The next day, on 25 May, Manning reflected that he felt connected to army specialist Ethan McCord, who was pictured in the Apache video carrying wounded children from a van. Manning added McCord as a friend on Facebook after the video came out. McCord left the US army and denounced the helicopter attack.
“Amazing how the world works – takes six degrees of separation to a whole new level. It’s almost bookworthy in itself, how this played: event occurs in 2007, I watch video in 2009 with no context, do research, forward information to group of FOI [freedom of information] activists, more research occurs, video is released in 2010, those involved come forward to discuss event, I witness those involved coming forward to discuss publicly, even add them as friends on FB – without them knowing who I am. They touch my life, I touch their life, they touch my life again. Full circle.”
“Are you concerned about CI/CID [counter-intelligence/ criminal investigation division] looking into your Wiki stuff? I was always paranoid.”
“CID has no open investigation. State department will be uberpissed … but I don’t think they’re capable of tracing everything.”
“What about CI?”
“Might be a congressional investigation, and a joint effort to figure out what happened. CI probably took note, but it had no effect on operations. So, it was publicly damaging, but didn’t increase attacks or rhetoric. Joint effort will be purely political, ‘fact finding’ – ‘how can we stop this from happening again’ regarding state dept cables …”
“Why does your job afford you access?”
“Because I had a workstation. I had two computers, one connected to SIPRNet the other to JWICS. They’re government laptops. They’ve been zerofilled because of the pullout. Evidence was destroyed by the system itself.”
“So how would you deploy the cables? If at all … Stored locally, or retrievable?”
“I don’t have a copy any more. They were stored on a centralised server. It was vulnerable as fuck.”
“What’s your endgame plan, then?”
“Well, it was forwarded to WL, and God knows what happens now: hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. If not, then we’re doomed as a species. I will officially give up on the society we have, if nothing happens. The reaction to the video gave me immense hope … CNN’s iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded. People who saw knew there was something wrong. I want people to see the truth, regardless of who they are, because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public. If I knew then what I knew now, kind of thing. Or maybe I’m just young, naive, and stupid.”
Manning elaborated his growing disillusionment with the army and US foreign policy:
“I don’t believe in good guys versus bad guys any more – only see a plethora of states acting in self-interest, with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless. I mean, we’re better in some respects: we’re much more subtle, use a lot more words and legal techniques to legitimise everything. It’s better than disappearing in the middle of the night, but just because something is more subtle, doesn’t make it right. I guess I’m too idealistic.
“I think the thing that got me the most … that made me rethink the world more than anything was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing ‘anti-Iraqi literature’. The Iraqi Federal Police wouldn’t co-operate with US forces, so I was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the ‘bad guys’ were, and how significant this was for the FPs. It turned out they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki [Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki] … I had an interpreter read it for me, and when I found out that it was a benign political critique titled Where Did the Money Go? and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet, I immediately took that information and ran to the officer to explain what was going on. He didn’t want to hear any of it. He told me to shut up, and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding MORE detainees.
“Everything started slipping after that. I saw things differently. I had always questioned the [way] things worked, and investigated to find the truth, but that was a point where I was a part of something. I was actively involved in something that I was completely against.”
“That could happen in Colombia. Different cultures, dude. Life is cheaper.”
“Oh, I’m quite aware, but I was a part of it, and completely helpless.”
“What would you do if your role w/ WikiLeaks seemed in danger of being blown?”
“Try and figure out how I could get my side of the story out before everything was twisted around to make me look like Nidal Hassan [the US army major charged with multiple murder for Fort Hood shooting]. I don’t think it’s going to happen. I mean, I was never noticed … Also, there’s godawful accountability of IP addresses. The network was upgraded, and patched up so many times … and systems would go down, logs would be lost … and when moved or upgraded, hard drives were zeroed. It’s impossible to trace much on these field networks, and who would honestly expect so much information to be exfiltrated from a field network?”
“I’d be one paranoid boy in your shoes.”
“The video came from a server in our domain! And not a single person noticed …”
“How long between the leak and the publication?”
“Some time in February it was uploaded.”
“Uploaded where? How would I transmit something if I had similarly damning data?
“Uhm … preferably OpenSSL the file with AES-256 … then use SFTP at prearranged drop IP addresses, keeping the key separate … and uploading via a different means … The HTTPS submission should suffice legally, though I’d use Tor on top of it … Long term sources do get preference … Veracity … The material is easy to verify because they know a little bit more about the source than a purely anonymous one, and confirmation publicly from earlier material, would make them more likely to publish, I guess. If two of the largest public relations ‘coups’ have come from a single source, for instance. Purely submitting material is more likely to get overlooked without contacting them by other means, and saying, ‘Hey, check your submissions for x.’”
Manning went on to talk about his discovery of the helicopter video:
“I recognised the value of some things. I watched that video cold, for instance. At first glance, it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by a helicopter, no big deal. About two dozen more where that came from, right? But something struck me as odd, with the van thing, and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer’s directory. So I looked into it, eventually tracked down the date, and then the exact GPS co-ord[inates] and I was like, ‘OK, so that’s what happened. Cool … Then I went to the regular internet, and it was still on my mind … So I typed into Google the date, and the location, and then I see this [a New York Times report on the death of the Reuters journalists] … I kept that in my mind for weeks, probably a month and a half, before I forwarded it to [WikiLeaks].”
Manning went on to detail the security laxity that made it easy for him, or anyone else, to siphon data from classified networks without raising suspicion.
“Funny thing is, we transferred so much data on unmarked CDs. Everyone did… videos, movies, music, all out in the open. Bringing CDs to and from the networks was/is a common phenomenon. I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’, erase the music, then write a compressed split file. No-one suspected a thing. Kind of sad. I didn’t even have to hide anything … The culture fed opportunities. Hardest part is arguably internet access – uploading any sensitive data over the open internet is a bad idea, since networks are monitored for any insurgent/terrorist/militia/criminal types.”