There was a small percentage, I’d say maybe 10–15 guys tops, who didn’t care what chapter he was, who just wanted to coexist until they could get out and just get along. But the rest of them—we’re talking mentally unfit. Some of them were there for criminal charges. Everyone who was there was getting kicked out. And between being mentally unfit and mentally unstable and being criminal, and then being locked in this room with the guys saying, “Oh, here’s this little guy”—it was open season on him. Being gay—being Bradley Manning and being gay in the DU—it was hostile. He was constantly on edge, constantly on guard. […]
They have all these beds and bunks that are all lined up and at the front there’s a common area. It’s not much of a common area but there’s a desk and doors, bathroom, storage room and then the entrance to this place. And there were three guys who had him cornered up front, and they were picking on him and he was yelling and screaming back.
And we got there—it was me and a couple of other guys who went up there to start breaking it up—and I’m yelling, “Get the hell out of here, back off.” And I started pulling Manning off him while the other guys were taking care of the ones who were picking on him. And I got Manning off to the side and yeah, he pissed himself. That wasn’t the only time he did that, but that was the time I remember. It happened a few other times, I know a couple of guys who could tell you the same story.17
Manning seems plainly not to have been soldier material. But he was not discharged. Instead, he was “recycled” back into the system. The unnamed soldier from the Fort Leonard Wood discharge unit had thoughts about this, too:
There is something wrong with the system. First off, I was in the DU for a month and in that entire month no one person was recycled from the DU. When I got out, I went home and I was getting periodic phone calls from the guys. Bradley was the only one who got recycled. And like I said, for the life of me I still don’t understand how or why. […] I think I am saying what is wrong with the system. Why was the US Army in such a mess that they were recycling the likes of Bradley Manning?
I know for a fact that in 2007 recruiting numbers were the lowest they had ever been. They were lowering recruitment standards like crazy. I mean, facial tattoos, too tall, too short, too fat, criminal record—it didn’t matter. […] It was take everybody you could get. Keep hold of everybody you can get.
I can’t help Bradley out. I tried to help him out then. A few others of us did but I can’t do anything to help him. […] I’m just saying a lot of people let him down. He is not the first one they let down and he is not the last one. That shit is going on right now at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. It is going on at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and it is going on everywhere there is a training facility.18
At the end of his trials at Fort Leonard Wood, Bradley Manning moved one step closer to the SCIF at FOB Hammer.
With desperate optimism, Manning told a friend (according to the Washington Post) that he was sure that intelligence training in Fort Huachuca would be better. “I’m going to be with people more like me.” And he did enjoy intelligence training. He was mildly reprimanded for broadcasting information about the base that might be considered sensitive on YouTube. But he still got a top-secret security clearance, and in August 2008 joined the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum in far-upstate New York. Another step closer to the SCIF.
At Fort Drum, Private Manning was a paradox the military was scarcely able to digest. On the one hand, he was wholly committed to his work as a soldier. He was doing “computations and analytical work,” he told a friend, and preparing weekly intelligence briefings for the commander. He saw his role in the military as a protector of human life, and it was a mission he believed in: “I feel a great responsibility and duty to people. […] I’m more concerned about making sure that everyone, soldiers, marines, contractor [sic], even the local nationals, get home to their families.” It was more than a task; it was a calling, a life. He fervently believed in the power of intellectual development to help him carry out his duties to his fellow soldier, to his fellow human.
im reading a lot more, delving deeper into philosophy, art, physics, biology, politics then i ever did in school… whats even better with my current position is that i can apply what i learn to provide more information to my officers and commanders, and hopefully save lives… i figure that justifies my sudden choice to this[.]19
What we know about Manning’s time at Fort Drum comes largely from a series of instant-message chats he held over several months with a Chicago youth named Zach Antolak who posts her thoughts in drag as Zinnia Jones on YouTube. Manning reached out to and told her—she is a sympathetic listener—about himself. Revealing conversations with a total stranger who becomes a virtual friend; it is a practice common among Bradley’s generation, and it later brought him to grief.
Manning spent his weekend leave in Boston; he found a steady Brandeis undergraduate boyfriend and a social niche among the idealistic wing of the IT crowd, young people who believed in the emancipatory potential of digital technology and communications. Manning demonstrated against the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy designed to keep gays closeted in the military. He found a world of hip young people, where being gay and brainy is perfectly natural, perfectly normal.
But away from the libertarian paradise of Boston’s undergraduate scene, Bradley Manning did not fit in with quotidian military life at Fort Drum. He couldn’t get along with roommates, one of whom he thought was homophobic, another racist. He was written up for tossing chairs around in a fit of rage. He was written up for yelling at his superiors. He was required to get mental health counseling. Was Manning aware of the clash between his ideal of patriotic service and the reality of actual military life? Sometimes he was:
i actually believe what the army tries to make itself out to be: a diverse place full of people defending the country… male, female, black, white, gay, straight, christian, jewish, asian, old or young, it doesn’t matter to me; we all wear the same green uniform… but its still a male-dominated, christian-right, oppressive institution, with a few hidden jems [sic] of diversity.
Eventually Manning’s vision of the American military as a global protector of freedom came under strain. As one of his Boston friends told the Washington Post, Manning “expressed a feeling to me like how messed up the situation is [in Iraq]. He said things like, ‘If more people knew what was going on over there, they would not support the war.”
According to his superiors at Fort Drum, Manning was not working out as a soldier, and they discussed keeping him back when his unit was deployed to Iraq. However, in the fall of 2009, the occupation was desperate for intelligence analysts with computer skills, and Private Bradley Manning, his superiors hurriedly concluded, showed signs of improvement as a workable soldier.This is how, on October 10, 2009, Private First Class Bradley Manning was deployed to FOB Hammer in Iraq as an intelligence analyst.
Upon arrival at FOB Hammer, Bradley Manning was happy: finally, he saw a chance to use his training and skills to keep people out of harm’s way in the middle of a shooting war. In the SCIF where Manning did his tasks, a large windowless warehouse full of computers and desks and power cords, there were moments of intense and earnest teamwork. Much of the time, though, the SCIF is a big room full of bored soldiers working twelve to fourteen hour shifts, day after day.
There was entertainment available in the system. According to former FOBbit Jimmy Rodriguez, “This stuff was all in a folder. It had a generic name on it so no one would look into it. A mix of games, sex and violence. They loved to watch these clips of Apaches gunning down people and whatnot. It was definitely entertainment.”20 The whole base environment was heavily mediatised, with a live-feed projection from a drone flying over Iraq up on a big screen in the Op Center. “It was mesmeric,” says Van Buren. “We called it ‘war porn,’ though I never saw actual shooting on screen.”
At first Manning thrived in his new setting. He privately informed his supervisor that he was gay, according to a Boston friend, and the supervisor told him it didn’t matter as long as the soldier did his job well. Though still freely posting LGBT-supportive messages on his Facebook page, Manning