Bradley Manning is at the center of the WikiLeaks controversy. But who is he?
By Ellen Nakashima, 11: 23 AM
In January 2010, more than 130 people gathered to celebrate the opening of Room B-28, a “hacker space” in the basement of the computer science building at
One of the visitors was a young Army specialist named Bradley Manning, on leave from duty in
Days later, he would be on a plane back to
He is accused of violating military computer security and leaking classified information to the insurgent Web site WikiLeaks. He faces 22 charges, including “aiding the enemy,” a capital crime. The material includes a video of an Apache helicopter firing on civilians in
For most of the past year, Manning spent 23 hours a day alone in a 6-by-12-foot jail cell. His case has become a rallying point for free-information activists, who say the leaked information belongs to the American people. They compare the 23-year-old former intelligence analyst to Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers, and decry excessive government secrecy. “What is happening to our government when Bradley Manning is charged with aiding the enemy?” asked Pete Perry, an organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network. “Who is the enemy? Information? The American people?”
The case raises troubling issues. Placing information in the public domain has never before been construed as aiding the enemy. Manning had a history of emotional outbursts throughout his youth, and they continued during his Army service, culminating in a breakdown in
How did a young man of such promise wind up in a brig? And how was he in a position to potentially access sensitive material given what the Army knew — or should have known — about him? Who is Bradley Manning, and what made him the way he is?
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Manning’s path to jail began in a one-stoplight
Manning’s parents — a young Navy veteran skilled in computer programming and his Welsh wife — moved to Oklahoma from California in 1983 with their 7-year-old daughter, Casey. Brian Manning had married Susan Fox the day after his 21st birthday in
The couple had tried for years to have another child, so Bradley’s arrival exactly 11 years after his sister’s was an occasion. His early years, spent in
The family lived in a neatly kept two-story house on five acres on an isolated dirt road several miles outside Crescent, where they had what Casey calls a “hobby farm.” There were two horses, a cow, pigs and chickens, a large vegetable garden and a pond stocked with perch. Susan was a homemaker and expert knitter who worked odd jobs but never learned to drive. She was a doting, even indulgent mother who let Bradley cover the entire second-story floor with his Lego creations.
Bradley was like a “hummingbird,” said his aunt, Debra Manning. “Always moving fast, taking a short rest, then back in motion again.” He’d talk just as quickly, his words tumbling over his thoughts.
When Bradley was no more than 7 or 8, Brian brought home a computer programming book and introduced his son to the C++ programming language. Much later, his dad helped him build a computer. “He loved anything electronic,” recalled a family friend, Mary Egelston.
His outstanding intellect was apparent early in school. He earned straight A’s and studied in advanced classes along with Jordan Davis, his oldest friend, now living in a suburb of Oklahoma City. Though Bradley played the sax and both boys were on a youth basketball team,
“Extremely bright,” said one of his teachers, with a “vocabulary, a depth of knowledge that most fifth-graders didn’t have.” He won top prize in the science fair three years in a row.
Bradley was also a wisecracker who was not shy about expressing his opinions — even to teachers, whom he sometimes corrected. The other children would say, “Oh, Bradley, he always thinks he knows everything,” recalled Egelston, who used to be a substitute teacher. “Well, Bradley, little munchkin that he is, he would stand up for what he believes.”
Even in elementary school, Bradley showed an interest in the world. He would argue that the
In sixth grade, Bradley became the first student from Crescent to win a statewide academic meet. When he went on stage to collect his trophy in
Other parents looked out for him. When Bradley and his friend Paden Radford went to academic meets in other towns, Paden’s mother, Jacqueline Radford, said she “always made sure Paden had enough money to pay extra if Bradley didn’t have any. The teacher would sometimes pitch in. That’s what we do around here.” One summer, Bradley went on an East Coast school bus trip with Paden’s father acting as his chaperone. It was evident that Bradley was “trying to find out where he fit in the world,” Mark Radford said.
He did a lot of that searching on his own. Brian Manning, who worked in information technology for Hertz, took business trips to
The absences strained Bradley’s relationship with his father, family members said. And when Brian was home, he was, one relative said, “far too strict” — in contrast to a mother who was “far too soft.”
Bradley was “afraid of his dad,”
(Brian Manning did not respond to requests for interviews.)
Bradley’s mother had drunk for years, but, she said, her habit grew worse in Crescent, where the family lived in relative isolation. She added vodka to her morning tea and rum to her afternoon Coke. “She just basically drank once she got up and till she went to bed,” Casey said. Susan said she was having problems in her marriage and turned to the bottle for solace. She admitted the drinking affected her children
The children learned early to be self-reliant. By age 6, Bradley could dress himself and get his own breakfast cereal. When Brian traveled, he would leave envelopes containing pre-written checks, and Casey would mail them. Her mother, she said, never learned how to write a check.
Bradley also began acting out. On a family trip to
But on his computer, Bradley could transcend life in his small Midwestern town. “He was always thinking outside Crescent,
Playing computer games, Bradley discovered the world of ideas. The game Call to Power II, for instance, prompted him and Davis to discuss using technology to achieve democracy. It was during one of those discussions that Bradley mentioned the concept that “information wants to be free,” which had become a tenet of the hacker community. “Bradley was interested in hacking — not in doing it, but in theory,”
Susan and Brian’s troubles escalated, and by the fall of 1999, Brian had moved out. The divorce in 2000, Egelston recalled, “rocked their world.” It was especially hard on young Bradley, who moved with his mother to a smaller, rented house in town. Casey was by now in college.
That same year, his father remarried, and the new wife’s son changed his name to Manning. One afternoon in 2001, Bradley came home devastated after a visit to his father, Susan Manning recalled. He felt replaced by his stepbrother, Dustin. Bradley began literally climbing the wall in frustration — taking two or three steps, running up the wall, then hopping off, over and over. She called Egelston and asked her to intercede. Egelston finally got him to his room and sat him down. He was “just totally frustrated,” Egelston recalled. He blurted out
Bradley was now an adolescent, coming into his sexual awakening. The summer he was 13, he confided to Davis and another friend that he had a crush on a boy. “It was, I guess, me,”
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Bradley did not speak openly of the turmoil at home. Besides, big things were happening in the world, and even as a 13-year-old, he was keenly aware of current events. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Bradley and Jordan Davis saw the footage of the terrorist attack on the
It was amid this turbulence that Manning’s mother decided to return to
They settled into a three-bedroom apartment in Haverfordwest, Wales, near his mother’s family. Though Bradley made a few friends, he spent a lot of time in his room playing games and listening to music on his computers.
Kids picked on him. “Some days, he was relieved to get home from school,” said his aunt Sharon Staples. “He’d run. He never walked.” Once on a camping trip with friends, she said, “he woke up, and all the tents around him were gone. They left while he was sleeping.”
His mother’s drinking continued to be a concern to the boy, and he told relatives he was afraid she would die. When he graduated from high school in 2005, he returned to
Bradley moved in with Brian, his second wife (also named Susan) and her son, who was about Bradley’s age. They lived in a ranch-style house in
Bradley showed a political consciousness about the
The youth confided in
As they grew closer,
The odd behavior became more frequent,
At home, Bradley and his stepmother fought over money, over his smoking, over his leaving empty Dr Pepper cans under his bed. In March 2006, the two got into such a row that Susan called 911, saying Bradley had threatened her with a knife. Her husband had fallen while trying to protect her, she told the dispatcher.
In the tape of the call, an angry Susan can be heard screaming at Brad
Susan told the dispatcher that Bradley was upset “because I have been telling him he needs to get a job, and he won’t get a job.”
In the audio, she lays down an ultimatum to his father
So Bradley took the old red Nissan pickup his dad had given him and hit the road.
***
In July 2006, Bradley’s aunt in Potomac received a call from her former sister-in-law in
Debra Manning called Bradley on his cellphone and offered to wire him money. She also offered him a temporary place to stay. About 30 hours later, Bradley showed up at her house. He had driven almost 700 miles in one day.
Thus began a 15-month interlude in the
Still, he seemed productive and more or less happy. “He was extremely organized, extremely tidy,” his aunt said. “This was not somebody who was flailing around.” So she was stunned when, over dinner at the now-gone Broadway Diner in
Debra would later learn that it was her brother who encouraged Bradley to enlist because, he said, it would give structure to his son’s life. “Twisted his arm,” was how Brian Manning put it to a PBS “Frontline” correspondent.
In October 2007, Pvt. Manning reported for basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in
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Despite his struggles, Manning was excited about his future in Army intelligence, a field that suited his analytical mind. “It’s going to be a different crowd when I get through with basic,” he told the friend. “I’m going to be with people more like me.”
He enjoyed classes at the
It was here, constrained by the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, that he began speaking out anonymously about gay rights. He attended a rally in
Manning now had a love interest
The trips to
Clark, who runs a small software firm, provided a sympathetic ear to Manning’s Army and family woes. “He always seemed in control. Even when he was in desperate situations, he came up with inventive ways to be as fine as possible. ... I was part of the world he hoped to join after he got out of the Army,”
Manning was not adapting well to the military culture. He clashed with a roommate he thought was anti-gay and one he thought was racist, according to a friend. He quarreled with other soldiers and pushed some chairs in anger. By August 2009, a supervisor, Master Sgt. Paul D. Adkins, noted that he was showing signs of “instability” and required him to seek mental health counseling, according to an Army report. Manning received an initial screening but no regular therapy, the report said. Because he could not discuss his romantic relationship with an Army therapist, Manning on his own saw a civilian counselor off the base.
Adkins and a major discussed leaving Manning behind when the unit deployed to
At the same time, Manning tried to reassure his family he would be okay. He told his aunt he was eager to use his training in a war zone. He told his sister not to worry because he would be “in an air-conditioned trailer behind the front line.”
On one of his last visits to
In
He also confided that his supervisor “completely knew [he was gay] and had no problem with it as long as he did his job properly,” Rose said. A few others knew, too, Manning told
Three months into his
During the visit, according to Wired.com, which interviewed Watkins, Manning confided to his boyfriend that he had “gotten his hands on” sensitive information and was considering passing it to WikiLeaks. Since the Wired story, Watkins has not spoken to the media and did not return phone calls for this article. (After Manning’s arrest, federal investigators swooped into
The lovers were not getting along. One evening, they went to a Triskelion meeting, and Rose said he noticed Manning sitting dejectedly in a corner. “He came home expecting some kind of homecoming, to be embraced. Instead, he’d been ignored.”
***
Shortly after Manning returned to
Founded in late 2006 by a peripatetic Australian and former hacker named Julian Assange, the site was conceived as an “uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking,” with servers peppered throughout the world. By early 2010, it had earned some ink for posting the “Climate-gate” e-mails from a British university and Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mails.
But it was the April 2010 posting of a 2007 video shot from a U.S. Army helicopter hovering over the streets of
Not long after, Manning e-mailed friends a link to the video, urging them to check it out. According to Wired.com, Manning messaged Watkins, asking, “Are people talking about it? ... That was one of his major concerns, that once he had done this, was it really going to make a difference? ... He wanted people held accountable and wanted to see this didn’t happen again.”
The same month the video appeared, Manning began to exhibit “bizarre behavior” at work, including showing “blank stares when spoken to” and stopping in mid-sentence, according to Master Sgt. Adkins in a memorandum written for an investigation into whether any supervisors should be punished for failing to properly discipline Manning and for failing to run a secure SCIF. The following sequence of events is taken from that report, portions of which were read to The Post.
Manning’s strange behavior increased in “frequency and intensity” and gave “an impression of disrespect and disinterest” to his superiors. Adkins sent Manning not to a therapist but to a chaplain.
On May 7, Manning left his work area about 6
Later that evening, having returned to his shift, he struck a female soldier in the face. He would later say he had no intention of hitting her and had no idea why he did.
The brigade psychiatrist, Capt. Edan Critchfield, diagnosed an “occupational problem and adjustment disorder with mixed disturbance of emotions and conduct.” Two sources familiar with the case said Manning’s adjustment disorder was related to “gender identity.” The psychiatrist recommended that Manning be discharged. The bolt was removed from his weapon, and he was reassigned to work in the supply room.
A day later, Capt. Matthew Freeburg decided to suspend Manning’s top-secret security clearance but never processed the paperwork. On May 24, Manning was demoted to private first class because of the assault.
Adkins, Critchfield and Freeburg all declined to comment for this story.
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With his military career disintegrating, Manning turned to cyberspace. On May 9, he sent a Facebook message to a novelist in
Jonathan Odell, who is gay and writes about race and culture in the American South, said he was intrigued when Manning wrote that he had been involved in some “ ‘very high-profile events,’ albeit as a nameless individual thus far.”
Odell perused Manning’s Facebook wall. Manning again linked to an interview he gave anonymously, this time telling the Washington Blade (in an April 1, 2010, piece) that even though he was stressed because of the military’s gay policy, he had to “dodge” questions about sexuality in therapy sessions.
Odell said he thought the soldier “was reaching out for someone to tell his story” and messaged back that he understood, he had read the Facebook posts.
“Facebook,” Manning replied, “doesn’t even touch the surface.”
Odell said he never heard from Manning again.
Instead, less than two weeks later, an e-mail from Manning popped up in Sacramento on the laptop screen of Adrian Lamo, who had been convicted in 2004 of breaching the computer systems of the New York Times and others, and sentenced to six months’ house arrest. Lamo, a controversial figure in the hacker community, said in a series of phone interviews that he speculated that he had come to Manning’s attention because of tweets he wrote suggesting people donate money to WikiLeaks.
They continued their correspondence by instant message. Manning’s handle was Bradass87. He said he was an intelligence analyst pending discharge and had had “unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months.” He also painted himself as “isolated,” “desperate,” “broken” and “self-medicating like crazy.”
And in the following hours, according to excerpts of chat logs provided to The Washington Post and Wired.com by Lamo, Manning referred extensively to what he said he found in the networks, including the quarter-million State Department cables — most of them unclassified — and the Baghdad video, “i want the material out there,” he said.
(The logs — Lamo provided The Post a small portion — have been authenticated by Army investigators, according to an intelligence official familiar with aspects of the case. According to a second source, the investigators matched the logs on Lamo’s hard drives with logs found on Manning’s hard drive.)
Lamo was impressed by the video leak but, he said, felt uneasy about the cables. He consulted an ex-boyfriend who had worked in counterintelligence, who advised him to turn the soldier in. Lamo did, three days after he began chatting with Manning. The chats continued, with Lamo probing for details.
And Manning appeared to be providing them, expressing a sense of outrage about the
“Everything started slipping after that,” he wrote. “I was actively involved in something that i was completely against.”
He noted at another point that if he were “more malicious,” he could have sold the cables to
Lamo later said he was “deeply conflicted” about reporting Manning, “given that Bradley is an individual acting out of his conscience and his desire to make the world a better place. ... However, he was actively trying to disrupt
Lamo asked Manning what he would do if his role with WikiLeaks “seemed in danger of being blown?”
Manning replied
“i mean, i was never noticed ...
“and who would honestly expect so much information to be exfiltrated from a field network?”
***
Long before the terrorist attacks of 2001, the Defense Department created a secure network to share operational plans and intelligence among military personnel. The data obtained by WikiLeaks came from this network, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, to which more than half a million people have access. State Department cables are also accessible through SIPRnet because the department has found it less costly to piggyback on the military’s network than to build its own. But only employees with a “need to know” are authorized to see these cables.
Manning, despite his clearance, would not have had such a need. The Army alleges that he “knowingly exceeded [his] authorized access” to obtain the cables. He also lacked access to portions of the Afghan and
The Army had security protocols that would have prevented the breach if followed, the official added. But safeguards to detect unauthorized installation of software had not been activated at the SCIF. Audit logs of computer activity were not reviewed. Bags were not inspected as personnel entered and left. To boost morale, the official said, people were allowed to bring in CDs and listen to them.
“The unit personnel that had responsibility for security of the network failed to do their job,” the official said. “It was flat-out apathy and a failure of the chain of command.”
In the chats, Manning appeared to share that view. “Everyone just sat at their workstations ... writing more stuff to CD/DVD,” he wrote Lamo. “ [The] culture fed opportunities. ... weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counterintelligence, inattentive signal analysis ... a perfect storm.”
Manning, with his history of emotional fragility, should at a minimum have had his clearance reviewed, said Joel F. Brenner, former national counterintelligence executive. His outbursts and emotional issues “should have been the big trigger.”
Nobody “cared about him,” said the intelligence official familiar with the case. “If somebody had taken an interest or tried to work with him, that very well may have changed his behavior.”
David Charney, a psychiatrist who has consulted on espionage cases, said supervisors can be trained to recognize signs of distress in people before they take actions that could harm national security. Young adults often don’t know their place in the world. “When there’s a lot of confusion about that,” he said, “then you really are talking about a deeper sense of being unmoored in life.”
***
Bradley Manning was detained on May 29 and held in
“We have seen nothing that proves to us that he did it,” Debra Manning said.
Friends and relatives who have visited Manning say he tries to keep abreast of current events, following, for instance, the uprisings across the Middle East and the men’s college basketball tournament.
“He tries to think about the outside world as much as possible,” his cousin Chris in
Ellen Nakashima is a
© 2011 The Washington Post Company
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