually, there was a large central TV screen where an analyst could watch the war play in endless loop. You could zoom in on the raw footage from helicopters or even helmet cams. At times it felt like watching nonstop snuff films. \u201cIt\u2019s groundhog day,\u201d Manning wrote: every day the same. Later, his super\u00advisors said he displayed dissociative behavior, his mind in one place and his body in another\u2014but that was the nature of the job. An intel analyst sat at his work station and targeted the enemy, reducing a human being to a few salient points. Then he made a quick decision based on imperfect information: kill, capture, exploit, source. Any illusions Manning had about saving lives quickly vanished. At one point, he went to a superior with what he believed to be a mistake. The Iraqi \u00adFederal Police had rounded up innocent people, he said. Get back to work, he was told. \u201cI was never noticed,\u201d he later said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Manning\u2019s concerns about his sexual identity were intensifying. In November 2009, he made contact on the web with a gender counselor back in the States. When I met the counselor, he was easygoing and upbeat for someone who\u2019d spent hours talking to servicemen who believed they were inhabiting the wrong body. He knew what he was talking about, though. In person, his gender was difficult to discern\u2014he\u2019d begun his transition as a teenager. \u201cBradley felt he was female,\u201d the counselor told me. \u201cHe was very solid on that.\u201d Quickly, their conversation shifted to the practicalities: How does someone transition from male to female? \u201cHe really wanted to do surgery,\u201d the counselor recalled. \u201cHe was mostly afraid of being alone, being ostracized or somehow weird.\u201d To the counselor, it was clear Manning was in crisis. \u201cI feel like a monster,\u201d he\u2019d typed on his computer several times. The statement referred partly to his gender struggles but more to his job. He\u2019d taken an oath not to divulge this type of information. But then it spilled out. He told the counselor about a targeting mission gone bad in Basra. \u201cTwo groups of locals were converging in this one area. Manning was trying to figure out why they were meeting,\u201d the counselor told me. On Manning\u2019s information, the Army moved swiftly, \u00addispatching a unit to hunt them down. Manning had thought all went well, until a superior explained the outcome. \u201cUltimately, some guy loosely connected to the group got killed,\u201d the counselor said. To the counselor, it was clear: Manning felt that there was blood on his hands. \u201cHe was very, very distressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

About that time, Manning later \u00adexplained, \u201ceverything started slipping.\u201d Manning, it turned out, wasn\u2019t built for this kind of war. \u201ci was a *part* of something \u2026 i was actively involved in something that i was completely against.\u201d The job wore down lots of soldiers. Some survived by becoming desensitized\u2014the blood and death goes right past them. Manning took it personally. According to the government, it was in November 2009, the same month that he reached out to the gender counselor, that \u00adManning began to work with WikiLeaks\u2019 \u00adJulian \u00adAssange, \u201ca candidate for the most dangerous man in the world,\u201d as Daniel \u00adEllsberg, leaker of the Pentagon papers, later put it.<\/p>\n

Assange\u2019s appeal to Manning was obvious. The WikiLeaks leader was a celebrity in Manning\u2019s hacker world\u2014dashing, mysterious, and cartoonish in equal parts. There was his striking appearance: knife-thin with a constantly cocked head and that saintly white hair. Assange was another one who\u2019d harnessed the power of the Internet to do his bidding. He was a genius programmer and cryptographer who started refining those skills as a teenager. As a 24-year-old, he was charged with hacking into Nortel\u2014he didn\u2019t cause any significant damage and so wasn\u2019t sentenced to prison. Hackers loved him. To them, he embodied all their best impulses. They thought of themselves as \u201chighly critical minds that question authority, appreciate civil liberty,\u201d one hacker explained to me. And Assange questioned authority every day. But Assange wasn\u2019t a typical hacker, who, after all, are mostly technicians. \u00adAssange was a thinker. One of his central thoughts was that secrets sustain corruption. And so he designed WikiLeaks, which made leaking the world\u2019s most closely held secrets devilishly simple. Just hit SEND and off they went into WikiLeaks\u2019 encrypted system.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a monster,\u201d he typed to his gender counselor, who said, \u201cHe was very, very distressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

For months, Manning later said, he tracked Assange, and eventually, he claimed, the WikiLeaks founder responded. \u201cHe finds you,\u201d Manning later explained. It was something like a courtship, at least from Manning\u2019s point of view. \u201ci\u2019ve developed a relationship with assange,\u201d he wrote. Assange\u2019s attentions flattered Manning, and his beliefs spoke directly to the troubled, impressionable private. \u201cEvery time we witness an act that we feel<\/em> to be unjust and do not act, we become a party to injustice,\u201d Assange once wrote.<\/p>\n

The seduction worked both ways. For Assange, someone like Manning was irresistible, too. WikiLeaks had revealed political and banking scandals in Kenya and Switzerland, but a person like Manning had access to more impressive secrets, involving the United States, a central perpetrator of injustice in the world, as Assange saw it, and one on which there were few checks.<\/p>\n

Manning claimed he was a source to Assange, not quite a collaborator, but he had certain privileges: \u201ci mean, im a high profile source.\u201d To maintain his status in the hierarchy of Assange\u2019s attentions, Manning had to produce, which ratcheted up the pressure. The process exhausted him. \u201cI\u2019m a total fucking wreck,\u201d he later wrote.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Watkins, one person Manning thought he could depend on, was slipping away. Even before shipping out, Manning had changed his Facebook status to \u201csingle.\u201d But it wasn\u2019t a clean break. \u201cThinking of you dear,\u201d Watkins wrote on Manning\u2019s Facebook page on March 24, 2010\u2014but then disappeared. The mixed signals drove Manning to despair. \u00ad\u201c[Tyler] left me with this ambiguity for months on end,\u201d and it \u201ccauses so much stress,\u201d he wrote on Facebook, according to a copy provided to New York<\/em>. Manning reached out again and again, but Watkins wouldn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n

Then, finally, he heard from Watkins, who \u201clectured\u201d him: The relationship was really over. \u201cWith closure, there\u2019s at least some peace in this rotten world,\u201d \u00adManning wrote on April 30, 2010. But not much. \u201cWhat do I have left at home\u2014the answer is clearly Nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

On May 5, Manning wrote on Facebook, he \u201cis beyond frustrated with people and society at large.\u201d His master sergeant had removed the bolt from his weapon\u2014again there was concern that he might harm himself or others. He was telling people he was on his way home to be discharged with an \u201cadjustment disorder,\u201d though \u201cgender identity\u201d had also been marked in his file, according to the Washington Post.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then, on May 21, 2010, Bradass87 popped up on the screen of yet another stranger, Adrian Lamo, a hacker famous for spectacular intrusions. At the time Manning had reached out to Lamo, he desperately needed a friend.<\/p>\n

That day, at 11:40 p.m. in Iraq, \u00adBradass87 sent Lamo an instant message on AOL.<\/p>\n

\u201chi,\u201d he began.<\/p>\n

Lamo later provided the chat logs to Wired.com<\/a>, which posted edited versions; Boingboing.net<\/a> later posted additional excerpts. According to the logs, Manning didn\u2019t take long to make a startling statement: \u201chypothetical question: if you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time \u2026 say, 8-9 months \u2026 and you saw incredible things, awful things \u2026 things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC \u2026 what would you do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamo seemed to be the perfect confidant for Manning. He was a celebrity in the hacker circles with which Manning identified, and he\u2019d worked on a task force for gay, lesbian, and transgender youth. He\u2019s bisexual. And then, Lamo, like Manning, lived the most vivid parts of life online.<\/p>\n

I wanted to talk to Lamo, and after I tracked him down online, he invited me to the Coliseum, a Long Island motor inn where he greeted me at the door of his small room. He wore a half-smile, quipped that he was staying until he exhausted his finances or died, and made a beeline for the bed\u2014he was unsteady on his feet. And then he shut his eyes. And kept them shut for much of our three-hour conversation. He was articulate, even thoughtful, but didn\u2019t seem entirely present. He often paused for 30-second intervals before speaking.<\/p>\n

It was only when I asked about his life as a hacker that Lamo seemed to become fully engaged. \u201cIt is the one thing I get excited about,\u201d he told me. Lamo is a high-school and college dropout, but as a hacker he thought of himself as a bold explorer of new worlds, a Columbus. His hacks were at once clever and incredibly dumb\u2014and always sensational. \u201cWhy not go in and behave like a user and see what can be made to behave differently than expected?,\u201d he explained. Lamo didn\u2019t damage the systems he entered\u2014\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be malicious\u201d\u2014but left behind a quirky signature, as if to say, \u201cI could have hurt you.\u201d At Yahoo News, he edited a couple of stories. Later, he hunkered down at a Kinko\u2019s copy shop for 24 hours and, with nothing but his laptop, hacked so deep into MCI Worldcom\u2019s computer system that he could have fired then-CEO Bernie Ebbers. \u201cI was tempted,\u201d Lamo told me\u2014but he just took a screen shot.<\/p>\n

Lamo\u2019s hacks made him famous mostly because he ran to the press after each one. Unfortunately, the FBI turned out to be an avid reader of his press. In 2003, the govern\u00adment arrested him for busting into the New York Times<\/em>\u2019 computers\u2014Lamo had added his name to the list of op-ed contributors and created several Nexis \u00adaccounts, mainly to keep up with news of himself. At the time, Lamo was furious at the government. His arrest \u201cstrikes a blow against openness,\u201d he said. Hackers rallied around him. As far as they were concerned, his only crime was \u201cthat of outsmarting you\u201d\u2014the government.<\/p>\n

In the Coliseum Motor Inn, Lamo lit a cigarette, a Camel with a pellet of menthol in the filter, and sucked on it like a straw. Smoking seemed to make him wistful. \u201c[WorldCom] is a long time ago now,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

Lamo\u2019s life as a hacker had come to an end at 22, and with it, a part of him seemed to die. He\u2019d been sentenced to house arrest rather than prison, but he told me, \u201cI\u2019ve been diagnosed with major depression that largely began after my clash with the FBI.\u201d (Two weeks before Manning reached out, Lamo had been confined to a mental-health facility.)<\/p>\n

If Lamo suffered, he didn\u2019t let on to his public. Hacking was now out of the question, but arrest had enhanced his fame. Young admirers reached out to him, \u00adincluding, in 2007, a 17-year-old named Lauren Robinson. \u201cI liked his ideals and such back then,\u201d she told me. Within a year, they were married\u2014Lamo was 26 at the time. At first the romance was exciting. Soon, though, reality set in, Robinson recalled. \u201cWe\u2019d sit around on computers all day,\u201d she complained. As she saw it, his main activity was tending \u201cthe Adrian Lamo persona,\u201d which existed almost exclusively online. \u201cEighty-five percent of his time was on a computer,\u201d she said. He refused to work for pay. \u201cI won\u2019t whore out my skills,\u201d he told Robinson. His father paid their rent. In the real world, Lamo was barely hanging on. But as Robinson, now divorced, recalled, online his reputation was intact. \u201cPeople kind of saw him as a hacker idol,\u201d she said. Bradley Manning must have too.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t even much of a hack, Manning told Lamo, according to the logs. The Army\u2019s \u201cinfosec\u201d\u2014Manning used the military term for information security\u2014was so sloppy that a lowly intel analyst could sift through the government\u2019s most closely held secrets. \u201cit was vulnerable as fuck,\u201d he wrote to Lamo. Manning downloaded data onto a CD marked \u201cLady Gaga,\u201d lip-syncing as he supposedly did his job: \u201cpretty simple, and unglamorous,\u201d he wrote. No one had ever taken note of him, and no one did now: \u201ceveryone just sat at their workstations \u2026 watching music \u00advideos \/ car chases \/ buildings exploding \u2026 and writing more stuff to CD\/DVD.\u201d Then, the government alleged, he fed it to WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n

In their online conversations, Lamo wanted to know more and encouraged Manning any way he could. He flirted. The two exchanged photos, assuring one another of their \u201csexiness,\u201d according to a person who read the unedited portions of the chat logs, sent each other emoticon hearts, and used endearments like \u201csweetie.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Lamo wasn\u2019t Assange, offering Manning a part in a noble cause. Even as he flirted, Lamo contacted a friend connected with military counterintelligence. Lamo didn\u2019t want to find himself on the wrong side of the FBI again. Also, as Lamo saw it, Manning posed a threat to the nation. Manning said he leaked hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables: \u201choly fracking crap, 260,000 documents, do you think you could go through those and say they\u2019re not going to cause any lives to be lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamo, who soon started working with the authorities, led Manning on.<\/p>\n

bradass87: \u201ci think im in more potential heat than you ever were.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot mandatorily,\u201d Lamo reassured him.<\/p>\n

Manning isn\u2019t a classic whistle-blower. Disturbing information didn\u2019t cross his desk, prodding him to act. Manning snooped\u2014according to the timetable he proposed to Lamo, he\u2019d been at it since almost the moment he arrived in Iraq. \u201ci had always questioned how things worked, and investigated to find the truth,\u201d he said. One of Manning\u2019s first discoveries was a troubling 2007 video of an Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad. In the video, the viewer watches through the crosshairs of a .30-caliber gun\u2014almost complicit\u2014as the gunner killed two \u00adReuters journalists, mistaking a Tele\u00adphoto lens for a weapon, and wounded two children. For Assange, the meaning of the video was clear, and to make his point he edited the video into a version he called \u201cCollateral Murder.\u201d It caused a worldwide scandal and overnight gave WikiLeaks, a tiny group of activists, credibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is your endgame?\u201d Lamo asked Manning.<\/p>\n

Manning didn\u2019t have one. He\u2019d started leaking as a way to protest the conduct of the war. The Apache helicopter killings were \u201cwrong,\u201d he wrote to Lamo. But soon he embraced a broader principle: Open the drawers. \u201cinformation should be free,\u201d he told Lamo, reciting the hacker mantra. According to the chat logs, Manning said he leaked Iraq and Afghan war logs, reports on Guant\u00e1namo prisoners, and a cache of diplomatic secrets. \u201cexplaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective,\u201d Manning thought of himself as honorable, even heroic\u2014\u201cI guess I\u2019m too idealistic,\u201d he said. \u201ci want people to see the truth \u2026 regardless of who they are \u2026 \u00adbecause without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.\u201d He hoped to provoke \u201cworldwide discussion, debates, and reforms \u2026 if not \u2026 then we\u2019re doomed as a species.\u201d He added a personal coda: \u201ci will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamo played Manning, reassuring him while, in reality, he had nothing but disdain for him. When Lamo was arrested, he\u2019d been offended by the government prosecution\u2014\u201ccriminalizing curiosity,\u201d he called it. Now he was offended by Manning. \u201cHe\u2019s a traitor at best,\u201d Lamo said. And, worse, a child. \u201cHe was almost eager to explain his leaks, current, past, and future. Like a kid showing off a new toy,\u201d Lamo told me. He was disgusted by the way in which Manning conflated his own precious moral awakening with the future of U.S. diplomacy. The leaks could \u201ccompromise our ability to make the world a better place, which we do in a lot of ways,\u201d Lamo later said.<\/p>\n

Manning explained to Lamo that he had targeted innocent men, as if that justified a seemingly endless leak of government secrets.<\/p>\n

\u201ci was a part of it \u2026 and completely helpless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201csometimes we\u2019re all helpless,\u201d responded Lamo cheerlessly.<\/p>\n

With Lamo, Manning seemed to boast sometimes, but at other points he seemed on the verge of tears: \u201ci just wanted enough time to figure myself out \u2026 to be myself \u2026 and be running around all the time, trying to meet someone else\u2019s expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamo couldn\u2019t muster any sympathy. A little later, Manning wrote, \u201cim not sure whether i\u2019d be considered a type of \u2018hacker\u2019, \u2018cracker\u2019, \u2018hacktivist\u2019, \u2018leaker\u2019 or what.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamo offered another possibility: \u201cor a spy :),\u201d adding a smile.<\/p>\n

On May 26, five days after Manning contacted Lamo, the Army moved. Manning was arrested in Iraq. Almost two weeks later, Lamo, who couldn\u2019t ever resist the spotlight, leaked the story to a journalist and ex-hacker at Wired.com. And once again, he was famous.<\/p>\n

At the Coliseum, the overhead light was dim. Cigarette smoke hovered near the ceiling, lending our conversation a conspiratorial air. \u201cI\u2019m a defector,\u201d Lamo said with loopy pride. He meant to his fellow hackers, and indeed, Adrian Lamo is their Benedict Arnold. \u201cEvery single day, ten people are telling him he\u2019s a shit,\u201d said one friend who\u2019s sympathetic. \u201cNobody respects him anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Lamo, though, defection came with benefits. He lost one community but gained another. Lamo\u2019s celebrity as a hacker had been waning for years. Now, once again, he felt like a force to be reckoned with. He was summoned to Washington. \u201cAt one meeting, you had the Department of State, Department of Defense, the Army Cointel, the FBI, \u00adNational Security Section, NSA, and like two or three other guys,\u201d Lamo told me, as his delicate hands twitched in his lap.<\/p>\n

It was difficult to imagine Lamo nabbing a spy. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine you holding a real job,\u201d I told him at one point.<\/p>\n

He smiled, revealing a missing tooth. \u201cYou\u2019re not wrong in that,\u201d he said. \u201cI haven\u2019t held a real job in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

I told him I didn\u2019t understand why the government even needed him. They have the chat logs. Lamo seemed hurt. He\u2019d come to view himself as part of the country\u2019s counterespionage effort. \u201cThink of it. You\u2019re the government. All of a sudden, out of the blue, you acquire one Adrian Lamo with no strings attached. You don\u2019t just throw him away when you\u2019re done with him,\u201d he said grandly.<\/p>\n

I checked the time. It was past eleven and raining outside. I had a train to catch. On my way out, Lamo stopped me. He had a question. \u201cI\u2019m in the market for a place to stay,\u201d he said. He wondered if I knew a couch he could crash on.<\/p>\n

Manning was first taken to a jail in \u00adKuwait, then transported to the brig in Quantico, Virginia. There, he was held in harsh conditions, kept in his cell 23 hours a day, and, for a time, made to sleep naked. And yet, while sitting in prison, he became much more powerful than ever before. He became a symbol. Conservative Mike Huckabee called for the leaker\u2019s head\u2014literally: He favored execution of traitors. Glenn Green\u00adwald, the liberal columnist for \u00adSalon, argued that Manning was courageous, a latter-day Ellsberg, the ex-Marine who\u2019d leaked a history of government deception during the Vietnam War, though perhaps even more important. \u201cThese leaks showed us the true face of American conduct in the world,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Assange didn\u2019t admit that Manning was a source, but he couldn\u2019t quite abandon him. Assange generally cared more for principle than people, whom he considered either useful or not. \u201cI\u2019m not so big on the nurture,\u201d he admitted in a different context. But Manning was special. Before Manning, Assange had been a gadfly, his accomplishments laudable but unheralded. After Manning, he was a hero to some on the left, \u201cthe most important person to ever live,\u201d as one of his circle maintained. So important that the military drew up a plan to undermine him (which was leaked to WikiLeaks). The U.S. convened a grand jury to investigate WikiLeaks under the 1917 espionage act. (Separately, Assange is under house arrest in England, awaiting a hearing on extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning for sexual misconduct.) And the pressure has taken a toll on WikiLeaks. A top lieutenant, fed up with what he saw as Assange\u2019s dictatorial ways, defected to launch his own site\u2014\u00adOpenLeaks. Perhaps more important, WikiLeaks\u2019 technology architect departed with him. And so, for the past year, WikiLeaks has been unable to receive leaked documents online.<\/p>\n

In prison, Manning was far from the furor he\u2019d set off. He had a few visitors. For a time, Manning\u2019s father was one of them\u2014he apparently wanted a relationship after all. For father and son, though, prison was not a place to grow close. \u201cWe talk pretty much all technical talk, and I was quite amazed at how he was current with it,\u201d Brian Manning told me. \u201cHe was giving me some advice.\u201d For Bradley, the conversation was little comfort, and two months ago, he took his father off his visiting list. \u201cIt\u2019s complicated,\u201d was Bradley\u2019s explanation. His mum managed to visit once from Wales. But she was another stranger. They didn\u2019t have that much to say to one another, and for part of the visit, she just stared at him.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long ago that Manning had imagined a bright future for himself. At Fort Drum, as the rest of his platoon slept, he typed into the night. He might \u201cjump into politics,\u201d he told ZJ casually. His plans were \u201cvague,\u201d but he was determined to have an impact. He assured her that after he got out of the Army, \u201cim planning on breaking out in all directions.\u201d Manning, now 23, faces 52 years in prison, and perhaps the death \u00adpenalty. But in other ways, his reach is longer, his footprint wider than he could have ever dreamed. He\u2019s already broken out.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 nymag.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a lonely, five-foot-two, gender-questioning soldier became a WikiLeaks hero, a traitor to the U.S., and one of the most unusual revolutionaries in American history. Among fellow soldiers, Manning had to conceal the basic facts of his sexual orientation. On the web, he was proudly out and joined a \u201cRepeal Don\u2019t Ask Don\u2019t Tell\u201d group. He\u2019d even begun to explore switching his gender, chatting with a counselor about the steps a person takes to transition from male to female. He assured [ZJ] that after he got out of the Army, \u201cim planning on breaking out in all directions.\u201d Manning, now 23, faces 52 years in prison, and perhaps the death \u00adpenalty. But in other ways, his reach is longer, his footprint wider than he could have ever dreamed. He\u2019s already broken out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}