Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.An intriguing aspect of the WikiLeaks saga is the story behind the arrest and public unmasking of Private Bradley Manning.

In late May of last year, Manning was arrested by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. At the time, he was stationed in Iraq at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad. Just 22 years old, Manning was an intelligence analyst, and while he wasn't immediately charged with any crime, the Army had reason to believe that he was involved in leaking classified information to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Just one month earlier, WikiLeaks had posted the gun-sight video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq which the site titled "Collateral Murder." It was the first high-profile leak in what would become a sustained campaign by WikiLeaks against the American government.

With Manning in custody, the Army was trying to figure out the scope of his offenses when, in July, WikiLeaks released a compendium of 77,000 American military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. The Army believed that Manning was behind these leaks, too. In the course of their investigation, they discovered that Manning had downloaded 260,000 State Department cables from the Net-Centric Diplomacy database on SIPRnet. When WikiLeaks published these documents in December, Manning was suspected of having handed them over as well.

The public first learned about Manning's arrest not from the New York Times or the Washington Post but from Wired.com, the sister website to the magazine Wired. The scoop came from reporters Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter. And here's where the story gets interesting.

In the late 1980s, Poulsen was a computer hacker. Under the nom de guerre "Dark Dante," Poulsen accomplished a number of inventive, if not strictly legal, feats. As a 17-year-old he allegedly hacked his way into the Defense Department's ARPANET. He later hacked private corporations, such as Pacific Bell, and various federal systems, where he uncovered information about ongoing FBI investigations. This was enough to get the feds after him; he was indicted in 1989. At the time, the Department of Justice's cybercrime unit, which rode herd on Poulsen's case, was headed by a fellow named Mark Rasch.

With the FBI at his heels, Poulsen went on the lam for 17 months. During his run, he hacked into the phone system of a Los Angeles radio station, 102.7 KIIS-FM. He took control of their phone bank and used it to win various contests by arranging things so that he could always be the 102nd caller. His fabulous prizes included a Porsche 944 S2, a vacation to Hawaii, and $20,000 in cash. When Poulsen was featured on the true-crime TV program Unsolved Mysteries, the show's 1-800 tip line was mysteriously disabled. The fun ended in April 1991 when Poulsen was arrested at a supermarket in Sherman Oaks, at 10 o'clock at night. In 1994 he pled guilty to an array of charges, including wire and computer fraud. He served a total of five years in jail.

Upon his release, Poulsen became a journalist. He wrote first for SecurityFocus, a website dedicated to information and cybersecurity. Oddly enough, one of SecurityFocus's other contributors was Mark Rasch, who by that time had left the Justice Department and gone into the private sector.Poulsen has become an enterprising-and quite excellent-reporter. He occupies an unusual position in journalism, possessing not only an enormous amount of technical expertise, but also contacts in both the reformed and unreformed hacker worlds. In 2000, Poulsen was working on a piece about security issues at AOL when he interviewed a hacker named Adrian Lamo.

As Poulsen later explained, "Lamo was nearly unique among hackers of that period, in that he had no evident fear of discussing his unlawful access, regardless of the inevitable legal consequences. He cracked everyone from Microsoft to Yahoo, and from MCI to Excite@Home. And he freely discussed how he did it, and sometimes helped the victim companies close their security holes afterward." Over the years, Poulsen and Lamo became friendly, with Poulsen frequently using Lamo as a source.

In May 2010, Poulsen wrote a story for Wired.com about Lamo's having been institutionalized for Asperger's syndrome. The piece was read by Private Manning in Iraq and it struck a chord; he immediately reached out to Lamo and initiated a series of online chats and emails. It was during the course of these conversations that Manning confessed to Lamo that he had given a mountain of classified material-including the "Collateral Murder" video-to WikiLeaks.

Lamo was a hacker who operated on the fringes of the law, but he knew the difference between computer crime and offenses like Manning's that could get people killed. He was troubled by what Manning had told him and consulted some people in cybersecurity. One of them was Chet Uber, the head of a rag-tag volunteer group, Project Vigilant, which attempts to (legally) compile evidence of cybercrime and forward it to the authorities. Uber asked Lamo to talk with Rasch, who is listed as Project Vigilant's general counsel. (There is some dispute as to how serious Project Vigilant is; Rasch demurely describes the group as mostly "aspirational.") Both Uber and Rasch urged Lamo to give his chat logs to the FBI. On May 25, he met with FBI agents at a Starbucks near his house in Carmichael, California.

The entire affair lasted barely a week: Manning reached out to Lamo on May 21 and was arrested within days. Lamo told Poulsen about his contact with Manning, and Poulsen, after Manning was taken into custody, convinced Lamo to give Wired.com a copy of the chat logs and to go on the record.

Yet somehow in all of this, the character who's emerged as a folk-hero isn't Kevin Poulsen, with his only-in-America journey from computer prodigy, to dashing hacker, to jailbird, to stud journalist. It's Private Bradley Manning, who sits in the brig at Quantico facing eight federal criminal counts related to the mishandling of classified information. The left, both here and abroad, has turned young Manning into a cause clbre.

Like some latter-day Mumia Abu-Jamal (or Julius and Ethel Rosenberg), Manning is being held up as a brave voice of morality and defiance, victimized by corrupt forces of "digital McCarthyism." In December, the city of Berkeley took up a resolution to have him declared a "hero." Michael Moore regularly posts information about pro-Manning rallies on his website.

The Nation's blog recently urged readers to remember that "without Bradley Manning and many others like him, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and all our new-found public information would be as in the dark as Manning is right now." The Bradley Manning Support Network has sprung up to collect followers and money for his defense fund. Through their website, BradleyManning.org, you can donate cash or buy "Free Bradley Manning" T-shirts, buttons, and whistles or watch Julian Assange, on Al Jazeera, call Manning an American political prisoner.

Other lefties, such as Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald, have actually attacked Poulsen and Wired.com for bias, journalistic malpractice, and assorted conspiratorial evildoing.That's crazy, of course. But for these people, all reality is filtered through the lens of politics. For them, Manning and WikiLeaks are players in a grand opera about the moral depravity of America, so they must be defended and their antagonists must be attacked.

The funny thing is, Poulsen isn't particularly an antagonist. He's just a good reporter working a great story.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.By Jonathan V. Last: Reprinted with permission from The Weekly Standard

Continued here:
The Left's Canonization of St. Bradley Manning - CBS News

The two biggest stories this week are WikiLeaks' continued publication of classified government documents, which did untold damage to America's national security interests, and the Democrats' fanatical determination to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" and allow gays to serve openly in the military.

The mole who allegedly gave WikiLeaks the mountains of secret documents is Pfc. Bradley Manning, Army intelligence analyst and angry gay.

We've heard 1 billion times about the Army translator who just wanted to serve his country, but was cashiered because of whom he loved.

I'll see your Army translator and raise you one Bradley Manning.According to Bradley's online chats, he was in "an awkward place" both "emotionally and psychologically." So in a snit, he betrayed his country by orchestrating the greatest leak of classified intelligence in U.S. history.

Isn't that in the Army Code of Conduct? You must follow orders at all times. Exceptions will be made for servicemen in an awkward place. Now, who wants a hug? Waitress! Three more apple-tinis!"

According to The New York Times, Bradley sought "moral support" from his "self-described drag queen" boyfriend. Alas, he still felt out of sorts. So why not sell out his country?

In an online chat with a computer hacker, Bradley said he lifted the hundreds of thousands of classified documents by pretending to be listening to a CD labeled "Lady Gaga." Then he acted as if he were singing along with her hit song "Telephone" while frantically downloading classified documents.

I'm not a military man, but I think singing along to Lady Gaga would constitute "telling" under "don't ask, don't tell."

Do you have to actually wear a dress to be captured by the Army's "don't ask, don't tell" dragnet?

What constitutes being "openly" gay now? Bringing a spice rack to basic training? Attending morning drills decked out as a Cher impersonator? Following Anderson Cooper on Twitter?

Also, U.S. military, have you seen a picture of Bradley Manning? The photo I've seen is only from the waist up, but you get the feeling that he's wearing butt-less chaps underneath. He looks like a guy in a soldier costume at the Greenwich Village Halloween parade.

Maybe there's a reason gays have traditionally been kept out of the intelligence services, apart from the fact that closeted gay men are easy to blackmail. Gays have always been suspicious of that rationale and perhaps they're right.

The most damaging spies in British history were the Cambridge Five, also called "the "Magnificent Five": Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and John Cairncross. They were highly placed members of British intelligence, all secretly working for the KGB.

The only one who wasn't gay was Philby. Burgess and Blunt were flamboyantly gay. Indeed, the Russians set Burgess up with a boyfriend as soon as he defected to the Soviet Union.

The Magnificent Five's American compatriot Michael Straight was -- ironically -- bisexual, as was Whittaker Chambers, at least during the period that he was a spy. And of course, there's David Brock.

So many Soviet spies were gay that, according to intelligence reporter Phillip Knightley, the Comintern was referred to as "the Homintern." (I would have called it the "Gay G.B.")

Bradley's friends told the Times they suspected "his desperation for acceptance -- or delusions of grandeur" may have prompted his document dump.

Let's check our "Gay Profile at a Glance" and ... let's see ... desperate for acceptance ... delusions of grandeur ... yep, they're both on the gay subset list!

Couldn't they just work for JetBlue? America would be a lot safer right now if gays in an "awkward place" psychologically could do no more damage than grabbing a couple of beers and sliding down the emergency chute.

Look at the disaster one gay created under our punishing "don't ask, don't tell" policy. What else awaits America with the overturning of a policy that was probably put there for a reason (apart from being the only thing Bill Clinton ever did that I agreed with)?

Liberals don't care. Their approach is to rip out society's foundations without asking if they serve any purpose.

Why do we have immigration laws? What's with these borders? Why do we have the institution of marriage, anyway? What do we need standardized tests for? Hey, I like Keith Richards -- why not make heroin legal? Let's take a sledgehammer to all these load-bearing walls and just see what happens!

For liberals, gays in the military is a win-win proposition. Either gays in the military works, or it wrecks the military, both of which outcomes they enthusiastically support.

But since you brought up gays in the military, liberals, let's talk about Bradley Manning. He apparently released hundreds of thousands of classified government documents as a result of being a gay man in "an awkward place."

Any discussion of "don't ask, don't tell" should begin with Bradley Manning. Live by the sad anecdote, die by the sad anecdote.

See more here:
Bradley Manning: Poster Boy for 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Manning in custody during his trial at Fort Meade in 2011. (Reuters photo: Benjamin Myers)The military cant function without trust and discipline. Mannings commutation undermines that warrior ethos.

It might just take going to war to truly understand the nature of military justice. During my deployment to Iraq, I was the only JAG officer at an isolated outpost near the IraqIran border. I worked closely with my commander on the dizzying array of disciplinary issues that arise on deployment: Soldiers fight, they sometimes defy their officers and NCOs, and some of them take drugs. Drop 800 men far into the most stressful situations imaginable thousands of miles from home and some will crack. Its that simple.

But heres the key to military justice: Both words matter. In the civilian system, we tend to think only of justice. Does the punishment fit the crime? Are we punishing the guilty? Are we vindicating the rights of their victims? But theres an additional, supplemental goal to military justice. The Manual for Courts-Martial puts it this way:

The purpose of military law is to promote justice, to assist in maintaining good order and discipline in the armed forces, to promote efficiency and effectiveness in the military establishment, and thereby to strengthen the national security of the United States.

In other words, military justice is designed to make the armed forces more cohesive and effective, in addition to punishing service members crimes. Military justice helps preserve the warrior ethos.

The warrior ethos is simple, but profound: I will always place the mission first, I will never accept defeat, I will never quit, and I will never leave a fallen comrade. The amount of self-denial and self-sacrifice this requires is extreme and completely alien to most civilians. Does your job demand that you lay down your life for your colleagues? Does it demand that you follow orders even if following orders may mean death or serious injury? Do you have no option of resigning if you disagree?

For a military to function well under such circumstances, it must demand a degree of obedience and trust that is hard to fathom. The obedience requirement is clear: Soldiers must obey lawful orders. The trust requirement is just as vital: To do their deadly jobs, they have to trust that the men and women around them are also willing to lay down their lives for the mission and for each other. In essence, soldiers make two simple pledges: I will obey lawful orders, and I will lay down my life for the mission and my brothers and sisters.

Good commanders know that soldiers trust them to reinforce the warrior ethos with effective discipline. Soldiers who cant be trusted cant be coddled; violating orders, acting selfishly, or disregarding the mission can ultimately break units and armies.

Good commanders know that soldiers trust them to reinforce the warrior ethos with effective discipline.

Given that context, its obvious that Bradley Manning was no ordinary leaker. When he dumped hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic secrets into the public domain, he violated every single tenet of the warrior ethos. He abandoned the mission. He accepted defeat and, through his data dumps, worked to facilitate it. He quit on his comrades, acting with utter, callous disregard for their lives. His message to his unit and to his nation was clear: He would disobey lawful orders and risk killing his comrades to, in his words, stimulate worldwide discussions, debates, and reforms.

In such a case, commanders have a sacred obligation to protect their soldiers. Its a matter of maintaining a bond with the men and women they lead. There can be no tolerance of true betrayal, and the military to its credit sought a severe sentence for Manning, attempting to make the punishment fit his crime. It fought for life imprisonment, and ultimately obtained a 35-year sentence that itself was an act of unreasonable mercy.

When Barack Obama commuted Mannings sentence yesterday, he signaled once again that, even after eight long years as commander-in-chief, he simply does not understand the essence of military leadership or the core of military culture. By minimizing Mannings crimes, he violated his own obligation to men and women in uniform. It was his job to enforce the lawful military norms that have been forged through centuries of bitter battlefield experience. Instead, he violated those norms, ensuring that Manning will serve no more time than men convicted of far more mundane crimes.

I have seen with my own eyes the character-building power of effective military discipline, of rehabilitating good soldiers and returning them to the fight. I have seen how punishing the craven returns resolve to fractured units. Reserve mercy for the true warriors, the courageous men and women who make mistakes. As for the traitors? Judgment should be their earthly destiny. Leave their mercy to the church.

Read the rest here:
By Commuting Bradley Mannings Sentence, Obama ... - nationalreview.com

Washington

Four decades after The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, supporters of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning are drawing parallels between the motives that drove Daniel Ellsberg to disclose the Pentagon Papers and Mannings alleged handover of secret government documents to the website WikiLeaks, which released them in tandem with several newspapers.

Moreover, the Pentagon Papers, made public 40 years ago today, were more highly classified than any of the secret materials published by WikiLeaks, according to the Bradley Manning Support Network. President Obama has said that Ellsbergs material was classified on a different basis than were the WikiLeaks disclosures. Thats true, Mr. Ellsberg says. Mine were top secret.

After the Pentagon Papers leaks, which established a record of government intent to mislead the American public about US involvement in Southeast Asia, Ellsberg was charged with 12 federal felony counts and faced a possible 115 years in prison. All charges against Ellsberg were eventually dismissed by the trial judge on the grounds of what the judge called the totality of governmental conduct that "offends a sense of justice.

Private First Class Manning could face the death penalty for leaking US diplomatic cables and US military video and field intelligence reports, though the US military has said it will not request the death penalty.

With the release of the Pentagon papers on Monday, the Department of Defense said it has no security concerns about their becoming public in their entirety.

Ellsberg used the occasion to lambast the government, saying in a statement that it has done little to improve its treatment of whistle-blowers. Instead, he said, "were seeing an unprecedented campaign to crack down on public servants who reveal information that Congress and American citizens have a right to know.

In April, Manning was transferred to the US military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., after repeated criticism about his treatment at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia. He has been held in US military custody since May 26, 2010.

If Bradley Manning did what hes accused of, then hes a hero of mine, the Ellsberg statement said. The government continues to persecute Manning, much as it did Ellsberg in the 1970s, he said. I wish I could say that our government has improved its treatment of whistle-glowers in the 40 years since the Pentagon Papers.

Mannings treatment amounts to governmental misconduct that offends a sense of justice, Ellsberg added, borrowing words from the judge who presided over his own trial.

The Pentagon says the leaked WikiLeaks documents allegedly provided by Manning have harmed the US military. We deplore WikiLeaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents, and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world, including our enemies, Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell said last year. We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us, he added. By disclosing such sensitive information, WikiLeaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners, and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us.

Jeff Paterson, a steering committee member of the Bradley Manning Support Group, pushed back against the characterization that Manning had aided Americas enemies, noting that the Pentagon Papers helped to build public pressure to end the Vietnam War, just as Wikileaks revelations are helping to catalyze democratic movements across the Middle East.

History has vindicated Daniel Ellsberg, he said, and history will vindicate Bradley Manning. Both men are American heroes.

The Bradley Manning Support Network is "dedicated to securing due process and a public trial for PFC Manning," according to the group's spokesman. So far, 4,300 people have donated $333,000 to Manning's legal fees and network "public education" efforts.

RECOMMENDED: Five bombshells from WikiLeaks' Iraq war documents

Read more from the original source:
Pentagon Papers vs. WikiLeaks: Is Bradley Manning the new Ellsberg ...

The Times has covered Mannings trial to some degree--in early November, the paper published a story about Mannings plans to plead guilty to some charges and the Times editorialized against Mannings poor treatment at Quantico back in March of 2011. But last weeks hearing, with Mannings direct testimony, seemed especially newsworthy--outlets including CNN, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and New York Magazine covered it. The Guardian, another newspaper that collaborated with Wikileaks and the Times, sent veteran reporter Ed Pilkington, the chief reporter for Guardian U.S. and a former national and international editor for the paper. Pilkington called his decision to cover the hearings in depth pure news judgement, when we spoke.

Like thorough, unbiased reporting that challenges your way of thinking? Subscribe to The New Republic for $3.99/month.

The Times has always had a rocky relationship with WikiLeaks, Manning, and other leakers of state secrets. After publishing the cables, Bill Keller, the Times executive editor at the time, wrote an 8,000-word New York Times Magazine story in which he compared Julian Assange to a bag lady. We regardedAssange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator, he wrote. The Guardian, on the other hand, sought partnership between a mainstream newspaper andWikiLeaks: a new model of cooperation aimed at publishing the world's biggest leak, as Yochai Benkler described it in the Harvard Civil-Rights Civil-Liberties Law Review. (My emails to Times executive editor Jill Abramson, Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt, and Keller, were not answered.)

The Times attitude towards Assange and Manning is, at least, consistent with its treatment of leakers in the past. Even though the Times had to defend itself in court for publishing the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellberg told me over the phone that the papers lawyers refused to offer him even the smalles amount of help with his criminal case (which was eventually dismissed). In Ellsbergs telling, A.M. Rosenthal, then the editor-in-chief of the Times, told him there was no policy at the paper regarding prosecutions of sources: Ellsberg was, after all, the first person ever prosecuted for leaking classified government documents to the press.

Editors and reporters have a good deal of ambivalence towards their sources, especially in the national security field, Ellsberg told me. They all thought I had broken the law, and a lot of them may have thought I was a traitor even though they used the material. When Assange expressed his shock to Ellsberg over a critical profile the Times published about him, Ellsberg told him dont take it personally, they didnt treat me any better.

See more here:
Bradley Manning Gets No Love From The New York Times

LONDON (AP) It's rare for an American to generate more sympathy abroad than at home, but Bradley Manning and his trial are unique in a host of ways.

With Manning's trial heating up in the United States, where he is accused of aiding the enemy by leaking classified material to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, his vocal supporters in Britain and Europe are again rallying to his side.

While support for the imprisoned soldier may be weak in the U.S., Manning a dual U.S. and British national by virtue of his Welsh mother has a solid band of supporters in Britain.

In countries with few national secrets at stake in the trove of classified documents that Manning unleashed, many have seized upon his case as a focal point for a wide range of human rights issues, from the ethics of waging pre-emptive wars to the protection of individual freedoms on the Internet. Many saw his harsh treatment in a U.S. military prison as a violation of his own human rights.

"Every solder in every nation has a duty to expose war crimes. That's what Bradley Manning did," said Peter Tatchell, a British gay rights activist who has taken part in the "support Manning" movement. "In many ways, Manning is a true patriot because he's sought to uphold the U.S. constitution. Thanks to Bradley, the American people now know the truth."

Manning, a 25-year-old former intelligence analyst from Oklahoma who is accused of leaking more than 700,000 U.S. battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, has also drawn support from members of the Occupy movement, an international grassroots campaign that has opposed corporate greed.

Naomi Colvin, an Occupy activist, said attitudes toward Manning, an openly gay soldier, are more open-minded in Britain than in America.

"It's much less politicized here than in the U.S. It's not really about 'Is Manning a traitor or not?' that's never been the central question here," she said.

Instead, Colvin said she and her fellow activists were more concerned with the rights abuses that Manning exposed and the humiliation he experienced in detention. When the group started lobbying on Manning's behalf, its focus was on the mistreatment of a U.K. citizen abroad, she said.

Manning's assertion that he was kept in isolation for months and stripped to his underwear every night while in pretrial detention helped build support for him from human rights groups around the world, including from some in the United States.

Still, they face fierce criticism from Americans who side with the prosecutors. U.S. critics argue that Manning had no right to publicly release the classified material, and some have called him a traitor for embarrassing the U.S. military and threatening U.S. national security.

"He indiscriminately put on the Internet the names of hundreds of people, risking their lives for cooperating with the U.S.," said Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of "Necessary Secrets" and a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute.

"I think he behaved recklessly," he said. "I think it's strange for people here that many in Europe are treating him as a hero."

Manning admitted in court in February that he had provided a vast number of documents to WikiLeaks.

In London, protesters have held vigils and demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy to demand better treatment for Manning, most recently on Saturday. More rallies are planned in the coming weeks, Colvin said.

Nathan Fuller, a campaigner for the Support Bradley Manning Network, said from Fort Meade in Maryland that when the group marked Manning's 1,000th day in prison in February, half of its events took place outside the U.S., in countries ranging from Uganda to Australia and Germany.

Backing for Manning has come from an official level, too. In a 2011 report, Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, a noted human rights investigator, praised Manning for uncovering information about the secret rendition of terror suspects. Marty blasted the "cult of secrecy" in western governments and defended the "fundamental role" that whistleblowers like Manning play in society.

Left-leaning segments of Britain's diverse press have been largely sympathetic to Manning's cause, particularly when compared to media coverage in America.

The Guardian newspaper, which has given the Manning and WikiLeaks cases extensive coverage, said 2,500 of its readers voted in favor of Manning winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 more support than any other candidate received.

On Tuesday, commentators in The Guardian again praised Manning, with one saying he had risked everything to stand up for truth.

It may be easier for the British press, and newspapers in other countries, to be sympathetic to Manning's point of view because the secrets he made public deal with the American military and U.S. diplomats and not their own soldiers and envoys.

Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said American press coverage has been more "uniformly unsympathetic" than press reports from abroad.

"Part of that is the mainstream press here doesn't cover the same ideological turf that it does in the U.K. or elsewhere," he said. "But I'd suspect most of it is the mundane fact it's American interests he's accused of threatening, and thatpeople accused of 'aiding the enemy,' rightly or wrongly, tend not to get the most flattering coverage in their home country."

Tim Price, a British playwright who wrote a sympathetic play about Manning's teenage years in Wales called "The Radicalization of Bradley Manning," believed the harsh media coverage in the United States had exposed a blind spot in the U.S. press.

"I think the U.S. media has been unable to make the leap that Bradley might actually be the one soldier defending American ideals and principles and the U.S. military is the party guilty of putting soldiers at risk on a daily basis by waging wars with little idea how to end them," he said.

___

AP writer Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

See the original post:
Bradley Manning generates more sympathy abroad

Bradley Manning has said he wants to change his name to Chelsea Manning. Fine. Thats his business. But he also says that from now on he wants to be referred to as a woman and by female pronouns only: she, her, etc. Sorry, but no. You dont become a woman simply by saying, I am a woman. Such an attempted flight from objective reality, in this case from the objective reality of being male, is bizarre. Mannings name is his business alone, but his sex is not so personal, or so malleable. As is the case for all of us, it is governed by basic scientific and social facts. It is the height of narcissistic arrogance to expect society to refer to you as a woman simply because you say you are one. If I said, I am black, so from now please refer to me as Afro-British, people would mock me. Why? Because Im not black. And likewise, Mr Manning is not a woman.

I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female, said Mr Manning in a statement issued today. He asked that starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun. The Guardian has already complied with this reality-denying request, constantly saying she in its piece on Mr Mannings phantom sex change. To its credit, the BBC has not complied, showing that it still has at least one foot in the real, tangible, sentient world by quite rightly referring to Mr Manning as he. It would be weirdly relativistic for the media now to refer to Mr Manning as she. Journalists are supposed to find facts, to report on the world as it exists, not communicate one mans version of reality as outlined in a statement issued from jail.

Mr Mannings request is of a piece with our therapeutic times, in which were constantly told that how we feel about ourselves is more important that what we actually are or what we really do. So you often see happy-clappy, Oprah-style TV presenters telling objectively ugly people You are beautiful before sometimes adding that sting in the tail: on the inside Young people are taught to worship their self-esteem, to focus on making themselves feel good rather than on achieving something significant in the outside world. We are told that we all have fluid, playful identities, which we can mould and remould however we choose. This is all meant to be quite radical, but in truth it is deeply conservative it encourages people to ignore reality, to forge a myopic obsession with the self, with ones own navel and image and tag, rather than engaging with the broader world and its inhabitants. Theres nothing rebellious in pissing about with ones identity and descriptor it merely speaks to a profound and narcissistic retreat from the physical, social world in favour of, as Christopher Lasch described it, an intense preoccupation with the self.

Of course, some men undergo sex-change surgery, which some people might view as odd but we can at least accept that after such surgery the former man is now a kind of woman. But simply to declare I am a woman when you are in fact a man is surreal. Mr Manning, no man (or woman) is an island; you exist in a world where we have names for things, where language exists for the purpose of expressing ideas about material reality, which means that just as surely as up is up, and down is down, so you are a man.

Brendan ONeill is editor of spiked.

See the rest here:
No, Bradley Manning, you are not a woman - spiked

PROVIDENCE, R.I. Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who now prefers to be called Chelsea Manning, decided to announce the desire to live as a woman the day after sentencing took place because a military prison said publicly it would not provide hormone treatment, his attorney said Monday.

Attorney David Coombs told The Associated Press that Manning had known for a long time he would make such a statement but, "She wanted, essentially, for the media surrounding the trial to dissipate."

Manning did not want people to think the statement was insincere.

"People might think it was an effort to get further attention," said Coombs, who lives in Providence, R.I.

Coombs said he and Manning knew the Army might not provide hormone treatment, but they were hoping the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., would allow it since Manning had been diagnosed with gender-identity disorder by an Army psychiatrist who testified at his trial.

It wasn't until they read a Courthouse News Service story that Manning decided to make the announcement. The story quoted prison spokeswoman Kimberly Lewis saying the prison would not provide hormone therapy. It was published Aug. 20, the day before Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking mountains of classified material to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

"It was Chelsea's intent to do this all along," Coombs said. "It was only after Fort Leavenworth had said that they would not provide any sort of medical treatment that we decided not to wait."

Coombs said he hoped the military prison "will simply do the right thing" so Manning will not have to sue in military or civilian court.

Coombs said at this point, Manning does not want sex-reassignment surgery and expects to be kept with men in prison. The Fort Leavenworth prison is all-male. He said Manning is exploring changing names legally and would request that the military recognize the new name.

Coombs said he had seen online people objecting to taxpayer-funded hormone therapy and said if the Army won't pay for it, Manning will.

Hormone therapy, which typically involves high doses of estrogen to promote breast development and other female characteristics, can help Manning, Coombs said.

"It's just to be comfortable in her own skin," Coombs said.

He described it as similar to ensuring someone with high blood pressure gets medication.

Coombs also said on his blog Monday that Manning chose Elizabeth as his middle name, replacing Edward.

Coombs said Manning knows there is the potential for confusion with the name change, and said Manning expects to be referred to as Bradley when it has to do with events prior to sentencing, the appeal of the court-martial and the request for a presidential pardon. Prison mail must be addressed to Bradley Manning.

"There's a realization that most people know her as Bradley," Coombs said. "Chelsea is a realist and understands."

Manning was demoted from private first class to private at sentencing. Manning will be dishonorably discharged when the soldier finishes the prison sentence. The earliest Manning could be released on parole is 2020.

Coombs also said the Bradley Manning Support Network is changing its name to the Private Manning Support Network. The group has raised more than $1 million and is paying Manning's legal expenses.

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Updated: 10:45 p.m. ET

FORT MEADE, Md. Pfc. Bradley Manning put U.S. military secrets into the hands of Osama bin Laden himself, prosecutors said Monday as the Army intelligence analyst went on trial over the biggest leak of classified material in American history.

Manning's lawyers countered by arguing that he was a "young, naive but good-intentioned" soldier whose struggle to fit in as a gay man in the military made him feel he "needed to do something to make a difference in this world."

Manning, 25, has admitted turning over hundreds of thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, pleading guilty earlier this year to charges that could bring 20 years behind bars. But the military pressed ahead with a court-martial on more serious charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.

Prosecutors said they will present evidence that bin Laden requested and obtained from another al Qaeda member Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department cables published by WikiLeaks.

"This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases and then dumped that information onto the Internet into the hands of the enemy," prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow said.

He said the case is "about what happens when arrogance meets access to sensitive information."

Wearing his dress blue uniform, the slightly built Manning peered through his small eyeglasses at a slide show of the prosecutor's hour-long opening statement, watching on a laptop computer at the defense table. The slide show also was projected on three larger screens in the courtroom, which had seats for only about 50 people.

Later, almost motionless, the soldier from Crescent, Okla., sat forward in his chair, looking toward his defense attorney, David Coombs, throughout his 25-minute opening statement.

Coombs said Manning struggled to do the right thing as "a humanist," a word engraved on his custom-made dog tags. As an analyst in Baghdad, Manning had access to hundreds of millions of documents but selectively leaked material, Coombs said. He mentioned an unclassified video of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack that mistakenly killed civilians, including a Reuters photographer.

"He believed this information showed how we value human life. He was troubled by that. He believed that if the American public saw it, they too would be troubled," Coombs said.

Coombs did not address whether bin Laden ever saw any of the material. The soldier has said he did not believe the information would harm the U.S.

Coombs said Manning struggled privately with gender identity early in his tour of duty, when gays couldn't openly serve in the military.

"His struggles led him to feel that he needed to do something to make a difference in this world," Coombs said. "He needed to do something to help improve what he was seeing."

Later in the day, the court also heard from two Army investigators and Manning's roommate in Iraq, who testified the soldier was online whenever he was in their quarters.

CBS News' Julia Kimani reports that the government is expected to call 141 witnesses throughout the trial, while the defense is expected to call 46.

Manning chose to have his court-martial heard by a judge instead of a jury. It is expected to run all summer. Much of the evidence is classified, which means large portions of the trial are likely to be closed to reporters and the public.

Federal authorities are looking into whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can also be prosecuted. He has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex-crimes allegations.

"This is not justice; never could this be justice," Assange said in a statement Monday. "The verdict was ordained long ago.Its function is not to determine questions such as guilt or innocence, or truth or falsehood. It is a public relationsexercise, designed to provide the government with an alibi for posterity. It is a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warningto people of conscience."

In February, Manning took the stand and read from a 35-page statement in which he said he leaked the material to expose the American military's "bloodlust" and disregard for human life in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The case is the most high-profile prosecution for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for its crackdown on leakers. The six cases brought since Obama took office are more than in all other presidencies combined.

The WikiLeaks case is by far the most voluminous release of classified material in U.S. history, and certainly the most sensational since the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers showed that the U.S. government repeatedly misled the public about the Vietnam War. Their leak to The New York Times set off an epic clash between the Nixon administration and the press and led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the First Amendment.

The material WikiLeaks began publishing in 2010 documented complaints of abuses against Iraqi detainees, a U.S. tally of civilian deaths in Iraq, and America's weak support for the government of Tunisia -- a disclosure that Manning supporters said helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

The Obama administration has said the release of the material threatened to expose valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America's relations with other governments.

Manning's supporters -- including Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg -- have hailed him as a whistleblowing hero and political prisoner. Others say he is a traitor who endangered lives and national security.

Some 20 Manning supporters were in the courtroom, including Princeton University professor and civil rights activist Cornel West and Medea Benjamin, a member of protest group Code Pink.

"I think it's a show trial," Benjamin said. She and others complained about the small courtroom, saying the government was trying to make it look as if Manning had less support than he really has.

"It's important to support him," said Anne Wright, a retired Army colonel. "I spent 29 years in the military, and what Bradley Manning has done is exposed government corruption and brutality."

Supporters were told by the military to turn their TRUTH T-shirts inside out before entering the courtroom.

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Image caption Manning sent this photo to an Army supervisor in 2010, and it was introduced into evidence at his court martial

Bradley Manning, the US soldier who leaked secret US government documents to the Wikileaks website, has announced he wants to live as a woman.

"I am Chelsea Manning," Pte First Class Manning said in a statement to NBC's Today programme. "I am a female."

The 25-year-old said he had felt female since childhood, wanted at once to begin hormone therapy, and wished to be addressed as Chelsea.

Pte Manning faces 35 years in prison for crimes including espionage.

The soldier could be released on parole after at least seven years in jail, his civilian lawyer David Coombs has said.

Mr Coombs has asked President Barack Obama to pardon Pte Manning, and has pledged to appeal against the verdict and sentence.

Pte Manning will serve the sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and on Thursday, Mr Coombs indicated the soldier was willing to take legal action to force the prison to provide hormone therapy if authorities refused.

He said Pte Manning had not indicated whether he wanted to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

"The ultimate goal is to be comfortable in her skin and to be the person that she's never had an opportunity to be," he said.

Asked why Pte Manning was making this announcement now, the day after sentencing, Mr Coombs said: "Chelsea didn't want to have this be something that overshadowed the case."

Pte Manning's struggles with gender identity formed a key part of the defence through the weeks-long court martial.

Defence witnesses, including therapists who had treated Pte Manning, testified that the soldier had spoken of wanting to transition to being a woman, suggesting that these problems had affected his mental health.

Pte Manning's former Army supervisor testified that the accused had sent him a photograph of himself wearing a blond wig and lipstick.

US military prosecutors, meanwhile, described Pte Manning as a notoriety-seeking traitor and asked for a 60-year sentence in order to deter future intelligence leakers.

Pte Manning, who grew up in the US state of Oklahoma and in Wales, joined the Army in 2007 to help pay for university and, according to court martial defence testimony, to shake off a desire to become a woman. The soldier trained as an intelligence analyst and was deployed to Iraq in 2009.

There, Pte Manning became disillusioned with the war and felt increasingly isolated from friends and family.

In May of that year, Pte Manning initiated what subsequently became one of the largest leaks of classified US government documents ever - hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and battlefield reports from Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Bradley Manning: 'I am a woman named Chelsea' - BBC News