"The Army's Manning problem
By Greyhawk
The NY Times profiles Bradass87:
He spent part of his childhood with his father in the arid plains of central Oklahoma, where classmates made fun of him for being a geek. He spent another part with his mother in a small, remote corner of southwest Wales, where classmates made fun of him for being gay.
Many details here on the now-infamous Wikileaker - from his school days:
...Manning refused to recite the parts of the Pledge of Allegiance that referred to God or do homework assignments that involved the Scriptures. And if a teacher challenged his views, former classmates said, he was quick to push back.
"He would get upset, slam books on the desk if people wouldn't listen to him or understand his point of view," said Chera Moore, who attended elementary and junior high school with him.
...to his Army days:
He enlisted in the Army in 2007, to try to give his life some direction and to help to pay for college, friends said.
He was granted a security clearance and trained as an intelligence analyst at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., before being assigned to the Second Brigade 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y.
Before being deployed to Iraq, Private Manning met Tyler Watkins, who described himself on his blog as a classical musician, singer and drag queen. A friend said the two had little in common, but Private Manning fell head over heels. Mr. Watkins, who did not respond to interview requests for this article, was a student at Brandeis University. On trips to visit him here in Cambridge, Private Manning got to know many in Mr. Watkins' wide network of friends, including some who were part of this university town's tight-knit hacker community.
Friends said Private Manning found the atmosphere here to be everything the Army was not: openly accepting of his geeky side, his liberal political opinions, his relationship with Mr. Watkins and his ambition to do something that would get attention.
Although hacking has come to mean a lot of different things, at its core, those who do it say, is the philosophy that information should be free and accessible to all. And Private Manning had access to some of the most secret information on the planet.
Meanwhile, his military career was anything but stellar. He had been reprimanded twice, including once for assaulting an officer. He wrote in e-mails that he felt "regularly ignored" by his superiors "except when I had something essential, then it was back to 'Bring me coffee, then sweep the floor.' "
And it seems the more isolated he felt in the military -- he wore custom dog tags that said "Humanist," and friends said he kept a toy fairy wand on his desk in Iraq -- the more he clung to his hacker friends.
He must have had a tough inner struggle between "his ambition to do something that would get attention" and the need to wait he expressed here:
bradass.jpg"im not ready... i wouldn't mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility of having pictures of me... plastered all over the world press... as a boy..."
Postscript: the NY Times story makes much of Manning's abilities as a "hacker" - but the reality is he just copied files his clearance gave him access to and passed them on. Not exactly rocket science, as they say.
"I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like 'Lady Gaga', erase the music then write a compressed split file," he wrote. "No one suspected a thing and, odds are, they never will."
"[I] listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga's 'Telephone' while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history," he added later.
This question (asked before I heard anything about him being gay and/or a would-be transgender) is still unanswered:
The real question is one of clearance (and I've been a security manager for a large unit - I know how this stuff works). Specifically, why did this guy still have one? (Or at least, access to SIPR.) If this is true:
He discussed personal issues that got him into trouble with his superiors and left him socially isolated, and said he had been demoted and was headed for an early discharge from the Army.
...his clearance should have been yanked long before - as in step one. "Manpower shortage" isn't the answer - as this case demonstrates all too clearly, not everyone is "better than nothing" - sometimes you're infinitely better off being a man down. (I've made those sorts of decisions before, too - with an eye towards deploying to a war zone and otherwise.)
Apparently those "personal issues" included assaulting an officer. I don't think "being gay" makes someone a security risk - but if someone was afraid (or even just slow) to yank Manning's clearance because he was gay we have a different problem altogether.
And for more fun and games, if you haven't read this piece on how Wired got the initial scoop on the Manning bust, check it out. This, too. Seems none of the folks involved can keep a secret.
And more fun links here.
And final thought - thank God Manning wasn't a blogger. (At least, as far as I know.)"
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