
Bradley Manning’s Statement - ivancdg
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-3113-bradley-mannings-statement-taking-responsibility-for-releasing-docs
======
jacquesm
Just by how Bradley Manning was treated and by the continued existence of
Guantanamo bay's facility the United States has lost a large chunk of its
voice the world over when they start talking about human rights.

How far the US Government will sink before they realize that every time they
do something like this they are hurting their own interests is anybody's
guess. Be it drone attacks that kill children as collateral damage (Oh, but we
apologized) or torture dressed up as self protection it hardly matters.

If you want to criticize the world then you need to set an example, not by
taking out your rage on others but by wondering what it is that you are doing
wrong and then correcting that.

Slowly but surely every 'own goal' is reducing the United States' importance
on the world stage. And that's a real pity because we really do need an entity
that is a little larger than most that can serve as a role model for the rest.
As it is the role model seems to be that might makes right and that if you
deny your problems and your mistakes that you can get away with it. The rules
apply to everybody but you.

~~~
sneak
Everyone paying attention feels this way.

The treatment of Manning and eventual treatment of Assange will be our
generation's Vietnam - an active demonstration of our government's willingness
to lie to and abuse us, a touchstone for all who are seeking a reason not to
cooperate.

~~~
bconway
_The treatment of Manning and eventual treatment of Assange will be our
generation's Vietnam - an active demonstration of our government's willingness
to lie to and abuse us, a touchstone for all who are seeking a reason not to
cooperate._

It would certainly be nice if that was the case. However, it's much more
likely the average American doesn't know (or care) about Manning, other than
the occasional footnote on the 10 o'clock news, and in a year or two he will
be forgotten.

~~~
sneak
We're lucky, then, that the Average American has no effect on policy.

~~~
emn13
I'm afraid that indifference might well have an effect on policy.

------
ck2
You cannot look at any statement from him without realizing he's been kept in
extremely hostile conditions, just this side of torture, WITHOUT TRIAL for
over 1000 days (nearly three years!) being told he's facing execution or life
imprisonment.

Any of us would say ANYTHING facing that. Anything.

They are roasting him alive now, government has over 140 "witnesses" to put on
the stand.

They are going to make an example out of him, it's going to be horrible.

~~~
GHFigs
Manning has not been held the conditions you're referring to since April of
2011. If you care about the case, please learn more about it.

~~~
jacquesm
Probably you should clarify your statement a bit or you'll be downvoted a lot
(upvoted you, but that's only one.)

Anyway, what I find disgusting about the whole 'Manning' case is that vetting
procedures should have never ever allowed this man to get even close to
sensitive material, let alone top-secret. Burning him at the stake is just a
way to assign blame when in reality every person that ever evaluated Mannings
psychological profile had been asleep at the switch. The guy needs help, not
punishment. The fact that we as a society depend on the Bradley Mannings of
this world to keep us on the straight and narrow is what is really
frightening.

~~~
ck2
There are also 5 million people in the USA with the same level of sensitive
access as Bradley Manning, 1.4 million with "top secret" clearance.

That's a ridiculous mockery of anything they think should be a "secret" from
US citizens.

~~~
krschultz
That's just a fundamental misunderstanding of what the clearances mean.

First and foremost, they're just a background check. There are lots of
janitors and painters that have Secret or Top Secret clearances so they can
work in buildings that contain that kind of information. There are large
swaths of people that work in factories with clearances that really couldn't
tell you anything of value - but they have to pass a background check to get
the job.

Then once you narrow it down to the people that have actual classified
knowledge, they generally only know a sliver of a small area and that's it.
"Need to know" matters a whole lot.

The people with wide ranging access to lots of different databases is very
small. I would bet Bradley Manning is one of less than 50,000 or so people
with that kind of access.

~~~
jacquesm
> I would bet Bradley Manning is one of less than 50,000 or so people with
> that kind of access.

You'd lose that bet pretty quickly. He _was_ one of those.

------
throwaway125
A lot has been written and said about Bradley Manning but it always seemed
such a distant thing. Reading this statement made me realize how he's a real
person that I can identify with rather than just some guy in a news article.

~~~
jbester
In 2011, Wired posted[1] the transcript of conversations between Bradley
Manning and Lamo, the man who informed on him. It's an interesting read and
gives a window, albeit a small one, into his mental state and underlying
motives.

I would not consider the transcript complimentary, it does not portray a high-
minded, moral crusader. It portrays Manning, the depressed, confused, trans-
gendered person, acting out against the Military Establishment.

[1] <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/manning-lamo-logs/>

~~~
ok_craig
And in reality, he's probably a mix of all of the above, like most people.
Everyone's got ideals, everyone's got insecurities.

We tend to project our insecurities more when we're having casual conversation
with people we consider friends.

We tend to project our ideals more when we're having serious philosophic
debate, defending our character, or, you know, being charged with war crimes.

~~~
jbester
Technically, he's charged with espionage and giving aid to the enemy. With the
stated motive of "sparking a public debate" regarding current war policy, a
more targeted leak would have achieved the stated goal, in line, with, say,
the pentagon papers or the AT&T/NSA leaks or even the his own later leak of
the gun-cam video.

I have a hard time believing the flagrant and wanton release of material was
and is not suicide by Court Martial.

~~~
mpyne
Even the U.S. government isn't stupid enough to execute Pfc. Manning for
aiding the enemy.

And even if the U.S. government was, Col. Lind (given that she will be the
single-point-of-lightning-rod for any sentence adjudged) would not be that
stupid as she probably has better things to do than get "martyred" herself
after the trial is over.

But let's say that Col. Lind wants to live in a "Witness Protection"-esque
program for the rest of her life... any sentence of execution has to be
approved by the President himself (MCM Rule 1207), and whatever else you might
say about him, he's more politically-savvy than to allow that to happen.

But wait.... this is all only possible if the death penalty was declared from
the start, and the government chose from the beginning not to go for it. So it
looks like "suicide by court-martial" is out of the running, at least.

~~~
dmm
The proscecuter of the case said they are not pursuing the death penalty.

------
breakall
Interesting that Manning tried to contact the Washington Post, but got blown
off... Tried the NYTimes, and they didn't return his call. That may say
something about the media, but I'm more curious if the reaction by the US
government and other officials to the leaks would have been the same if those
papers had published the material, instead of Wikileaks?

~~~
saraid216
To follow on from safeaim,

I'd challenge you to get in contact with a reporter from either newspaper
yourself. How would you go about it?

~~~
breakall
Be famous, rich, powerful, or all of the above?

Snark aside, I've occasionally exchanged brief emails with folks at newspapers
-- an op/ed writer who wrote a particular column I liked, for example. With
enough persistence, I think I could get through. If I really ran into a brick
wall at the Post or the Times, I'd settle for the editor of a mid-size city
paper.

------
smutticus
50 years from now everyone involved in these proceedings still alive will be
ashamed of what transpired. We'll be issuing apologies and talking about 'how
this never should have happened.' Then it will happen again in slightly
different circumstances and the people alive then will find slightly different
justifications for their actions.

------
ok_craig
The third from last section, titled "Facts regarding the unauthorized
disclosure of Other Government Documents" is very vague. While all other
sections detail the information released, this one does not. Possibly, I
suppose, because it never made it to the public. Does anyone have any idea
what it could be referring to?

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
I'm very curious about this as well. It's the only topic he's not willing to
disclose in a public statement, yet he states that the documents upset him a
great deal. He's not even willing to mention the specific agency involved.

That makes me think that disclosing this topic would create even worse charges
than he already faces. So a reasonable guess is that these documents are
actual compartmentalized information. But of course then the question is how
he was able to access them given the impression I get is his office was rather
low security, not a SCIF.

It's hard not to think that there's a significant part of the story here that
isn't being told.

~~~
GHFigs
_He's not even willing to mention the specific agency involved._

This is part of him pleading guilty to these charges, one of which is over
"more than one classified memorandum from a government intelligence agency".
It's not him personally being shifty about it--that's what the charge is.

 _But of course then the question is how he was able to access them given the
impression I get is his office was rather low security, not a SCIF._

He refers to the "T-SCIF" many times in this statement, 'T' meaning
'Temporary'. There's even a photo in the chat logs published by Wired.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
Ah, thanks, I'd skipped over some of the more procedural parts of his
statement. I'm surprised it was so easy for him to access and copy such
material without detection. I guess if it appeared like it was in the course
of his duties it wouldn't raise any alarms.

~~~
mpyne
Read his statement. His entire job was to sift through _all_ available
information to present the best and most accurate possible picture to his
chain-of-command for use when formulating courses of action.

That wouldn't just entail what the "enemy" is doing, that would also include
what other government agencies are up to, what allies are up to, links to the
other major field of combat for the Army, etc.

Given that is what his job entailed though, you would think they would have a
much more stringent screening process for access to that material. With
nuclear weapons they have a specific personnel reliability program
([http://www.ncis.navy.mil/securitypolicy/PRP/Pages/NuclearWea...](http://www.ncis.navy.mil/securitypolicy/PRP/Pages/NuclearWeaponPersonnelReliabilityProgram.aspx)).
I'm not saying they need something as stringent for intel analysts but they
need to have _something_.

------
codemac
Website is offline, here is the google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&safe=...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&output=search&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bradleymanning.org%2Fnews%2Fupdate-3113-bradley-
mannings-statement-taking-responsibility-for-releasing-
docs&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bradleymanning.org%2Fnews%2Fupdate-3113-bradley-
mannings-statement-taking-responsibility-for-releasing-docs)

~~~
ihuman
As of 4:34 EST, the website is back online

~~~
derrida
Here's the copy on the transcribers blog
[http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_man...](http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_manning/pfc_bradley_e_manning_providence_hearing_statement.html)

------
porsupah
I am terribly, interminably indebted to Bradley Manning. I cannot possibly
repay the debt of conscience he managed to summon up.

------
grecy
Interesting there was no mention from him about how he was treated while
incarcerated, or about being held for so long without charge/trial.

~~~
throw-away2
You mean how he was held in protective custody (not solitary confinement, as
is commonly and falsely claimed by idiots like Glenn Greenwald) because he has
a history of mental instability (ie Gender Identity Disorder, punching another
soldier) and the Army fears he's a suicide risk (which he probably is)?

~~~
derrida
"protective custody". Right. Like if he were let out onto the streets on bail
he would flee, or go on a murdering rampage.

You are blaming the victim.

The military is _entirely responsible_ for the conditions he is held under in
custody. That's part of what the word _custody_ means. A UN Torture
Investigator (Juan Mendez) concluded he was living in "inhumane and degrading
conditions".

~~~
throw-away2
Did you read what I said? He's being held in protective custody because they
fear, rightly, that he may kill himself. And if God-forbid he succeeded in
doing so, what would you and the rest of his supports say then? That they
killed him to shut him up, to send a warning to other would-be whistle-
blowers, or some other nonsense.

And Manning isn't a victim. He released an enormous cache of classified
information, directly violating an oath that he took not to, placing ISAF
Forces in jeopardy and undermining the ability of the State Department (you
know, the agency that tries to affect positive change in the world _without_
the use of force) to do its job. What wrong-doing did Manning uncover; what
crimes? All he succeeding in doing was harming the State Department and
endangering ISAF personnel and the Afghans who aid them.

~~~
derrida
> _What wrong-doing did Manning uncover; what crimes?_

Here are some US troops shooting at unarmed civilians, children and Reuters
journalists. There was never a gun held, or fired except by the US troops...

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0>

This is the reality of asymmetric warfare, where doing your job walking down
the street in Baghdad can get you killed.

There are 1000's of such incidents we know about thanks to Manning. This
happens to be the most graphic and easily understood because it is a video.
Other stories are contained in the giant databases and are a couple of hundred
words of text.

Personally I uncovered a case in Cablegate where the US Ambassador to Nigeria
asked for someone to be rendered to the US without going through the Nigerian
Courts. This constitutes extraordinary rendition, moreover, this was pre-911
before extraordinary rendition was known to be widespread.

If anybody _actually looks_ at the material, you'll grasp its significance
immediately. Moreover, there is a good chance with 250,000 cables and
countless war logs if you see something significant, you are the only person
in the world to have recognised the significance of that piece of information.

~~~
rimantas

      > This is the reality of asymmetric warfare, where doing
      > your job walking down the street in Baghdad can get you
      > killed.
    

And this was unknown prior to wikileaks, right? Right? You do know that the
video you linked is "edited" to put it mildly?

    
    
      > There are 1000's of such incidents we know about thanks to
      > Manning. 
    

Yeah, sure. Nobody else knew.

    
    
      > If anybody actually looks at the material, you'll grasp its
      > significance immediately
    

Yes, it is easy to grasp the significance — next to none. That's why nobody
talks about those cables any more.

My cynical view is that wikileaks was just a tool for Asange to make a name
for himself. Manning? Just colateral damage.

~~~
petit_robert
Colonel O. North, nice to see you again!

------
cake
It's funny to see how common the tools he uses are :

Dell laptops, WinRAR, wget...

You would think the army has some fancy tech, apparently not.

~~~
tlrobinson
It's amazing how many high profile "hacking" cases are essentially (or
literally) "used wget to download unsecured information". aaronsw and weev
come to mind.

~~~
jonknee
This information was secured, he just had the ability to use computers on the
secure network. People will always be an attack vector, though the military
certainly could have implemented more automated alerts on unusual activity.

~~~
btilly
Based on his description, it was standard operating procedure to make multiple
local copies of large amounts of data so that you'd have access to it when you
needed it even if there were network problems later.

In that case, his network activity may not have looked unusual.

------
mpyne
I think the thing I was _most_ surprised about is that the Iraq and
Afghanistan war logs were the very first thing Manning had uploaded to
WikiLeaks, and this happened far _before_ Manning had been given the order to
determine what other anti-Maliki literature was being drummed up by the FP 15.

I had always had the impression that Manning had been generally dissatisfied
by American geopolitics but that the FP 15 order had been the last straw for
him and that he'd started divulging information to WikiLeaks all at once.

It wasn't like that at all. He released the Iraq/Afghanistan actions database
way before any of that. Before he saw the "Collateral Murder" video. Before
the FP 15. Even before he punched a soldier in the face (around 8 May 2010,
which was his "altercation").

WTF. He was essentially a WikiLeaks mole working on the inside... even though
he made clear that no one from WikiLeaks pressured him into divulging
information he also freely admits that some of the information he went out of
the way to find, was simply because it was a matter of discussion in the
WikiLeaks IRC/Jabber chat.

He freely admits releasing documents that he felt could possibly harm the U.S.
as well: "Of the documents release[d], the cables were the only one I was not
absolutely certain couldn’t harm the United States."

And why did he release these cables if they were the only documents that were
risky? "I believed exposing this information might make some within the
Department of State and other government entities unhappy."

He also talked about reading quotes after WWI, about how "the world would be a
better place if states would avoid making secret pacts and deals with and
against each other." Certainly true! However he seemed to have missed the
history lesson from _WWII_ , where the U.K. and the U.S. both enjoyed
significant military advantages thanks to their signals intelligence and
codebreaking feats.

If Manning were as smart an intelligence analyst as he claims to be then he
should know full well that information which is unclassified individually may
still be a risk to national security (and therefore classified) if released as
an aggregate.

The U.S. did this to the Japanese several before the Battle of Midway; for
instance an increase in message traffic from the Japanese Naval base at Truk
was a clue to the intelligence analysts at Station Hypo at Pearl Harbor that
the Japanese fleet was prepping for a major operation, _even though they
couldn't break the code_. (A good book to read regarding this is Ian Toll's
"Pacific Crucible").

I suppose at least I can't say he was doing this to get back at the Army per
se, since he'd done _everything_ before they reduced him in rate. But
conversely, much of what he leaked was not "war crimes" at all, but merely
stuff to "start a debate".

I'm not really sure what to think about all of it. It seems to me that based
on his _very half-hearted_ attempts to go to the media that he was intending
all along to go to WikiLeaks (whether consciously or not), and that the
reasoning for it was not about specific things at all (at least the initial
leaks).

I wish he would have talked about why he felt the need to brag to Lamo about
it. Maybe that (talking to Lamo) was brought on by his stress from his
punishment from the Army, it would almost be doubly ironic if the way he
unmasked himself ultimately came about from his own fist hitting the face of
another soldier.

~~~
grandalf
What is your point? That he's an imperfect version of the kind of rebellious
hero figure people think he is?

Very few people have sufficient courage of their convictions to consider doing
what he did. The rest of the psychological portait is noise.

~~~
mpyne
I'm not even sure exactly... the Manning case has confused me since it came
out.

The biggest question was always _why_. His supporters claimed it was about war
crimes, but it couldn't be that by sheer breadth of unrelated information he
leaked.

The motive of getting back at the Army at least made sense, but he makes
fairly clear that his NJP was the _last_ thing that happened, not the first.

So an idealistic quandary? Perhaps he wasn't yet sufficiently jaded but he had
to have known nothing would change going that route. By leaking
indiscriminately, at such sheer scale, and information that's not actually
pointing to a war crime or other government malfeasance he opens the
government up to _many_ defenses against what the information contained.

But either way, he said he wouldn't. He said further that if he did uncover
evidence of wrongdoing that he would report it properly.

I mean let's put it a different way. You provide a SaaS/PaaS /what-have-you to
a Fortune 50 enterprise.

What, _ethically_ , would stop you from snooping at their data and leaking it?
If you contort your logic enough, as happened to Manning, you could easily
flip it around entirely to claim that you had a moral imperative to look for
wrongdoing in the emails and documents of these large multi-nationals that
affect so many lives across the world.

Presumably we can rely on the tech startups incubated at HN not to do this,
but why? Why would it be OK for Manning and not your cloud provider? Why would
it not be OK for the cloud provider and OK for Manning?

I guess in the end that's what I wonder most about, even now. Why?

I and probably millions of others have had the opportunity "to start a public
debate" if that's all we were worried about, but we didn't. Why did Manning?
L'appel du vide? The stress of being LGBT in the military? And how can we
balance the need for transparency in military and government with the very
real need for INFOSEC to protect the same?

~~~
lprubin
Manning claims he didn't go out of his way to find this stuff and merely came
across it in the course of his duties. There are awful things happening all
over the world and nobody has a duty to expose it all. But if in the course of
your life, evidence of wrongful misdoing is dropped in your lap, if it's
horrible enough, I challenge anybody not to lose sleep over what to do about
it.

Given that, IMHO it comes down to a moral judgement on just how terrible the
actions the company was committing.

Situation A: Working at a SaaS email company, in the course of my work fixing
an email bug, I find out one of their low level executives is engaging in some
light embezzlement of company funds, say to the tune of $100K.

Situation B: Working at a SaaS email company, in the course of my work fixing
an email bug, I find out the company has been dumping toxic waste into a local
river which, by the company's own internal admission, is leading to highly
increased risks of cancer, birth defects and brain damage for the inhabitants
of nearby towns.

For me personally, situation A is not "evil" enough to my moral compass, nor
will my exposing it make that big of a difference in the world for me to risk
exposing it. However, situation B would cause me to really stop and think
about if it's worth risking spending many years in jail to expose what amounts
to my moral compass as crimes against humanity. I'd like to think I'd have the
courage to expose it.

Privacy policies are just human constructions meant to make human and societal
interaction more fluid. But if an individual or group starts to flagrantly
break written and unwritten rules of human decency and societal organization,
it rings as fair to my mind to fight back. "I won't fuck with you if you don't
fuck with me" is out the window once an organization goes too far in the
fucking with me department. Especially if it's an organization like a
government who writes its own rules and then breaks them.

~~~
mpyne
> Given that, IMHO it comes down to a moral judgement on just how terrible the
> actions the company was committing.

OK, I would actually tend to agree (and for what it's worth, so would DoD and
the law).

But when does the aggregate of those "minor" issues become so large that you'd
feel it's a major Sit-B issue? It seems to me that if you simply scoured long
enough at a large enough company that you should eventually have enough to
feel that you have something major, simply by definition.

So then the question might become, why _don't_ email providers do this (search
their clients communications and files)? The threat of the law isn't the
answer as everyone would simply remind you that you have a moral imperative to
break the law.

I'm not trying to pose these questions to you personally at this point but
they certainly bear thinking about, especially nowadays when we're trying to
migrate everything to the cloud. At some point (if you're a tech at a cloud
provider) you have to think that they only reason you don't see evil on your
servers is because you're not looking hard enough.

~~~
grandalf
Manning was applying his training as an intelligence analyst to the big
picture factors involved. He is clearly very skilled at synthesizing large
amounts of information.

I think the argument can be made that Manning truly believed in the goal of
the US war effort, and could not stand to see the US doing things that he
viewed as hypocritical. To someone in his position, living every day fighting
a war that most of us are clueless about, the idea that the organization he
was a part of had some bad apples, or worse that it had structural rot and
corruption, would have been dispiriting and infuriating, and something that he
was willing to take personal risk to fix.

So I think that to consider Manning's thoughts and actions unusual you have to
make the argument that the military is full of cynics who just roll their eyes
when atrocities happen or buffoons who drink the patriotism kool-ade and view
the US as being capable of no wrong...

Manning had unique intellect, unique skills, and unique access to data. He was
also in the small minority of people familiar with Wikileaks and ballsy enough
to risk his own life by leaking information. There are probably many people in
the military and in various corporate jobs who view Manning as a hero but who
lack the personal courage to do what he did.

What would you assume would happen if a whistleblower stepped forward and
revealed lies and corruption... I might have predicted initial outrage
followed by reforms and the eventual pardon of the whistleblower. Manning's
case shows us that the actual result is years in prison without charge, a
massive attempted cover-up, and all kinds of shady behavior by the US
Government. There has still to date been no reform undertaken other than to
prevent information leaks through the methods Manning used.

Oddly the US news media has not called for reforms even as a counter-balance
to its coverage of Manning (and its coverage of Assange's so-called rape
charges). It would seem to require virtually no courage on the part of
journalists to address the question of reforms even as a subtext to the
sensationalism and propaganda.

~~~
mpyne
> What would you assume would happen if a whistleblower stepped forward and
> revealed lies and corruption

Which one are we talking about, a whistleblower or Bradley Manning?

~~~
grandalf
By my definition, Manning is a whistleblower, not sure why you make a
distinction.

------
Buzaga
>> The dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value
human life by referring >> to them as quote “dead bastards” unquote and
congratulating each other on the ability to kill in >> large numbers. At one
point in the video there is an individual on the ground attempting to crawl >>
to safety. The individual is seriously wounded. Instead of calling for medical
attention to the >> location, one of the aerial weapons team crew members
verbally asks for the wounded person to pick >> up a weapon so that he can
have a reason to engage. For me, this seems similar to a child torturing >>
ants with a magnifying glass.

>> Shortly after the second engagement, a mechanized infantry unit arrives at
the scene. Within >> minutes, the aerial weapons team crew learns that
children were in the van and despite the >> injuries the crew exhibits no
remorse. Instead, they downplay the significance of their actions, >> saying
quote ‘Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kid’s into a battle’ unquote.

>> The aerial weapons team crew members sound like they lack sympathy for the
children or the >> parents. Later in a particularly disturbing manner, the
aerial weapons team verbalizes enjoyment >> at the sight of one of the ground
vehicles driving over a body– or one of the bodies. As I >> continued my
research, I found an article discussing the book, The Good Soldiers, written
by >> Washington Post writer David Finkel.

>> He writes that the soldier finds him and sees him gesture with his two
forefingers together, a >> common method in the Middle East to communicate
that they are friendly. However, instead of >> assisting him, the soldier
makes an obscene gesture extending his middle finger.

>> The individual apparently dies shortly thereafter. Reading this, I can only
think of how this >> person was simply trying to help others, and then he
quickly finds he needs help as well. To make >> matter worse, in the last
moments of his life, he continues to express his friendly gesture– only >> to
find himself receiving this well known gesture of unfriendliness. For me it’s
all a big mess, >> and I am left wondering what these things mean, and how it
all fits together. It burdens me >> emotionally.

This is all that matters... the discussion on Bradley is valid but why isn't
US/these soldiers on a court to answer this sort of shit? You should be
ashamed of your country and try to do something about it

So many lies, fuck the power.

------
marze
About time.

