Its hard to really digest all this NSA stuff, the WikiLeaks story is so interesting in itself. This documentary just came out this year, it is called "We Steal Secrets- The story of WikiLeaks". The quote in here supposedly from Assange in this trailer about how he didnt care if the Manning info and WikiLeaks documents could cause Afghan citizens to get hurt because they deserved to die for helping the coalition troops and the Afghan government is pretty shocking. Supposedly WikiLeaks isnt too happy with the film. Alex Gibney did this, he is the guy who did the documentary "Enron the smartest guys in the room" . Enron was one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.
You can rent We Steal Secrets The WikiLeaks Story on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/We-Steal-Secrets-Story-WikiLeaks/dp/B00D8VN1PY
All of this stuff has become so politicized, you rarely hear any debate about how these guys got security clearances. Snowden didnt even have a high school diploma, got a GED, didnt complete his computer courses at a community college and started off a security guard at the nsa? Somehow he becomes a technical officer at the CIA, works for a defense contractor and has full access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover operatives all around the world?
I just finished a pretty decent book on Wikileaks and Manning. I dont know how much of this info is true or propaganda but it seems like Manning was a train wreck, if you come upon somebody in a fetal postion or trying to grab guns and they still maintain security clearances?
If a manager comes in on somebody curled up in a fetal postion on the floor at burger king I dont think they would let them finish out their shift, much less maintain security clearances with access to sensitive data in the united state military. This is the timeline for the Manning leaks and his life at the time .
"After four weeks at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Fort Polk, Louisiana, Manning was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, arriving in October 2009. From his workstation there, he had access to SIPRNet (the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) and JWICS (the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System). Two of his superiors had discussed not taking him to Iraq – it was felt he was "a risk to himself and possibly others," according to a statement later issued by the army – but again the shortage of intelligence analysts held sway.
A month later, in November 2009, he was promoted from Private First Class to Specialist. That same month, according to his chats with Lamo, he made his first contact with WikiLeaks, shortly after it posted 570,000 pager messages from the 9/11 attacks, which it released on November 25. Also in November, Manning wrote to a gender counselor in the United States, said he felt female, and discussed having sex reassignment surgery. The counselor told Steve Fishman of New York Magazine that it was clear Manning was in crisis, partly because of his gender concerns, but also because he was opposed to the kind of war in which he found himself involved.
On December 20, 2009,
after being told he would lose his one day off a week for being persistently late, he overturned a table in a conference room, damaging a computer that was sitting on it, and in the view of one soldier looked as though he was about to grab a rifle from a gun rack, before his arms were pinned behind his back. Several witnesses to the incident believed his access to sensitive material ought to have been withdrawn at that point. The following month, he began posting on Facebook that he felt alone and hopeless.
Army investigators told a pre-trial hearing that they believed Manning downloaded the Iraq and Afghan war logs around this time, in January 2010. WikiLeaks tweeted on January 8 that year that they had obtained "encrypted videos of US bomb strikes on civilians," and linked to a story about the May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan. Manning put the files on a digital storage card for his camera and took it home with him on a leave in early 2010.
During the same month, Manning traveled to the United States via Germany for a two-week holiday, arriving on January 24, and attended a party at Boston University's hacker space. It was during this visit that Manning first lived for a few days as a woman, dressing in women's clothes, wearing a wig and going out. After his arrest, his former partner, Tyler Watkins, told Kevin Poulsen of Wired that Manning had said during the January visit that he had found some sensitive information and was considering leaking it.
Manning told Lamo he passed the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral murder") video to WikiLeaks shortly after this incident, in February 2010. In April, just as WikiLeaks published the video, Manning sent an e-mail to his master sergeant, Paul Adkins, saying he was suffering from gender dysphoria and attaching a photograph of himself dressed as a woman. Captain Steven Lim, Manning's commander, said he first saw the e-mail after Manning's arrest – when information about hormone replacement therapy was found in his room in Baghdad – and learned that Manning had been calling himself Breanna.
Manning told Lamo that his commander had found out about the gender issue before his arrest, after looking at his medical files at the beginning of May. He said he had set up Twitter and YouTube accounts in Breanna's name to give her a digital presence, writing in the Lamo chat: "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 ... the CPU is not made for this motherboard ..."
On April 30, he posted on Facebook that he was utterly lost, and over the next few days that "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," that he was "beyond frustrated," and "livid" after being "lectured by ex-boyfriend despite months of relationship ambiguity ..." On May 7, he seemed to spiral out of control.
According to army witnesses, he was found curled into a fetal position in a storage cupboard, with a knife at his feet, and had cut the words "I want" into a vinyl chair.
A few hours later he had an altercation with a female intelligence analyst, Specialist Jihrleah Showman, during which he punched her in the face. The brigade psychiatrist recommended a discharge, referring to an "occupational problem and adjustment disorder."
His master sergeant removed the bolt from his weapon, and he was sent to work in the supply office, though at this point his security clearance remained in place. "
Well played plom. I am a bit of an Ontarian.
good job Matty
