The Passion of Bradley Manning

by Chase Madar

Bradley fled to Tulsa, moved in briefly with his boyhood pal Jordan Davis and took minimum-wage service jobs. He drifted to Chicago, doing odd jobs there. He was a pícaro, a Joad without the family, a homeless kid on his own who slept in his pickup in the O’Hare parking lot. He was all alone. There are thousands in America like him.

  In the spring of 2006, Bradley moved in with his father’s sister in the Washington DC area. He got a job in retail at an Abercrombie & Fitch shop, and then a better job behind the counter at Starbucks. He enrolled in a local community college, then dropped out after doing poorly on an exam. “He was extremely organized, extremely tidy,” his aunt told the Washington Post. “This was not somebody who was flailing around.” He networked with people in the DC political world—staffers, people on the hill. He liked to know things; he liked to know what was going on politically.

  Then, in late 2007, Bradley Manning did the last thing that anyone would expect of a 5’2” openly gay nineteen-year-old with a fierce independent streak.

  He enlisted.

  Why do so, and in addition do so in the middle of a shooting war that to all indications he did not approve of? We have already noted Bradley Manning’s high-minded spirit of service to his country, a spirit far removed from chauvinistic nationalism that often passes for patriotism in America today. Then there is the example of his father, however estranged, still exerting a strong gravitational pull on the teenage son. (Brian Manning admitted to a PBS “Frontline” correspondent that he did twist his son’s arm a bit to get him to enlist and give his life some direction.)

  Like all the other soldiers he wound up with at FOB Hammer, Brad Manning wanted to get something out of the army aside from the fulfillment of patriotic duty. Peter Van Buren, the foreign service officer who overlapped with Manning at Hammer, recalled the soldiers there: “Each of them was proud to serve but each of them had at least another reason that they carried around for joining the military, their own little secret weight.[…] Ran away from an evil girlfriend, needed money for college, father said get a job or get out, that sort of thing.” Bradley Manning could check more than one of these boxes.

  Bradley wanted to go to college, but he had no money and apparently no financial support from home. With the GI Bill, the Army could pay his tuition later. (When deployed at Fort Drum in upstate New York, he told a friend “i hope i can SOMEHOW get into a nice university and study physics for a bachelors or masters (doctorate if im smart enough?)” He dreamt of “those fancy sounding colleges […] UC Berkely, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, University Chicago.” He even exhorted his friend to think seriously about going to college; after all, “someone like me is spending 4 years in the military just to get the opportunity.”

  Manning reported for basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri in October, 2007. How would he fare in the army, this 5’2” eighteen-year-old with an independent mind and mouth, a young man whose sexual orientation was not so difficult to detect?

  In basic training, Bradley Manning stood out. The drill sergeants picked on him. He fought back; it’s his way. They picked on him some more. Before long, Manning found himself in the “discharge unit”—the separate barracks for soldiers who have essentially flunked basic training and are being “outprocessed,” that is, rejected and expelled from the military.

  A team of investigative reporters at The Guardian newspaper found a contemporary of Manning’s from the Fort Leonard Wood discharge unit. It is worth quoting at length from The Guardian’s interview with the discharged soldier who knew Bradley Manning.

  The kid was barely 5 feet—he was a runt. And by military standards and compared with everyone who was around there—he was a runt. By military standards, “he’s a runt, so pick on him,” or “he’s crazy—pick on him,” or “he’s a faggot—pick on him.” The guy took it from every side. He couldn’t please anyone. And he tried. He really did. […]

  He wasn’t a soldier—there wasn’t anything about him that was a soldier. He has this idea that he was going in and that he was going to be pushing papers and he was gonna be some super smart computer guy and that he was gonna be important, that he was gonna matter to someone and he was gonna matter to something. And he got there and realized that he didn’t matter and that none of that was going to happen. […]

  He was in the DU. That means he was not bouncing back. He was going home. You don’t just accidentally end up in a Discharge Unit one day. You have somebody saying, “You know what, he is no good—let’s get him out of here. There are a lot of steps to go to before you even hit a DU let alone before you go from a DU to a bus or a plane home. […]

  The DU at any given time had about 100+ men. It was basically one big room, it had a group of bunks, bunk-beds and that’s where we all lived.

  He was being picked on—that was one part of it. Because you know Bradley—everybody said he was crazy or he was faking and the biggest part of it all was when rumors were getting around that he was chapter 15—you know, homosexual. They’d call him a faggot or call him a chapter 15—in the military world, being called a chapter 15 is like a civilian being called a faggot to their face in the street. […]

  For Bradley, it was rough. To say it was rough is an understatement. He was targeted […] by bullies, by the drill sergeants. Basically he was targeted by anybody who was within arm’s reach of him.

  There was a small percentage, I’d say maybe 10–15 guys tops, who didn’t care what chapter he was, who just wanted to coexist until they could get out and just get along. But the rest of them—we’re talking mentally unfit. Some of them were there for criminal charges. Everyone who was there was getting kicked out. And between being mentally unfit and mentally unstable and being criminal, and then being locked in this room with the guys saying, “Oh, here’s this little guy”—it was open season on him. Being gay—being Bradley Manning and being gay in the DU—it was hostile. He was constantly on edge, constantly on guard. […]

  They have all these beds and bunks that are all lined up and at the front there’s a common area. It’s not much of a common area but there’s a desk and doors, bathroom, storage room and then the entrance to this place. And there were three guys who had him cornered up front, and they were picking on him and he was yelling and screaming back.

  And we got there—it was me and a couple of other guys who went up there to start breaking it up—and I’m yelling, “Get the hell out of here, back off.” And I started pulling Manning off him while the other guys were taking care of the ones who were picking on him. And I got Manning off to the side and yeah, he pissed himself. That wasn’t the only time he did that, but that was the time I remember. It happened a few other times, I know a couple of guys who could tell you the same story.

  Manning seems plainly not to have been soldier material. But he was not discharged. Instead, he was “recycled” back into the system. The unnamed soldier from the Fort Leonard Wood discharge unit had thoughts about this, too:

  There is something wrong with the system. First off, I was in the DU for a month and in that entire month no one person was recycled from the DU. When I got out, I went home and I was getting periodic phone calls from the guys. Bradley was the only one who got recycled. And like I said, for the life of me I still don’t understand how or why. […] I think I am saying what is wrong with the system. Why was the US Army in such a mess that they were recycling the likes of Bradley Manning?

  I know for a fact that in 2007 recruiting numbers were the lowest they had ever been. They were lowering recruitment standards like crazy. I mean, facial tattoos, too tall, too short, too fat, criminal record—it didn’t matter. […] It was take everybody you could get. Keep hold of everybody you can get.

  I can’t help Bradley out. I tried to help him out then. A few others of us did but I can’t do anything to help him. […] I’m just saying a lot of people let him down. He is not the first one they let down and he is not the last one. That shit is going on right now at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. It is going on at Fort Sill, Oklah
oma and it is going on everywhere there is a training facility.

  At the end of his trials at Fort Leonard Wood, Bradley Manning moved one step closer to the SCIF at FOB Hammer.

  With desperate optimism, Manning told a friend (according to the Washington Post) that he was sure that intelligence training in Fort Huachuca would be better. “I’m going to be with people more like me.” And he did enjoy intelligence training. He was mildly reprimanded for broadcasting information about the base that might be considered sensitive on YouTube. But he still got a top-secret security clearance, and in August 2008 joined the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum in far-upstate New York. Another step closer to the SCIF.

  At Fort Drum, Private Manning was a paradox the military was scarcely able to digest. On the one hand, he was wholly committed to his work as a soldier. He was doing “computations and analytical work,” he told a friend, and preparing weekly intelligence briefings for the commander. He saw his role in the military as a protector of human life, and it was a mission he believed in: “I feel a great responsibility and duty to people. […] I’m more concerned about making sure that everyone, soldiers, marines, contractor [sic], even the local nationals, get home to their families.” It was more than a task; it was a calling, a life. He fervently believed in the power of intellectual development to help him carry out his duties to his fellow soldier, to his fellow human.

  im reading a lot more, delving deeper into philosophy, art, physics, biology, politics then i ever did in school… whats even better with my current position is that i can apply what i learn to provide more information to my officers and commanders, and hopefully save lives… i figure that justifies my sudden choice to this [.]

  What we know about Manning’s time at Fort Drum comes largely from a series of instant-message chats he held over several months with a Chicago youth named Zach Antolak who posts her thoughts in drag as Zinnia Jones on YouTube. Manning reached out to and told her—she is a sympathetic listener—about himself. Revealing conversations with a total stranger who becomes a virtual friend; it is a practice common among Bradley’s generation, and it later brought him to grief.

  Manning spent his weekend leave in Boston; he found a steady Brandeis undergraduate boyfriend and a social niche among the idealistic wing of the IT crowd, young people who believed in the emancipatory potential of digital technology and communications. Manning demonstrated against the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy designed to keep gays closeted in the military. He found a world of hip young people, where being gay and brainy is perfectly natural, perfectly normal.

  But away from the libertarian paradise of Boston’s undergraduate scene, Bradley Manning did not fit in with quotidian military life at Fort Drum. He couldn’t get along with roommates, one of whom he thought was homophobic, another racist. He was written up for tossing chairs around in a fit of rage. He was written up for yelling at his superiors. He was required to get mental health counseling. Was Manning aware of the clash between his ideal of patriotic service and the reality of actual military life? Sometimes he was:

  i actually believe what the army tries to make itself out to be: a diverse place full of people defending the country… male, female, black, white, gay, straight, christian, jewish, asian, old or young, it doesn’t matter to me; we all wear the same green uniform… but its still a male-dominated, christian-right, oppressive institution, with a few hidden jems [sic] of diversity.

  Eventually Manning’s vision of the American military as a global protector of freedom came under strain. As one of his Boston friends told the Washington Post, Manning “expressed a feeling to me like how messed up the situation is [in Iraq]. He said things like, ‘If more people knew what was going on over there, they would not support the war.”

  According to his superiors at Fort Drum, Manning was not working out as a soldier. Adkins and a major discussed keeping him back when his unit was deployed to Iraq. However, in the fall of 2009, the occupation was desperate for intelligence analysts with computer skills, and Private Bradley Manning, his superiors hurriedly concluded, showed signs of improvement as a workable soldier. This is how, on October 10, 2009, Private First Class Bradley Manning was deployed to FOB Hammer in Iraq as an intelligence analyst.

  Upon arrival at FOB Hammer, Bradley Manning was happy: finally, he saw a chance to use his training and skills to keep people out of harm’s way in the middle of a shooting war. In the SCIF where Manning did his tasks, a large windowless warehouse full of computers and desks and power cords, there were moments of intense and earnest teamwork. Much of the time, though, the SCIF is a big room full of bored soldiers working twelve to fourteen hour shifts, day after day.

  There was entertainment available in the system. According to former FOBbit Jimmy Rodriguez, “This stuff was all in a folder. It had a generic name on it so no one would look into it. A mix of games, sex and violence. They loved to watch these clips of Apaches gunning down people and whatnot. It was definitely entertainment.” The whole base environment was heavily mediatised, with a live-feed projection from a drone flying over Iraq up on a big screen in the Op Center. “It was mesmeric,” says Van Buren. “We called it ‘war porn,’ though I never saw actual shooting on screen.”

  At first Manning thrived in his new setting. He privately informed his supervisor that he was gay, according to a Boston friend, and the supervisor told him it didn’t matter as long as the soldier did his job well. Though still freely posting LGBT-supportive messages on his Facebook page, Manning was discreet about his sexual orientation on base. It really wasn’t clear that anyone cared. “From my time on the base, I’m not sure how important that gay or straight was to any of the soldiers,” says Van Buren. “What people are really worried about is whether their fellow soldier is reliable, and can do their job.”

  Manning had access to SIPRNet, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, used by the Defense Department and the State Department to transfer classified data, and to JWICS, the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. In November he was promoted to the rank of specialist, when he began to learn the true meaning of success in his line of work.

  We know this because by November, Manning had made internet contact with an American “gender counselor”: the soldier was considering gender transition. As momentous and potentially wrenching as this decision can be, it was not what troubled Manning. As the therapist told New York Magazine, what was upsetting the young intel analyst was his work: specifically, a targeting mission in Basra that turned ugly. “Two groups of locals were converging in this one area. Manning was trying to figure out why they were meeting,” said the counselor to New York journalist Steve Fishman. From the SCIF, Manning advised an Army unit to move in quickly; it did. “Ultimately, some guy loosely connected to the group got killed,” said the counselor, and Manning felt deeply complicit in the bloodshed.

  Manning’s real Damascene moment came when he investigated the arrest of Iraqi civilian protesters for an act of faultless good citizenship. He later confided the whole story to someone he believed to be a friend:

  (02:31:02 PM) bradass87: i think the thing that got me the most… that made me rethink the world more than anything

  (02:35:46 PM) bradass87: was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police… for printing “anti-Iraqi literature”… the iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with US forces, so i was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the “bad guys” were, and how significant this was for the FPs… it turned out, they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki… i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…

  (02:36:27 PM) bradass87: everything
started slipping after that… i saw things differently

  (02:37:37 PM) bradass87: i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

  The arrest of nonviolent civilians was of particular concern because torture, as Manning well knew, remained a common practice among the Iraqi authorities even six years into the American occupation. (The gruesome facts of Iraqi torture were amply documented by the US military in documents that were later released by WikiLeaks.) True, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Peter Pace had in December 2005 publicly contradicted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by declaring that it was the duty of every US soldier in Iraq to stop torture if he or she saw it happening. (Pace’s tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was not renewed for a second term.) But when it came to actually enforcing this rule, the whole chain of command in Iraq turned out to be remarkably easygoing. Pace’s mandate was hollowed out anyway by Rumsfeld’s own secret legal directives in the form of Fragmentary Order 242, which set forth a specific policy of noninterference in Iraqi torture. Deployment to the war zone taught Manning that military occupation is, by its very nature, less protective than predatory.

  Gunsight videos of Iraqis getting blown away by AH-64 Apache gunships were ambient “entertainment” inside the SCIF. Like so many others, Manning watched one such video shot from over half a mile above the outskirts of Baghdad on July 12, 2007. In the video, a group of civilians mingling with insurgents is fired upon by a gunship. Wounded Iraqis crawling away are shot dead. A van comes by to retrieve the wounded, and the helicopter opens fire on it too. The van turns out to be full of children. Throughout the gunsight video, pilot and crew are cracking wise, nervously, gleefully, callously. “Look at all those dead guys.” “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.” When the thirty-nine minute video is over, at least eleven people have been killed, most of them unarmed civilians. Two of the civilians killed turn out to be Reuters News Agency employees; the company files a FOIA request to find out about the death but is stonewalled. Washington Post reporter David Finkel gets a copy of the video and writes about it in his book The Good Soldiers—which Manning will read—but he is unable or unwilling to release the video. This is just one incident in a war that has, by conservative estimates, killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians.