Chelsea Manning

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

Chelsea Manning

Manning in April 2012
Born	(1987-12-17) 17 December 1987 Crescent, Oklahoma, U.S.
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	2007–2013
Rank	Private
Convictions	Violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, multiple counts of disobeying orders
Sentence	35 years, dishonorable discharge, loss of rank
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

Chelsea E. Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, 17 December 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was convicted in July 2013 of several violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after releasing the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison and dishonorably discharged. She will be eligible for parole after serving one third of her sentence, and together with credits for time served and good behavior could be released eight years after sentencing.

Assigned in 2009 to an army unit based near Baghdad, Manning had access there to databases used by the United States government to transmit classified information. She was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, told the FBI that Manning had confided during online chats that she 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. Much of the material was published by WikiLeaks or its media partners between April and November 2010.

Manning was ultimately charged with 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. She was held at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, from July 2010 to April 2011 under Prevention of Injury status – which entailed de facto solitary confinement and other restrictions that caused domestic and international concern – before being transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where she could interact with other detainees. She pleaded guilty in February 2013 to 10 of the charges. The trial on the remaining charges began on June 3, 2013, and on July 30 she was convicted of 17 of the original charges and amended versions of four others; she was acquitted of aiding the enemy. On 21 August she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, with a credit of 1,293 days for her time in pre-trial detention, including 112 days' credit for her treatment at Quantico. She will serve her time at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas in the United States Disciplinary Barracks.

Reaction to Manning's disclosures, arrest and sentence 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 had not prevented the unauthorized downloads. Reporters Without Borders condemned the sentence received by Manning, saying it demonstrates how vulnerable whistleblowers are and exemplifies how severely the US will punish "anyone who uncovers information of public interest concerning the exercise of official power."

Manning has had gender identity disorder since childhood and released a statement the day after her sentencing identifying as female, taking the name Chelsea Manning and expressing a desire to undergo hormone replacement therapy.

Background

Early life

File:Young Chelsea Manning.jpg

Manning as a child

Manning was born in Crescent, Oklahoma, to Susan Fox, originally from Wales, and her American husband, Brian Manning. Brian 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 her senior, was born in 1976. The couple returned to the United States in 1979, moving 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.

Her sister told the court-martial in 2013 that both their parents had been alcoholics, and that she had been Manning's principal caregiver, waking at night to make her a bottle and get her back to sleep. She also said Manning's mother had drunk continuously while pregnant with Manning. Capt. David Moulton, a Navy psychiatrist, told the court that Manning's facial features showed signs of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Manning's father took a job as an IT manager for a rental car agency, which meant he had to travel. Manning's mother suffered from poor health, was living several miles out of town, and was unable to drive, and as result Manning was largely left to fend for herself. Her 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.

Raised as a boy, Manning was regarded as small for her age – as an adult, she reached just 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and weighed 105 lb (47.6 kg) – and excelled at the saxophone, science, and computers. Her father told PBS that she created her first website when she was ten years old. She taught herself 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 Manning always had a mind of her own; she was openly opposed to religion and was an atheist, for example, and remained silent during the part of the Pledge of Allegiance that refers to God. When she was 13 she began to question her sexual orientation, and around this time her parents divorced. Manning and her mother moved out of the house to a rented apartment in Crescent. Her father's second wife was also named Susan, and Manning apparently reacted badly when the second wife's son by a previous relationship changed his surname to Manning. When she found out about it, Manning started taking running jumps at the walls, and told her mother: "I'm nobody now."

In November 2001 Manning and her mother left the United States and moved to Haverfordwest, Wales, where Manning attended the town's Tasker Milward secondary school. 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." Her interest in computers continued, and in 2003 she and a friend set up a website, angeldyne.com, a message board that offered games and music downloads.

Manning became the target of bullying at the school because she was effeminate and the only American. The students would imitate Manning's accent, and they apparently abandoned her once during a camping trip. Her aunt told The Washington Post that Manning awoke to an empty camp one morning, as everyone had packed up their tents and left the campsite. Manning identified to two friends in Oklahoma as a gay male, but was not open about it at school in Wales.

Return to the United States

Manning feared that her mother was becoming too ill to cope with her, so she returned to the United States in 2005, when she was 17. She moved in with her father in Oklahoma City, where he was living with his second wife and her child, and Manning got a job as a developer with a software company, Zoto. She was apparently happy for a time, but was let go after four months. Her 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. Her relationship with her father was apparently good, but there were problems between Manning and her stepmother. In March 2006 she reportedly threatened the stepmonther with a knife during an argument about Manning's failure to get another job; the stepmother called the police and Manning was asked to leave the house. She drove to Tulsa in a pick-up truck her father had given her, 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 she ran out of money and again had nowhere to stay. Her mother arranged for her to live with her father's sister, Debra, a lawyer in Potomac, Maryland. Nicks writes that the 15 months Manning spent with her aunt were among the most stable of her life. She had a boyfriend, took several low-paid jobs, and spent a semester studying history and English at Montgomery College, though she 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. She 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 her, she would scream at them – to the point where they started calling her "General Manning."

The decision to discharge her was revoked, and she started basic training again in January 2008. After graduating in April, she moved to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where she 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 she was reprimanded while at Fort Huachuca for posting three video messages to friends on YouTube, in which she described the inside of the "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility" (SCIF) where she worked.

Move to Fort Drum

Manning in September 2009

In August 2008, Manning was sent to Fort Drum in Jefferson County, New York, where she 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 she met Tyler Watkins, who was studying neuroscience and psychology at Brandeis University, near Boston. Watkins was her first serious relationship, and she posted happily on Facebook about it, regularly traveling 300 miles to Boston on visits.

Watkins introduced her to a network of friends and the university's hacker community. She 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 her in jail. In November 2008, she gave an anonymous interview to a high-school reporter during a rally in Syracuse in support of gay marriage, saying "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 her find her way around the city's gay community, introducing her to lobbyists, activists, and White House aides. Back at Fort Drum, she 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, her 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, she was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, arriving in October 2009. From her workstation there, she had access to SIPRNet (the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) and JWICS (the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System). Two of her superiors had discussed not taking her to Iraq – it was felt she 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, she was promoted from Private First Class to Specialist. According to her chats with Adrian Lamo, she made her first contact with WikiLeaks that same month, 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 she 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 her gender concerns, but also because she was opposed to the kind of war in which she found herself involved.

She 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), she was not allowed to be openly gay, though she apparently made no secret of it. When she told her roommate she was gay, the roommate responded by suggesting they not speak to each other. Her working conditions – 14–15 hour night shifts in a dimly lit secure room – did not help her emotional well being. On December 20, 2009, after being told she would lose her one day off a week for persistent lateness, she overturned a table in a conference room, damaging a computer that was sitting on it, before other soldiers pinned her arms behind her back. Several witnesses to the incident believed her access to sensitive material ought to have been withdrawn at that point. The following month she began posting on Facebook that she 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 8 January 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 her camera and took it home with her on leave in early 2010. During the same month, she 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, wearing a wig and dressing in women's clothes. After her arrest, her former partner, Tyler Watkins, told Kevin Poulsen of Wired that Manning had said during the January visit that she had found some sensitive information and was considering leaking it.

Loss of rank and recommended discharge

Manning told Adrian Lamo she had passed the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral murder") video to WikiLeaks in February 2010. WikiLeaks released the video on April 5, 2010. On April 24 Manning sent an e-mail to her master sergeant, Paul Adkins – with the subject line "My Problem" – saying she was suffering from gender dysphoria, and attaching a photograph of herself dressed as a woman. Adkins discussed the situation with Manning's therapists, but did not pass the email to a more senior officer; he told Manning's court martial that he was concerned the photograph would have been disseminated among other staff. Capt. Steven Lim, Manning's commander, said he first saw the e-mail after Manning's arrest, when information about hormone replacement therapy was found in Manning's room in Baghdad; at that point Lim learned that Manning had been calling herself Breanna. Manning told Lamo that her commander had found out about the gender issue before her arrest, after looking at her medical files at the beginning of May. She said she had set up Twitter and YouTube accounts in Breanna's name to give that identity 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 she posted on Facebook that she was utterly lost, and over the next few days wrote that "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," and that she was "beyond frustrated" and "livid" after being "lectured by ex-boyfriend despite months of relationship ambiguity ..." On May 7 she seemed to spiral out of control. According to army witnesses, she was found curled in a fetal position in a storage cupboard; she had a knife at her feet and had cut the words "I want" into a vinyl chair. A few hours later she had an altercation with intelligence analyst Specialist Jihrleah Showman, during which she punched Showman in the face. The brigade psychiatrist recommended a discharge, referring to an "occupational problem and adjustment disorder." Her master sergeant removed the bolt from her weapon, and she was sent to work in the supply office, although at this point her security clearance remained in place. She was demoted from Specialist to Private First Class just three days before her 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 she wanted to speak to him in confidence; she said she had been involved in some "very high-profile events, albeit as a nameless individual thus far." On May 19, according to army investigators, she e-mailed Eric Schmiedl, a mathematician she had met in Boston, and told him she had been the source of the Baghdad airstrike video. Two days later, she began the series of chats with Adrian Lamo that led to her 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 her to extract the files; if the latter, Assange could be charged with conspiracy. Manning told Lamo in May 2010 that she 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

On 18 February 2010 WikiLeaks posted the first of the material from Manning, a diplomatic cable dated January 13, 2010, from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, a document now known as Reykjavik13. In the chat log, Manning called it a "test" document. On March 15 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 she gave WikiLeaks the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video (so-called "Collateral Murder") in early 2010. Unedited version and edited version

Manning told Adrian Lamo that she gave WikiLeaks the video of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike after finding it in a Judge Advocate's directory. WikiLeaks named the video "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 them a journalist, and two others Reuters employees carrying cameras that the pilots mistook for anti-tank grenade launchers (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, 2010, 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 by 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 Adrian Lamo she 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, she 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. The video was never published; Julian Assange said in March 2013 that Daniel Domscheit-Berg had taken it with him when he left Wikileaks, and had apparently destroyed it.

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 Lamo 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 May 25, Manning – using the handle "bradass87" – told Lamo that she had leaked classified material. She introduced herself 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 her first explicit reference to the leaks: "This is what I do for friends." She 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. She 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 she felt isolated and fragile, and was reaching out to someone she 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 ... (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 she 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. She told Lamo she had recognized that the messages came from an NSA database, and that seeing them had made her 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 she said she dealt with Assange directly, Manning also said Assange had adopted a deliberate policy of knowing very little about her, 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 her that she 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 her the most was when 15 detainees had been arrested by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing anti-Iraqi literature. She 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. She reported this to her commanding officer, but said "he didn't want to hear any of it"; she said the officer told her to help the Iraqi police find more detainees. Manning said it made her realize, "i was actively involved in something that i was completely against ..."

She 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. She said she hoped the material would lead to "hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. if not ... than [sic] we're doomed as a species." She said she 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, she 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; they also 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. Lamo 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, and 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 June 10, and the full logs in July 2011, after the material about Manning's gender dysphoria 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. She was charged with several offences in July, 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 was "aiding the enemy," a capital offense, although prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.

Detention

Template:Manning timeline While in Kuwait, Manning was placed on suicide watch after her behavior caused concern. She 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. Her lawyer, David Coombs, a former military attorney, said Manning was not allowed to sleep between 5 am (7 am at weekends) and 8 pm, and was made to stand or sit up if she tried to. She was required to remain visible at all times, including at night, which entailed no access to sheets, no pillow except one built into her mattress, and a blanket designed not to be shredded. Manning complained that she regarded it as pre-trial punishment.

Her 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. Her lawyer said the guards behaved professionally, and had not tried to harass or embarrass Manning. She was allowed to walk for up to one hour a day, meals were taken in the cell, and she was shackled during visits. There was access to television when it was placed in the corridor, and she was allowed to keep one magazine and one book. Because she was in pre-trial detention, she received full pay and benefits.

On January 18, 2011, after an altercation with the guards, the jail classified her as a suicide risk. Manning said the guards had begun issuing conflicting commands, such as "turn left, don't turn left," and upbraiding her for responding to commands with "yes" instead of "aye." Shortly afterwards, she had her clothing and eyeglasses removed and was required to remain in her cell 24 hours a day. The suicide watch was lifted on January 21 after a complaint from her lawyer, and the brig commander who ordered it was replaced. On March 2 she was told that her request for the removal of her POI status had been denied. Her lawyer said Manning joked to the guards that, if she wanted to harm himself, she could do so with her underwear or her flip-flops. The comment resulted in her having her clothes removed at night, and she had to present herself 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 International asked the British government to intervene because of Manning's status as a British citizen by descent, although Manning's lawyer said Manning did not regard herself 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 20 April the Pentagon transferred Manning to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, a new medium-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she 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 her 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. She was arraigned on February 23, 2012, and declined to enter a plea.

During the Article 32 hearing, the prosecution, led by Capt. 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 her basement room in her aunt's home in Potomac, Maryland; and 10,000 cables on her 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 she 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 had been re-installed in January 2010, and on or around January 31, 2010, an attempt had been made to erase the hard drive by doing a "zero-fill," which involves overwriting material with zeroes. The material had been 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 her to give evidence against Assange. The defense also raised the issue of whether Manning's gender identity disorder had affected her judgment, and whether the "don't ask, don't tell" policy had made it difficult for her to serve in the army.

Guilty plea, trial, sentence

Further information: United States v. Manning

United States v. Manning
Court	United States Army Military District of Washington
Full case name	United States of America v. Manning, Bradley E., PFC
Decided	July 30, 2013
Case history
Prior actions	Article 32 hearing, opened December 16, 2011 Formally charged, February 23, 2012 Article 39 (pre-trial) hearing, opened April 24, 2012
Court membership
Judge sitting	Colonel Denise Lind

In December 2012 the judge, Army Colonel Denise Lind, accepted terms that would allow Manning to plead guilty to lesser charges in exchange for a maximum sentence of 16 years. She ruled in January 2013 that her sentence would be reduced by 112 days because of her treatment at Quantico. She pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges on February 28. Reading for over an hour from a 35-page statement, she said she had leaked the cables "to show the true cost of war." Prosecutors pursued a court-martial on the remaining charges.

The trial began on June 3, 2013. She was convicted on July 30 of 17 of the 22 charges in their entirety, including five counts of espionage and theft, and an amended version of four other charges; she was acquitted of aiding the enemy. The sentencing phase began the next day. A military psychologist who had treated Manning, Capt. Michael Worsley, testified on her behalf that she had been left isolated in the army, trying to deal with gender-identity issues in a "hyper-masculine environment." On August 14, Manning apologized for her actions, telling the court: "I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I'm sorry that they hurt the United States. I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people. ... At the time of my decisions I was dealing with a lot of issues."

The offenses she was convicted of carried a maximum sentence of 90 years. The government asked for a 60-year sentence to act as a deterrent to other soldiers, while her lawyer asked for no more than 25 years. She was sentenced on August 21 to 35 years and given a dishonorable discharge. Her rank was reduced from Private First Class to Private, and she will forfeit all pay and benefits. She was given credit of 1,293 days served, including the 112 days for her treatment at Quantico, and will be eligible for parole after serving one-third of the sentence. She may also be given additional credit for good behavior, and could be released in about eight years.

Gender reassignment

File:Chelsea Manning with wig.jpg

A photo provided by the Army in which Manning poses in a feminine wig and lipstick

In the chat conversations with Adrian Lamo in May 2010 (prior to the leaks to Lamo), it was revealed that Manning was pending discharge for "adjustment disorder" in lieu of "gender identity disorder".

Manning released a statement via her lawyer on 22 August 2013, read out on NBC's Today Show, that she intended to undergo gender reassignment and considered herself a woman. She has taken the name "Chelsea E. Manning".

As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility).

Reaction to disclosures

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."

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

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. Journalist Glenn Greenwald argued that Manning was the most important whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. President Barack Obama commented too, saying of Manning that she "broke the law"; Eugene Fidell of the National Institute of Military Justice called the remark "unlawful command influence."

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 her arrest, with Manning illustrating for the far right that gay people were unfit for military service, while the mainstream media presented her as a gay soldier driven mad by bullying.

See also

• Classified information in the United States
• Information security
• Information sensitivity
• McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950
• Reception of WikiLeaks
• Source (journalism)

Notes

• Note: Sources that are used repeatedly or are central to the article are presented in shortened form in this section, as are books; for full citations for those sources, see the References section below. Other sources 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, 19 December 2010; archived from the original on 7 April 2012.
• Fishman, Steve. "Bradley Manning’s Army of One", New York Magazine, 3 July 2011.
• Greenwald, Glenn. "The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks", Salon, 18 June 2010.
• Last, Jonathan V. "The Left's Canonization of St. Bradley Manning", CBS News, 11 January 2011.
• Manning, Bradley. "Memorandum", released by David Coombs, March 10, 2011; archived from the original on 6 April 2012.
• Nakashima, Ellen. "Bradley Manning is at the center of the WikiLeaks controversy. But who is he?", The Washington Post, 4 May 2011; archived from the original on 7 April 2012.
• Nicks, Denver. "Private Manning and the Making of Wikileaks", This Land, 23 September 2010.
• PBS Frontline. "Bradley Manning's Facebook Page", March 2011; archived from the original on 7 April 2011.
• Thompson, Ginger. "Early Struggles of Soldier Charged in Leak Case", The New York Times, 8 August 2010.
• Zetter, Kim. "Jolt in WikiLeaks Case: Feds Found Manning-Assange Chat Logs on Laptop", Wired, 19 December 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, 20 May 2010.
• Poulsen, Kevin and Zetter, Kim. "U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in WikiLeaks Video Probe", Wired magazine, 6 June 2010.
• Poulsen, Kevin and Zetter, Kim. 'I Can't Believe What I'm Confessing to You': The WikiLeaks Chats", Wired magazine, 10 June 2010.
• Nakashima, Ellen. "Messages from alleged leaker Bradley Manning portray him as despondent soldier", The Washington Post, 10 June 2010.
• Greenwald, Glenn. Email exchange between Glenn Greenwald and Kevin Poulsen, 14–17 June 2010.
• Poulsen, Kevin and Zetter, Kim. "Three Weeks After Arrest, Still No Charges in WikiLeaks Probe", Wired magazine, 16 June 2010.
• Xeni, Jardin. "WikiLeaks: a somewhat less redacted version of the Lamo/Manning logs", Boing Boing, 19 June 2010.
• Greenwald, Glenn. "The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired", Salon, 27 December 2010.
• Hansen, Evan and Poulsen, Kevin. "Putting the Record Straight on the Lamo-Manning Chat Logs", Wired magazine, 28 December 2010.
• Greenwald, Glenn. "Wired's refusal to release or comment on the Manning chat logs", Salon, 29 December 2010.
• Firedoglake. "Manning/WikiLeaks timeline", published as a complete version of the released excerpts, retrieved 14 March 2011; archived from the original on 28 March 2012.
• Hansen, Evan. "Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed", Wired magazine, 13 July 2011; archived from the original on 28 March 2012.

Audio/video

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

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

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

Further reading

Articles

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

Audio/video

• Broom, Kyle. "Prevention of Injury (POI)", a short dramatization of the account given by Manning in her letter to the army (Manning, 10 March 2011); also see ImDb, retrieved 8 April 2012.
• Democracy Now. Bradley Manning video archive, 2011–present.
• Gavin, Patrick. "Celeb video: I am Bradley Manning", Politico, 19 June 2013.
• Gonzales, Juan and Goodman, Amy. "Glenn Greenwald on the Assange Extradition Ruling, the Jailing of Bradley Manning ...", Democracy Now!, 24 February 2011.
• Miller, Michelle. "Private", CBS News, 26 April 2012, interview with Denver Nicks, author of Private (2012), Manning's biography.
• Nicks, Denver. "Private Manning Speaks", This Land, 22 September 2010.
• Price, Tim. The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012 (play), directed by John McGrath, "The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning", National Theatre Wales, 12–28 April 2012.

Legal documents

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

External links

• Chelsea Manning at IMDb
• Bradley Manning Support Network