died hard. He decided to do something about it.
(03:07:01 PM) bradass87: i just… couldnt let these things stay inside of the system… and inside of my head…
(03:07:26 PM) bradass87: i recognized the value of some things…
(03:11:07 PM) bradass87: i kept that in my mind for weeks… probably a month and a half… before i forwarded it to them
The “them” was Wikileaks.
It is not clear when Bradley Manning allegedly began transmitting documents to Wikileaks; the government in its charge sheet against the private claims it was November 2009. By then, the anti-secrecy group had already achieved celebrity in tech-libertarian and media circles by publishing the Yahoo email account of Sarah Palin and various 9–11 text messages sent from inside the burning towers. Founded in 2006, the website offers a place for whistleblowers around the world to post important revelations, with source anonymity protected by the latest encryption technology. The site’s content is backed up by mirror-sites around the world. Wikileaks is by no means the first such site; before it came Cryptome—and it will surely not be the last.
On April 5, 2010, Wikileaks premiered the helicopter video at the National Press Club in Washington DC, slapping the gratuitous title “Collateral Murder” on the clip. In days, millions of people around the world watched the video, and for the most part responded in horror and disgust. America’s international lawyers rushed to provide the disquieting assurance that the aerial assault was in perfect conformity with the laws of armed conflict. A few members of the helicopter crew stepped forward to apologize to the families of the Iraqi dead and wounded. America still had 98,000 troops in Iraq (not counting mercenaries and other contractors), and their purpose there was questioned anew. Bradley Manning saw all of this. He became Facebook friends with the American infantryman, Ethan McCord, who at the scene of the aerial attack went back to the shot-up van to retrieve two wounded children and rushed them to a hospital. Manning felt a loop had been closed:
(02:07:41 AM) bradass87: event occurs in 2007, i watch video in 2009 with no context, do research, forward information to group of FOI activists, more research occurs, video is released in 2010, those involved come forward to discuss event, i witness those involved coming forward to discuss publicly, even add them as friends on FB… without them knowing who i am
(02:08:37 AM) bradass87: they touch my life, i touch their life, they touch my life again… full circle
The “Collateral Murder” video is only the beginning of what Manning allegedly exfiltrated to Wikileaks. There are the Afghan War Logs, 91,731 “Significant Action” military field reports that provide a mosaic for a pacification campaign going poorly. There are the Iraq War Logs, 391,832 more SigAct field reports, another pointillist portrait of a failed campaign. And 251, 287 State Department cables, most of which are not classified, many of which are “confidential” and some six percent of which are “secret.” (Not one of the documents that Bradley Manning has allegedly disclosed is “top secret.”)
How might he have done it? In fact, sending hundreds of thousands of documents from the SCIF at FOB Hammer would have been easy. The “infosec”—information security—at FOB Hammer was not so much faulty as nonexistent. As former FOBbit Jacob Sullivan remembered:
There were laptops sitting there with passwords on sticky notes. If someone in uniform came in and sits beside me at a computer and I didn’t know him, I’m not going to stop him and say excuse me, can I see some ID, I’m just gonna be like, “whatever.”22
And Manning himself in these unauthenticated chatlogs is even more candid about the wholesale absence of security at the SCIF.
(02:00:12 PM) bradass87: everyone just sat at their workstations… watching music videos / car chases / buildings exploding… and writing more stuff to CD/DVD… the culture fed opportunities
(02:01:44 PM) bradass87: hardest part is arguably internet access… uploading any sensitive data over the open internet is a bad idea… since networks are monitored for any insurgent/terrorist/militia/criminal types
(01:52:30 PM) bradass87: funny thing is… we transffered [sic] so much data on unmarked CDs…
(01:52:42 P.M) bradass87: everyone did… videos… movies… music
(01:53:05 PM) bradass87: all out in the open
(01:53:53 PM) bradass87: bringing CDs too [sic] and from the networks was/is a common phenomeon
(01:54:14 PM) [email protected]: is that how you got the cables out?
(01:54:28 PM) bradass87: perhaps
(01:54:42 PM) bradass87: i would come in with music on a CD-RW
(01:55:21 PM) bradass87: labelled with something like “Lady Gaga”… erase the music… then write a compressed split file
(01:55:46 PM) bradass87: no-one suspected a thing
(01:55:48 PM) bradass87: =L kind of sad
(01:56:04 PM) [email protected]: and odds are, they never will
(01:56:07 PM) bradass87: i didnt even have to hide anything
(01:56:36 PM) [email protected]: from a professional perspective, i’m curious how the server they were on was insecure
(01:57:19 PM) bradass87: you had people working 14 hours a day… every single day… no weekends… no recreation…
(01:57:27 PM) bradass87: people stopped caring after 3 weeks
Career foreign service member Peter Van Buren condemned the lack of security to me. “It’s lax that no one ever disabled the disk drives in the SCIF computers, and the idea that anyone could burn a disc in there is insane, and breaks every single security rule.”23
This amazing lack of “infosec” has been a major point among pundits and journalists horrified that the leaks’ information was brought to light. For those who welcome the disclosures, what is more disturbing still is how it took so long for these documents to be leaked. After all, some three million Americans have a security clearance: did none of these people who came into contact with the “Collateral Murder” video see fit to release it to the public? Until Manning’s alleged leaks, there apparently was no need for infosec measures, given how thoroughly those with a security clearance had internalized the government’s mindset.
Back at base, Bradley Manning’s career as a soldier—his only ticket to the university education he craved—was fast disintegrating. By May 5, his superiors thought he was behaving erratically; they removed the bolt from his service rifle. He was more and more intent on gender transition, which he could only commence outside the military. On May 7, Manning slugged a female superior in the face: he was demoted back to Private First Class, sent to work in the supply room—but retained his security clearance. He was soon to be discharged, for adjustment disorder (“in lieu of ‘gender identity disorder’,” he’d later say), and he was very, very lonely.
Pfc. Bradley Manning reached out to a stranger.
On
