Monday, August 9, 2010

Soldier at Center of WikiLeaks Probe May Have Been Protesting DADT

Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking thousands of pages of classified military documents to WikiLeaks.org may have acted as a response to his difficulty serving under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, according to an article in Monday's New York Times.

The Times article paints a picture of a young man from a small, mid-western town, plagued by insecurities, who joined the Army to help build his self confidence, only to find life in the closet unbearable:

Blond and barely grown up, Private Manning worked as an intelligence analyst and was based east of Baghdad. He is suspected of disclosing more than 150,000 diplomatic cables, more than 90,000 intelligence reports on the war in Afghanistan and one video of a military helicopter attack — all of it classified. Most of the information was given to WikiLeaks.org, which posted the war reports after sharing them with three publications, including The New York Times.
WikiLeaks has defended the disclosure, saying transparency is essential to democracy. The Pentagon has denounced the leaks, saying they put American soldiers and their Afghan allies in grave danger.
And while that dispute rages on, with the Pentagon having recently demanded that WikiLeaks remove all secret documents from the Internet and hand over any undisclosed materials in its files, Private Manning is being held in solitary confinement at Quantico, Va., under suicide watch.
Read the full story here.


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