Harding, Luke: WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

There has been much discussion since Manning’s arrest about the role that his sexuality played in the events that led up to the massive WikiLeaks disclosures. There have been suggestions that Manning was contemplating a sex change, based on a couple of remarks he made in the course of an online chat with the hacker Adrian Lamo shortly before his arrest. In one comment, Manning tells Lamo that he “wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed … if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me … plastered all over the world press … as a boy.” In another he complains that his CPU, or central processing unit, “is not made for this motherboard”, an analysis using the language of computers that is seen by some as the complaint of a man anguished by a brain that he felt did not fit his male frame.

But such speculation is unsubstantiated, and has been countered by those who see it as an implicit attack on the trust-worthiness of gay people in the military. Timothy Webster is one who ridicules any correlation between Manning’s sexuality and his leaking of state secrets. A former special agent with US army counter-intelligence, Webster played an important part in the Manning story. He acted as the go-between connecting Lamo, the hacker whom Manning had confided in, and the military, after Lamo decided to turn informant and shop Manning to the authorities.

Webster, who is himself gay, says, “A small but loud-mouthed sideshow of talking heads have tried to use the Manning case as leverage to impugn homosexuals serving in the military. But the notion that the Manning case has anything to do with his sexuality is categorically absurd. Many thousands of homosexual and bisexual men and women are serving honourably and to suggest that their sexuality renders them any less effective in the defence of our nation is bigoted nonsense.”

But Manning’s sexuality is relevant in at least one important regard. His response to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and his willingness to campaign against it semi-openly, was a presage of what was to come. Many gay people in the military took the view that, while they would quietly work to reform the policy from within, they would never disrespect an order. But Manning was too firm in his convictions – some say too hot-headed – to accommodate himself to a regulation that he believed to be unjust. As Jeff Paterson puts it: “He was willing to face retribution and ridicule within the army to fight something he knew was wrong.”

The other reason Manning’s sexuality may prove pertinent was more incidental – it was through his first serious boyfriend that he became introduced to the world of Boston hackers. The boyfriend in question was Tyler Watkins, a self-styled classical musician, singer and drag queen. They met in the autumn of 2008 while Manning was still stationed at Fort Drum. They must have made an unlikely couple, the flamboyant and extrovert Watkins and the quietly focused Manning. But judging by his status updates on Facebook, the soldier fell hard for the queen. Bradley Manning “is cuddling in bed tonight”; “is a happy bunny”; “is in the barracks, alone. I miss you Tyler!”

Watkins is a student of neuroscience and psychology at Brandeis University outside Boston. Manning would regularly make the 300-mile journey from Fort Drum to see him, and in so doing became acquainted with Watkins’ wide network of friends from Brandeis, Boston University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the birthplace of computer geekery that has been described as the “Mesopotamia of hacker culture”. For Manning, it was an entrée into a whole new way of thinking that was worlds apart from the small-town conservatism of Crescent or the buttoned-down rigidity of Fort Drum.

Typical of the new attitudes he was exploring was the “hackerspace” attached to Boston University that he visited in January 2010 while he was on leave back in the US and visiting Watkins. Known as Builds, it is a sort of 21st-century techy version of a 1960s artists’ collective. Its members come together to work on a host of projects, from creating a red robot mouse, to designing a computer system that can record the miles run by athletes at a race track, to studying how to crack open door locks (strictly on their own property). It is part computer workshop, part electronics laboratory, part DIY clinic. What unites these multifarious activities is the hacker culture to which everyone subscribes.

David House, a Boston University graduate who set up the hackerspace there, says that hacking is not the shady skull-and-crossbones activity of breaking into computers that it is often assumed to be. Rather, it is a way of looking at the world.

“It’s about understanding the environment in which we operate, taking it apart, and then expanding upon it and recreating it. Central to it is the idea that information should be free, combined with a deep distrust of authority.”

House points to a book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution , by Steven Levy, which chronicles the rise of the “hacker ethic” at MIT. “Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about … the world from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things,” Levy writes. “They resent any person, physical barrier, or law that tries to keep them from doing this. All information should be free. If you don’t have access to the information you need to improve things, how can you fix them?”

House remembers meeting Manning when he came to the opening of his hackerspace in January 2010. They had a short conversation in which Manning said nothing out of the ordinary. “He did not strike me as someone who would be accused of working against the US government,” House says.

That was the only occasion House met Manning before the soldier’s arrest. Since then, however, House has struck up an important friendship with him, becoming one of only two people (the other is Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs) who are allowed to visit him at Quantico. In the course of several visits, House has developed a more intimate sense of what makes Manning tick.

“He’s very professorial in his thinking. Talking to him is like having a drink with one of your old college professors. He’s very interested in what underpins power, the underlying systems, in an abstract way. That’s why he fit in so well with Boston hacker culture, which has the same academic line.”

The other quality that has struck House is what he calls Manning’s “high moral integrity. He always draws a firm ethical line. There are certain things that he sees as basic human rights that he believes are inviolable.”

One of those inviolable basics that Manning evidently believed in was the value to democratic society of free information. As he said in his web chats with Lamo, “information should be free. It belongs in the public domain. If it’s out in the open … it should be a public good … I want people to see the truth … regardless of who they are … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” A statement that could have been taken straight out of the Boston hackers’ manual.

It was a belief that came powerfully into play when Manning was deliberating about what to do with the vast hoard of state secrets he had been allowed to explore in Iraq. For most soldiers the answer to that conundrum would have been utterly simple: abide by the confidentiality with which you have been entrusted, and get on with your job. But for Manning it was more complicated than that. On the same trip back to Boston in which he visited House’s hackerspace he talked to Tyler Watkins about his dilemma. As Watkins told Wired.com: “He wanted to do the right thing. That was something I think he was struggling with.”