Bradley Manning: Torture, the Law, and Human Rights

By Ennealogic

Imagine for a moment that you wake up every day with raw spots on your shoulders and hips from sleeping (or trying to sleep) under heavy 'blankets' that are more like very heavy kitchen scrubbie squares. Then, imagine that for 23 out of 24 hours a day you are confined to a very small, windowless cell that is 6 feet wide by 12 feet long. There is a mattress with a built-in pillow of sorts. There is a toilet and a drinking fountain. You are not permitted to exercise in your cell. You might be allowed a piece of paper and a pen, or maybe one book.

Pfc. Bradley Manning

Every 5 minutes, day and night, a guard appears at the slit in your cell door and if you are awake, you are required to respond that you are okay. If you fall asleep and for some reason are not visible from the cell door, due to being under the 'blanket' or huddled in a corner, you are wakened to verify you are still alive.

The Washington Times reports,

At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up (on weekends, he is allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m.). Under the rules for the confinement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards.

Imagine that for one hour a day you are allowed to leave your cell but all you are permitted to do is walk around another small room. Or maybe watch television, but not necessarily a channel of your choice. You get no newspapers, you have no computer or phone, and your visitors are few and far between. You receive food and medication, but you don't know what you are ingesting.

Imagine that this goes on day after day, month after month, until time ceases to have meaning. I can't. My brain goes into spasms after a few weeks...

Google Earth view of Quantico

As most of us know, Bradley Manning was arrested in Kuwait in late June, 2010 and transferred to the Quantico military brig a couple of weeks later. He has been detained under severe conditions since then. According to Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who has written a great deal about the unjustified conditions of Manning's detention,

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a "Maximum Custody Detainee," the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day—for seven straight months and counting—he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.

Now, imagine that you have been charged with a crime but not convicted. In fact, you have not yet had a trial or even a pre-trial. And imagine that your solitary confinement under what has been called at the best, punitive conditions, and at the worst, torture, is a result of the distribution to authorities of chat logs? And imagine that one Adrian Lamo distributed these logs to authorities.

I am certainly not in a position to validate the chat logs. They are/were plain text, and as such, easily subject to modification. Lamo's background as a hacker is well known. Were the logs genuine? Perhaps. What was Lamo's true motivation for sharing them with authorities? Unknown. Will he be questioned deeply? I hope so.

At the moment, the military can't find a connection between Manning and Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and the supposed final recipient of the files that Manning is alleged to have copied and transmitted. Nor can the military find corroborating evidence of Lamo's claims. My concern is that Manning is being subjected to severe conditions in the hope he will confess to whatever he is accused of.

View AlJazeera's recent report here:



So, how long does Manning have to wait for the wheels of justice to spin? The Washington Times reports that Manning's pre-trial hearing has been postponed until he can be examined by a psychiatric board whose purpose would be to verify he is fit to stand trial. The members of this "706" board have yet to be selected. There is no justification given for the delay. Meanwhile, Manning endures day after month in limbo, punitive limbo.

Bradley Manning is not without his champions. In one of Keith Olbermann's last Countdown broadcasts, he interviews Colleen Rowley, a government whistleblower, and talks abut Manning's detention and Wikileaks:



US Representative Dennis Kucinich (D Ohio) has written to Secretary of Defense Gates requesting that he may visit Bradley Manning. I was hoping to hear that his request was granted by now, but so far there has been no word.

Many groups and individuals support Manning, and sponsor events designed to keep the focus on this case. Here are a few:

• Bradley Manning Support Network - Web site
• Bradley Manning Support Network - facebook
• Courage to Resist
• Free Bradley Manning - Twibbon
• Amnesty International

I would be remiss if I did not mention David House and Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake who not only jump through the hoops at Quantico to visit Manning, but post excellent articles about this issue. See for example,

• Statement of Events: Bradley Manning's Primary Visitor Detained at Quantico
• A Holiday Message From Bradley Manning
• FDL Coverage of Bradley Manning's Detention

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This is not a simple story and it has no simple or easy ending. We have to ask ourselves what would WE do when faced with a question of conscience? Here is what a US Army recruit swears to on joining:

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) provides that, under Article 90, during times of war, a military member who willfully disobeys a superior commissioned officer can be sentenced to death. However...

These articles require the obedience of LAWFUL orders. An order which is unlawful not only does not need to be obeyed, but obeying such an order can result in criminal prosecution of the one who obeys it. Military courts have long held that military members are accountable for their actions even while following orders -- if the order was illegal.

Our soldiers, our troops, our men and women in uniform, walk a fine line. They know what is wrong and what is right. They know what is good and what is bad. They probably confront these questions frequently, whether they are in combat or just handling paperwork. If a superior officer tells you to lie about what you saw and heard and know to be true, what would you do? What should you do? And then, what is the just and fair way to treat someone who did what he thought was the right, moral and just thing to do?

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Bradley Manning: Tragic Hero or Shameful Traitor?

By Ennealogic

(I decided to dive right in with a post about a political issue that nags at my conscience and gives rise to questions about justice, fairness, decency and honesty in our country. I hope all the Po'gaters don't mind my skipping a personal introduction! For those who don't know me, here's where I've blogged since 2003.)

You'll find two distinct camps when the discussion turns to Bradley Manning. On one side, this young Army intelligence analyst was simply following his conscience and did what he felt he must to increase global awareness about the usually hidden, ugly side of war. On the other, this misguided and even contemptible miscreant abused his access to military and diplomatic secrets and deserves to be scorned and imprisoned for life, if not put to death first. (Given Sarah Palin's Facebook post stating that Julian Assange should be "pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders," I think I can guess which camp she would fall into here.)

Who Is Bradley Manning?

Wikipedia has a relatively comprehensive page on PFC Manning that tells us he was charged with unauthorized disclosure of classified information in June, 2010, and that he has since been held in a maximum security brig at Quantico, Virginia. His pre-trial hearing isn't expected to take place until May, 2011, a very long eleven months—due to the unusually harsh constraints of his confinement—since he was first put into the brig.

He's 23 years old, slight of build, and an adept when it comes to computers and information security. Born in Oklahoma to a US Navy father and a Welsh mother, he has joint citizenship with both US and UK. We don’t know very much about him yet. He was just another faceless troop in the Army, until the day someone he trusted turned him in to authorities. He has not been given a chance to talk to us since.

However, a convicted hacker named Adrian Lamo initially gave copies of chat logs—the same evidence Lamo presented to authorities that resulted in Manning’s arrest and detention—to Kevin Poulson of Wired magazine who informs us that Wired printed about a quarter of what they received, and offers various rationalizations for withholding the rest. (This has prompted speculation that we aren't getting the whole story, triggering calls for the entire set of chat files to be released.)

If I accept that the incomplete logs are genuine, though, a picture of Manning does begin to take focus. Here's an excerpt (please take a look at Firedoglake's compilation when you can):

(02:35:46 PM) Manning: 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) Manning: everything started slipping after that… i saw things differently
(02:37:37 PM) Manning: 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…

As an intelligence analyst, Manning would certainly be in a position to access all kinds of reports and data coming in from our war zones. He would be expected to pick through the details and alert officers in his chain of command with his findings. I can only imagine his frustration when he brought reports of events he believed to be terribly wrong to the attention of his superiors, only to be brushed aside and ignored.

An interesting side note is that Manning might have been about to be discharged under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ When Manning was attending school in the UK, he apparently revealed to his classmates that he was gay. The image above, from his Facebook page, shows him wearing a rainbow wristband and displaying a poster calling for equality 'on the battlefield.' Based on his chats with Lamo, Manning’s discharge was going to say he had an 'adjustment disorder.' Would an earlier repeal of DADT and official acceptance of gays in the military have changed Manning’s state of mind and his future actions? Hard to know.

Who is Adrian Lamo?

Adrian Lamo is called a 'grey hat' hacker (not white but not black either) in the opening paragraph on his Wikipedia page. Convicted in 2004 for electronically breaking into The New York Times, Microsoft, Yahoo and MCI in 2002, Adrian Lamo served 6 months' detention at his parent’s home and was subject to 2 years probation. (More on Lamo's crimes here.)

I can't help but contrast Lamo's case with that of David Kernell, the college student who guessed the answers to Sarah Palin's secret questions protecting her Yahoo e-mail account; Kernell is currently serving one year plus one day in prison, followed by a 3-year supervised release.

From Wikipedia,

On May 21, 2010, Manning is alleged to have gone online to chat with Adrian Lamo, a former hacker. Lamo had been profiled the day before by Kevin Poulsen in Wired magazine, after being hospitalized and diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. According to The Washington Post, Manning subsequently e-mailed Lamo, introducing himself as "an army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern baghdad, pending discharge for 'adjustment disorder.'"

In June 2010, Adrian Lamo reported to U.S. Army authorities that Specialist Bradley Manning had leaked classified information to him. Lamo also stated that Manning confessed to leaking the video footage of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike incident in Iraq to Wikileaks. Lamo has alleged that Manning leaked tens of thousands of pages of classified U.S. government data and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon has been outspoken about this story, and in particular, about Manning's treatment at the brig in Quantico, a topic I hope to discuss in a future post. Greenwald has this to say about Lamo and his relationship to the Wired editor, Poulsen:

Lamo is notorious in the world of hacking for being a low-level, inconsequential hacker with an insatiable need for self-promotion and media attention, and for the past decade, it has been Poulsen who satisfies that need.

It is likely that Manning reached out to Lamo due to his notoriety as a hacker, and possibly because of Lamo's diagnosis that was highlighted by the story in Wired. What followed was several days' worth of online chats where Lamo seems at times to be soliciting information from Manning, drawing him in and getting him to reveal more.

In spite of Wikipedia lore maintaining that Lamo supports Wikileaks, he claims to have acted in order to protect national security by turning over his chat logs to authorities. "I wouldn’t have done this if lives weren’t in danger... [Manning] was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air."

What Does it Mean to Be a Patriot?

Whistleblowers find it very difficult to go against the status quo. There's social isolation, loss of status and employment, and in some cases, negative legal consequences. If the whistleblower is also a member of the US Military, negative consequences can mean imprisonment and even torturous detention. "Don’t rock the boat," as the saying goes, is a prevalent mindset—and for a good reason.

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This is part one of my post. In part two I want to explore what has and is happening to Bradley Manning, what his future may hold, and what impact his case has on other potential contributors to Wikileaks.

If you are interested, one of Bradley Manning's support networks has organized a National White House Call-in Day for tomorrow—Thursday, February 3.

Your comments and ideas are always welcome. Please send e-mail to Ennealogicpoliticalgates@gmail.com. (Boy, that's a mouthful, isn't it?)