Bored and depressed by army life, Manning started hanging out on the WikiLeaks IRC channel with its controversial founder, Julian Assange. It began as a simple act of communication no different in most respects from millions of casual chats that meander daily through uncounted online forums. Manning would occasionally get into conversations and debates, which he would say nourished him in a court statement years later. “[They] allowed me to feel connected to others even when alone. They helped me pass the time and keep motivated throughout the deployment.”
Manning described the WikiLeaks IRC channel as “almost academic in nature,” and Assange, years after the channel had vanished, agreed: “… the public IRC channel was filled with technical, academic, and geopolitical analysis, with many interesting people from different countries.” Assange said it wasn’t unusual for the channel to be visited by soldiers, like Manning.
The soldiers used WikiLeaks in the course of their work. “I had produced a logistics guide to understanding the U.S. military equipment purchasing system, which the Pentagon linked to in order to explain how their byzantine equipment numbering system worked,” said Assange. “We would often get soldiers coming in from far flung outposts asking us how to order a new tread for their tank.” It was easier, it seemed, to use WikiLeaks than the army’s own information services.
In the days before WikiLeaks was directly in conflict with the U.S. government, Assange seemed to have enjoyed the military company in the channel.
In short: Geeks. Not far from being Assange’s people. Years later, sitting on the stand in military court, Manning would echo this in his statement, saying that he’d used WikiLeaks material in his analysis reports to his superiors.
As long as WikiLeaks focused on African dictators and corrupt foreign bankers, everyone could pretend that a secrets-destroying project and America could get along. But America is a country run with secrets, and confrontation was only a matter of time. (...)
From the start, the American government’s response to what Manning did was extreme. Manning was brutally treated from the moment he was arrested. He was put in a cage in Kuwait, before being put into solitary and subjected to punitive measures in the Quantico Marine brig. After months in limbo, he was charged with 22 counts, including Aiding the Enemy, a euphemism for treason. This is a charge reserved specifically for spies who side with the enemies of the military, and among the worst charges a soldier can face. When Manning pled guilty to 10 of 22 charges in February, Aiding the Enemy was not among them. Ultimately, this was one of the two charges he was found not guilty of when the verdict was finally read. He now faces 90 years in prison at a sentencing hearing expected this week, three years after his arrest.
“People are scared or angry about WikiLeaks, and Bradley Manning is going to pay for people’s anxiety about WikiLeaks,” said Steve Aftergood, Director of the Federation of American Scientists project on Government Secrecy.
That anxiety, and an even larger bewilderment about the Internet has led to the diminutive and clever Manning being demonized and canonized at every turn. He’s been made out to be a pawn of Assange, a disturbed child, a latter-day Ellsberg, a depraved homosexual, the Internet’s greatest hero, a spark of the Arab Spring, and by his own government, a traitor. Beneath this weight of history is just a young geek, perhaps most remarkable for how normal he is.
“There are real questions about proportionality in this case,” said Aftergood. “I think Manning did something wrong, but do I think he’s the worst criminal in the past 10 years of war? He did not kill anybody. He violated security discipline and he has acknowledged that. It is proper that he be punished. But why is he the only name we know that’s being court-marshaled?”
by Quinn Norton, Medium | Read more:
Image: Patrick Semansky / AP via: LA Times
