[Ppnews] US Intelligence Veteran Defends Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks

Thu Apr 21 17:10:40 EDT 2011

US Intelligence Veteran Defends Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks

18.4.11
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/04/18/us-intelligence-veteran-defends-bradley-manning-and-wikileaks/

The story of Pfc Bradley Manning, the young US 
Army intelligence analyst allegedly responsible 
for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified 
documents to 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/category/wikileaks/>WikiLeaks, 
continues to act as a magnet for supporters 
worldwide, who are appalled by the accounts of 
his solitary confinement, and 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/04/12/on-the-torture-of-bradley-manning-obama-ignores-criticism-by-un-rapporteur-and-300-legal-experts/>the 
humiliation to which he has recently been 
subjected, which has involved him sleeping naked 
at night, and having to stand naked outside his 
call during cell inspections in the morning, even 
though the alleged basis for this humiliation  
that he is at risk of committing suicide  has 
been disproved by the miltary’s own records, in 
which his alleged propensity to commit suicide has been repeatedly challenged.

While sympathizing fully with Pfc Manning’s 
plight, I do hope that those supporting him will 
also realize that the humiliation to which he is 
being subjected, and its probable intent  to 
make him produce false confessions about his 
relationship with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks  
is not unique, as it echoes the conditions in 
which prisoners in the “War on Terror”  at 
Guantánamo and elsewhere, including, 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/12/20/is-bradley-manning-being-held-as-some-sort-of-enemy-combatant/>in 
three instances, on the US mainland  were held 
by the Bush administration, whose detention also 
involved torture and abuse, and the creation of 
circumstances in which confessions would be 
produced, whether they were true or not.

This was part of a disgraceful policy that has 
not come to an end under President Obama, as 
Guantánamo is still open, and 172 men are held 
there, with the administration, Congress and the 
courts having all 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/03/10/guantanamo-obama-turns-the-clock-back-to-the-days-of-bushs-kangaroo-courts-and-worthless-tribunals/>conspired 
to prevent the release of any of them (even 
though 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/01/12/the-political-prisoners-of-guantanamo/>89 
of them have been cleared for release). In 
addition, at Bagram in Afghanistan, there are 
still men held who were seized up to nine years 
ago in other countries, and were rendered to 
Bagram (after a tour of a variety of secret CIA 
prisons), where 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/04/04/broken-justice-at-bagram-for-afghans-and-for-foreign-prisoners-held-by-the-us/>they 
remain in a legal black hole.

While I encourage readers to spare a thought for 
those still held in Guantánamo and Bagram, I 
reiterate that I understand the significance of 
Bradley Manning’s plight, as it is unacceptable 
that the ill-treatment of such a prominent 
prisoner is continuing, despite international 
outrage, just as 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/03/03/death-penalty-for-bradley-manning-the-alleged-wikileaks-whistleblower/>it 
is unacceptable that he has not yet been put 
forward for trial, as he has now been held for 
nearly a year, since his initial arrest in Kuwait last May.

In an important update to Manning’s story, the 
website 
<http://westernfrontonline.net/news/13331-manning-peer-sheds-light-on-wikileaks-former-military-intel-analyst-shares-his-thoughts-on-the-motive-of-alleged-leaks>The 
Western Front recently interviewed Evan 
Knappenberger, an Iraq War veteran and former 
Army intelligence specialist, who graduated from 
the same intelligence school as Manning, and who 
has some important insights: firstly, about how 
dehumanizing it was working as an intel analyst 
in Iraq, and how, at the same time, when it came 
to having access to classified documents on the 
Defense Department’s online network, “Army 
security is [or was] like a Band-Aid on a sunken chest wound.”

Knappenberger also explains how the leaking of 
information by Manning (if indeed it was him) 
“has raised consciousness quite a bit of the true 
nature of what’s going on,” adding that he is 
appalled by the military’s obsession with 
classifying as secret everything that takes place 
in its wars, and how he is also appalled that 
Manning, as a whistleblower, should have rights 
and protections that are denied to him, and also 
regards his treatment as a disgrace.

This is a powerful interview, and I do hope that 
you have the time to read it, and also to circulate it to others.

Manning Peer Sheds Light on WikiLeaks: Former 
military intel analyst shares his thoughts on the motive of alleged leaks
By Will Graff, The Western Front, April 15, 2011

Former military intel analyst shares his thoughts 
on the motive of alleged leaks.

The alleged leaker, intelligence specialist 
Private First Class Bradley Manning, is now in 
Quantico military prison in Virginia, where he 
has been held in solitary confinement since his 
arrest in July 2010. On April 10, nearly 300 top 
legal scholars, authors and experts signed a 
letter condemning his treatment as torture.

Evan Knappenberger, an Iraq War veteran and 
former intelligence specialist in the Army, 
graduated from the same intelligence school as 
Bradley Manning in May 2004 and was given secret clearance.

Knappenberger is now a junior at Western majoring 
in mathematics. He was interviewed last week for 
a PBS Frontline documentary about WikiLeaks, 
Manning and military information security. The 
Western Front interviewed Knappenberger about his 
experience in the military and his connection to WikiLeaks.

The Western Front: What  is your connection to Bradley Manning?

Evan Knappenberger: Well, I have a couple 
connections to Bradley. The first is that we both 
went to the same intelligence school. We went to 
the same basic training company, pretty much an 
identical track all the way through.

They have [Manning’s] chat logs with the guy who 
turned him in. He talks about why he [leaked the 
documents]. He says on those chat logs that it’s 
out of principle. He didn’t like what he saw in 
Iraq. He talks about the collateral murder video, 
watching civilians get killed by American 
soldiers pretty much unprovoked. He had a change 
of heart, I think, that’s why he says he decided 
to release all these documents  if in fact, it was him that did it.

I was involved in torture in Iraq. Part of an 
intel analyst’s job is “targeting.” You take a 
human being and put him on a piece of paper, 
distill his life into one piece of paper. You’ve 
got a grid coordinate of where he lives and a 
little box that says what to do with him: kill, 
capture, detain, exploit, source  you know, 
there’s different things you can do with him. 
When I worked in “targeting,” it was having people killed.

The thing that gets me about that is I don’t 
think anybody who’s aware of what’s going on can 
do that work for very long without having a major 
problem come up. Most of the guys I went through 
intel school with, who went to Iraq with me, are 
either dead, killed themselves, are in a 
long-term care institution or completely 
disabled. I’m actually 50 percent disabled via 
PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), mostly 
because of the stuff that happened.

The Western Front: What kind of access did you have here and in Iraq?

Evan Knappenberger: Army security is like a 
Band-Aid on a sunken chest wound. I remember when 
I was training, before I had my clearance even, 
they were talking about diplomatic cables. It was 
a big scandal at Fort Huachuca [in Arizona], with 
all these kids from analyst school. Somebody said 
[in the cables] Sadaam wanted to negotiate and 
was willing to agree to peace terms before we 
invaded, and Bush said no. And this wasn’t very 
widely known. Somehow it came across on a cable 
at Fort Huachuca, and everybody at the fort knew about it.

It’s interesting the access we had. I did the 
briefing for a two-star general every morning for 
a year. So I had secret and top-secret 
information readily available. The funny thing 
is, Western’s password system they have here on 
all these computers is better security than the 
Army had on their secret computers.

There are 2 million people, many of them not U.S. 
citizens, with access to SIPRNet [Secret Internet 
Protocol Router Network, the Department of 
Defense’s largest network for the exchange of 
classified information and messages]. There are 
1,400 government agencies with SIPR websites. It’s not that secret.

The Western Front: Do you think private military 
contractors play a role in this?

Evan Knappenberger: Oh yeah. I worked in a place 
called a SCIF [Secret Compartmentalized 
Information Facility] and almost anybody, if they 
spoke English, could get in there. It wasn’t hard at all.

Every military base has [a SCIF]. There’s one in 
Bellingham, too. It’s by the airport. The only 
security they have at the SCIFs I worked at was 
one guy on duty at a desk. They had barbed wire 
you could literally step right over.

We basically gave [the Iraqi army] SIPRNet. It’s 
not official, but if you’ve got a secret Internet 
computer sitting there with a wire running across 
from the American side of the base, with no 
guard, you’re basically giving them access.

Then in every Iraqi division command post, you 
have a SIPRNet computer, with all the stuff 
Bradley Manning leaked and massive amounts more.

I could look up FBI files on the SIPRNet. In 
fact, I was reading Hunter Thompson’s Hell’s 
Angels book, and I was like “this sounds cool,” 
and I looked up all the Hell’s Angels.

We looked up the JFK assassination, I couldn’t 
find anything on that. It was kind of a game, 
but, yeah, that’s the SIPRNet. You’ve got access 
to every so-called sensitive piece of information.

You’ve basically got us sitting there in an Iraqi 
division command post, and to make it all better, 
the U.S. Army put one guard guy there to guard 
it. They would switch us off every 12 hours with 
another guy. If he gets up to go to the bathroom, 
the SIPRNet is just sitting there. All you need 
is knowledge of the English language and 
knowledge of how to use Internet Explorer.

The Western Front: Is all the information Bradley 
Manning leaked on those computers under the same security?

Evan Knappenberger: He has top-secret clearance, 
and it’s a little better. It’s like there’s one 
more door you have to go through to get to the 
top-secret computers, maybe. Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t.

The Western Front: What do you think the release 
of these documents and WikiLeaks have accomplished?

Evan Knappenberger: I think it has raised 
consciousness quite a bit of the true nature of 
what’s going on. Anybody now can go see the daily 
incident log of what happened in Iraq. What 
WikiLeaks did, what all of this did, is give real 
credibility to people who want to tell the truth. You can corroborate stories.

The Western Front: What do you think the attacks 
on WikiLeaks and Manning’s imprisonment say about freedom in the United States?

Evan Knappenberger: The fact we think we can 
classify everything that goes on in a war is 
ridiculous. And the fact that the press really 
doesn’t have the freedom to report on the military is ridiculous.

The second part of it is Bradley Manning and his 
treatment. If he was in any other government 
agency or private agency, he’d be considered a 
whistleblower. He’d have protections, but he’s 
not. It shows the gap of human rights in our military.

If he was anybody else, he’d be covered under the 
whistleblower protections or the freedom of 
speech. If a reporter gets classified information 
and publishes it, it’s not a crime. WikiLeaks is 
a reporting agency, so they should be covered 
under that. And anybody that works for them, i.e. 
Bradley Manning, should be covered under that, too.

The Western Front: What should people know about 
Bradley Manning and why should they care about this issue?

Evan Knappenberger: This is an American citizen. 
He’s an all-American kid. Born and raised in 
Oklahoma. If the constitutional rights don’t 
apply to him, it should scare everybody. Even if 
you don’t agree with what he allegedly did, you 
still have the obligation to care about the fact 
that he hasn’t been afforded his trial and he’s 
been treated with cruel and unusual punishment. 
Even if you’re against freedom of the press in 
this case, you still have the obligation to care 
about the kid. He’s being tortured.

It has been almost a year. They wake him up every 
five minutes. He’s stripped naked every day. The 
lights have been on in his cell 24/7 for a year. 
He gets one visitor a week. He can’t exercise in 
his cell, gets an hour a day to walk around a 
larger cell with no bed in it for exercise. Every 
human rights organization in the world has 
condemned his treatment as torture. That should 
scare the shit out of us because he’s not some 
Islamic fundamentalist who talks about Jihad, 
he’s an American kid, modern guy, who listens to 
pop music and happens to be gay.
**********************************

Andy Worthington is the author of 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files/>The 
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 
Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published 
by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the 
US, and available from Amazon  click on the 
following for the 
<http://www.amazon.com/Guantanamo-Files-Stories-Detainees-Americas/dp/0745326641>US 
and the 
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guantanamo-Files-Stories-Detainees-Americas/dp/0745326641>UK) 
and of two other books: 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/stonehenge-celebration-subversion/>Stonehenge: 
Celebration and Subversion and 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/battle-of-the-beanfield/>The 
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