The information he allegedly unleashed into cyberspace reverberated across the globe. The anti-war L

Editor s note: Since it was first published in September of 2010, Private Manning and the Making of Wikileaks has been widely considered the definitive article on the life of Bradley Manning . It is the first article to correlate Manning s whistleblowing with that of the Silkwood/Kerr-Mcgee scandal, the first to extensively mine his social network for clues about his upbringing, and the first to debunk the common (and still pervasive) media myth that Manning was a troubled child with emotional problems. The reporting below, by Denver Nicks, offers tour dates for jimmy buffett the most nuanced and complex portrayal of Manning to date and has been cited by several national outlets tour dates for jimmy buffett for its in-depth analysis of this enigmatic tour dates for jimmy buffett Oklahoman.
Midnight, May 22nd, 2010.  Army intelligence analyst Private First Class Bradley E. Manning is sitting at a computer at Contingency Operating Station Hammer, east of Baghdad. He is online, chatting with Adrian Lamo , an ex-hacker and sometimes-journalist based in San Francisco.
"Hypothetical question," he asks Lamo. "If you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time say, 8-9 months tour dates for jimmy buffett and you saw incredible things, awful things things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC what would you do?"
Outside of the chats, little is known about Bradley Manning. We know that he grew up in Crescent, Oklahoma, a town made famous by one of the biggest tour dates for jimmy buffett whistleblowing events in American history a decade before Bradley was born.  Currently, he s in solitary confinement at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, awaiting trial, and unable to speak to the press. His family and many of his close friends have been advised not to talk to the media. If the allegations against Private Manning are true, the 22-year-old from Oklahoma tour dates for jimmy buffett is responsible for the biggest tour dates for jimmy buffett leak of military secrets in American history,
Records of the chats, which continued over several days, portray a dejected, disillusioned soldier. His long-distance relationship has ended, he s been demoted from Specialist to Private First class after he struck another soldier and the army has removed the bolt from his rifle out of concern for his mental state.
Brad feels alone, invisible, like his career and his relationship–the life he had finally built after years of drifting–is falling apart. tour dates for jimmy buffett For months, he'd been disenchanted with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He points to a specific instance, in which, investigating 15 detainees for printing anti-Iraqi literature he found that the paper in question was merely a scholarly critique of corruption in the government and brought the revelation to an officer.
In further chats with Lamo, Brad describes how he used his security clearance and computer skills to access confidential government networks and download classified material, including video of American soldiers killing civilians, hundreds of thousands of internal military reports and more than 260,000 diplomatic cables. tour dates for jimmy buffett Disclosure of the classified material, he says, will have implications of "global tour dates for jimmy buffett scope, and breathtaking depth." He tells Lamo he's been delivering the classified information to Julian Assange, the quixotic founder of the shadowy whistleblowers website Wikileaks, which is releasing it publicly for the world to see.
The information he allegedly unleashed into cyberspace reverberated across the globe. The anti-war Left seized upon the leaks as evidence that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unjust and unwinnable. The Taliban promised to kill those Afghans who, the documents reveal, have collaborated with the Americans. President Obama said the leaks endanger the lives of American troops. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted the leaks will lead to a new free-speech ruling in the supreme court, which could overturn tour dates for jimmy buffett the precedent set in the Pentagon Papers case, the foundation of modern-day jurisprudence on questions of national security and freedom of speech.
Crescent, Oklahoma is stamped out in a one-square-mile rectangular grid and bisected by Highway 74, which becomes Grand Avenue in town. On this main thoroughfare is "the stop sign," a frequently tour dates for jimmy buffett referenced landmark when locals give directions. There is the gas station, where men gather in the mornings to talk and drink coffee; the Baptist church – one of 15 churches in town – an unadorned, rectangular block, with a plain white spire and beige metal siding; Kelly's Café, where locals fill the dining room to capacity at lunchtime. A towering, white grain elevator tour dates for jimmy buffett looms over the skyline. There are a few empty shells tour dates for jimmy buffett of buildings on Grand Avenue, but Crescent lacks the bombed-out look of crumbling decay visible in so many small Oklahoma towns. The cliché is unavoidable–Crescent, by all appearances, is a happy, healthy little town.
Crescent s favorite son is Geese Ausbie, the Crown Prince of the Harlem Globetrotters," but there's another character who isn't as cherished, a 28-year-old woman who spoke up in 1974 and got the world's attention.
Several miles south of town, on the Cimarron River, a decommissioned Kerr-McGee plutonium plant sleeps in quiet, conspicuous retirement. The plant was closed in 1975, a year after plant employee Karen Silkwood was last seen alive at a union meeting at the Hub Café (now closed, across the street from Kelly's). After the meeting, Silkwood drove south on Highway 74 toward Oklahoma City to meet with a reporter from the New York Times allegedly carrying documentation of gross safety violations at the plant. tour dates for jimmy buffett Silkwood's car was discovered crumpled in the embankment, its driver dead. The documents were never found.
An Oscar-nominated film was made about the incident, and the name Silkwood became a rallying cry for union organizers. But, for Crescent locals, the story is more than lore. Many in Crescent know someone who worked at the plant with Karen Silkwood, and for years the town's residents shared an association with whistleblowing and martyrdom.
Perry's Roadhouse is several miles south of town and effectively Crescent's bar. Bumper stickers decorate a back wall: "Don't steal, the government hates competition," and "U.S. Government Philosophy: If it ain't broke, fix it till it is."
Perry's isn't far from where Silkwood died on the same highway, and a few questions from a reporter still get locals speculating. An acquaintance says Silkwood was a drug addict. Perry heard that Kerr-McGee got the state to resurface the road, covering the skid marks before they could be analyzed. A friend of a friend says she backed into a telephone pole, putting the dent in her back bumper that, some believe, is evidence she was run off the road. Invariably, someone will add that Karen Silkwood was not from Crescent and lived in Oklahoma City.
The memory of the Silkwood incident lurks far in the background of life in Crescent–for the most part people don't particularly care to talk about it, and, polite that Crescent locals are, when they do, most don't have much to say. Still, the story remains unsettled. tour dates for jimmy buffett When Bradley Manning was growing up it was 20 years less settled.
Several tour dates for jimmy buffett miles north of Crescent, on Highway 74, a paved county road turns off the highway and into the countryside. The Manning family lived out here, in a two-story house in the country, tour dates for jimmy buffett near the end of a gravel road before it turns to dirt. Trees obscured the view of the house from the street and cast shadows over the property. There was an above ground swimming pool and a bountiful garden that produced what one neighbor called the biggest asparagus stalks he'd ever seen. The house was isolated and quaint. Neighbors were a quarter mile and more away. Brad grew up here with his older sister, Casey, his mother, Susan, and his father, Brian.
Brian Manning spent five years in the navy in the late 1970s, working with the high tech naval systems of the day. He studied computer science in California, tour dates for jimmy buffett and went to work for Hertz Rent-a-Car as an Information Technology tour dates for jimmy buffett manager. While in the Navy he spent time at Cawdor Barracks, in Wales. He married tour dates for jimmy buffett a Welsh woman, Susan, and moved with his family to Crescent, tour dates for jimmy buffett from where he could commute to the Hertz office in Oklahoma City.
"He was just a little nerd," said Danielle, Rhonda's daughter, and a childhood friend of Brad's. As kids, she and Brad rode bikes around the neighborhood, swam in his pool, played Super Mario Brothers tour dates for jimmy buffett at her house and Donkey Kong at his.
Bring up Bradley Manning in Crescent, and you're likely to hear that he was, "too smart for his own good." He was a promising saxophonist tour dates for jimmy buffett in the middle school band, always excelled in the science fair, and starred on the quiz bowl team. On bus trips to quiz bowl competitions around Oklahoma, he and a small group of friends passed the time talking about ideas and big picture questions of right and wrong.
"We'd talk about stuff that, for that age, was pretty deep," said Shanée Watson, who recently graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We discussed morality and philosophy a lot—I know that sounds weird, but that's what we did."
"You would say something, and he would have an opinion, which was a little unusual for a middle school kid," said Rick McCombs, currently the school principal, who was a high school history teacher tour dates for jimmy buffett and coach when Brad was in school. "Don't get me wrong, we had the cut-ups and the clowns and the mean ones and the bullies and those kinds of things, but this young man actually kind of thought on his own."
Johnny Thompson, whose bus stop was last on the route, just after Brad s, recalls a quiet but not exactly anti-social kid. After everyone else was gone I d actually go over there and talk with him a little bit, Thompson said. He was pretty nice if you were nice to him.
As Brad got older his playfulness receded. He stopped playing with neighborhood kids, spending more time on the top floor of his home where he had his computer–this was the late 1990s, just as the Internet was becoming a truly global