WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

The Lamo dialogues

Contingency Operating Station Hammer, Iraq

21 May 2010

“I can’t believe what I’m telling you”

BRADASS87

At his sweltering army base in the Iraqi desert, specialist Bradley Manning showed signs of considerable stress in the weeks following Assange’s release of the Apache helicopter video. In web chats, he confided that he had had “about three breakdowns” as a result of his emotional insecurity, and was “self-medicating like crazy”. He added: “I’ve been isolated for so long … I’ve totally lost my mind … I’m a wreck.” On 5 May, Manning posted on Facebook that he was “left with the sinking feeling that he doesn’t have anything left”.

Part of this emotional turmoil was probably related to the break-up of Manning’s relationship with Tyler Watkins back in Boston, which took place around the same time. But he was also feeling scared about the possible fall-out from his “hacktivist” activities, as he described them, with WikiLeaks. At one point he boasted that “No one suspected a thing … Odds are, they never will.” But at others he contemplated going to prison for the rest of his life, or even the death penalty.

“I’ve made a huge mess … I think I’m in more potential heat than you ever were,” he would confide online to Adrian Lamo, a hacker in the US who himself had been sentenced to two years’ probation for having hacked into computers in a range of enterprises including the New York Times. The combination of losing Watkins and feeling under threat of discovery by the authorities had clearly left Manning feeling rattled. Days before he began unburdening to Lamo over the internet, he was demoted from the rank of specialist to that of private first class, after he punched another soldier in the face.

Julian Assange had recently publicised, in rapid succession, four leaked classified files he had laid his hands on, all of different types, but all accessible to a member of the US army in Manning’s position. At some point between mid-January and mid-February, Assange received a copy of the cable from the Reykjavik embassy, which he published to good effect during his Iceland media campaign. Posted on 18 February, it was later described by Manning as a “test”.

On 15 March, Assange next posted a lengthy report about WikiLeaks itself, written by an army “cyber counter-intelligence analyst” and headlined by Assange “US intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks”. The “special report” dated from 2008 and its author was exercised about lists of military equipment WikiLeaks had managed to obtain. Despite its 32 pages, the report was really a statement of the obvious: that a good way to deter WikiLeaks would be to track down and punish the leakers. But Assange’s bold headline was a sound journalistic method of advertising and attracting donations.

Two weeks later, on 29 March, Assange caused more turbulence in Iceland by posting the series of US state department profiles of top local politicians: they appeared to have been taken from a separate biographical intelligence folder, rather than from a cabled dispatch. Icelandic officials called in the US charge d’affaires, Sam Watson, to make a complaint.

Just one week on, Assange flew from Reykjavik to Washington to publicise the Apache video. It appeared from what Manning said subsequently that he had done detective work on the video and leaked it in February after finding it in a legal dossier, a Judge-Advocate-General (JAG) file, presumably because the Reuters employees’ deaths led to a formal investigation at the time.

These four leaks were, of course, only hors d’oeuvres. Assange had also acquired a whole banquet of data: a file on Guantánamo inmates; a huge batch of US army “significant activities” reports detailing the ongoing Afghan war; a similar set of logs from the occupation of Iraq; and – most sensational of all – following the successful “test” with the Reykjavik cable leak, Manning had, it was later alleged, managed to supply Assange with a second entire trove of all 250,000 cables to be found in the “Net-Centric Diplomacy” database to which his security clearance gave the young soldier access.

Although the precautions practised by Manning and Assange had apparently worked well to date, it was perhaps no wonder that Manning felt exposed.

The process in which he first reached out to, and gained confidence in, Assange had been slow and painstaking, according to the later published extracts from what were said to be his chat logs. Neither he nor his lawyers have disputed their authenticity. The geeky young soldier seems to have first contacted the “crazy white-haired dude” in late November 2009, but tentatively so. He needed to be certain that WikiLeaks could be trusted to receive dynamite material without his own identity becoming known.

For a while he remained uncertain even about the person with whom he was communicating. He was in contact with a computer user claiming to be Assange, but was it really him? Sitting at his workstation in the Iraqi desert, how could Manning be sure? It took him four months to acquire that certainty. In his exchanges with Assange, he asked the Australian for details about how he was being followed by US state department officials. He then checked that information against what Assange was quoted as saying in the press, and the two precisely correlated. He also used his own security clearance to check up on the activities of the Northern Europe Diplomatic Security Team, the intelligence body that was most likely to have been doing the surveillance, and found that, too, correlated with Assange’s description.

Manning’s test with the Reykjavik cable dummy run would have confirmed not only that they could communicate safely, but also Assange’s ability to publish what he sent. With mounting confidence, Manning could press ahead with the big stuff.

What precisely were the transactions between the two men? By his own admission to Lamo, Manning “developed a relationship with Assange … but I don’t know much more than what he tells me, which is very little”. In interviews, Lamo has gone further, claiming that Manning told him he used an encrypted internet conferencing service to communicate directly with Assange, and that though they never met in person Assange actively “coached” Manning as to what kind of data he should transmit and how. Those claims have only come from Lamo, and have never been substantiated by supporting evidence.

What seems more certain is that some form of secure connection was created chiefly, or perhaps exclusively, for Manning, allowing him to pipe secret documents and videos directly to WikiLeaks. In his exchanges with Lamo, Manning described his technique. He would take a file of material, having scraped it out of the military system somehow, and encrypt it using the AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard, with a key size of 256 bits) cipher, considered one of the most secure methods.

He would then send the encrypted material via a secure FTP (file transfer protocol) to a server at a particular internet address. Finally, the encryption passcode that Manning devised would be sent separately, via Tor, making it very hard for any surveillance authorities to know where the information began its journey.

Matt Blaze, an associate professor in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in cryptology, says the system believed to have been constructed by Manning was a pretty straightforward technique for secure transmission. “From a computer security point of view straightforward ways are usually pretty good. Complex ways are liable to go wrong.”

Kevin Poulsen, the senior editor at Wired who published a partial version of the Lamo web chat – and himself a notorious former hacker – points out that the passage in the conversation in which Manning describes the transmission technique is hypothetical. Manning’s response is to a hypothetical question from Lamo: “how would I transmit something if I had damning data?” But if Manning was indeed describing the way he passed documents to WikiLeaks then it was very significant. “It goes way, way beyond the usual WikiLeaks method of uploading material to its website,” Poulsen says. “If it was the way he transmitted to WikiLeaks then it shows there must have been some degree of contact with WikiLeaks that went beyond the normal procedures.”

By 21 May, it can be assumed that Assange and any of their mutual links in the Boston hacker scene were strictly avoiding all contact with Bradley Manning – for his sake as much as theirs. It was unfortunate for them that Manning then started sending messages to Adrian Lamo instead. He made contact with him the day a piece appeared in Wired magazine sympathetically quoting Lamo on his own recent diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, his depressions, and his experience of psychiatric hospitalisation.

According to Lamo’s version, published in Wired, in that first chat, Manning, who was using the pseudonym Bradass87, volunteered enough information to be easily traced. (The logs have been further edited here, for clarity).

“I’m an army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern Baghdad, pending discharge for ‘adjustment disorder’ … I’m sure you’re pretty busy. If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight-plus months, what would you do?”

The next day, he started to blurt out confessions. The statements this tormented 22-year-old made about the biggest leak in US official history – some intimate, some desperate, some intelligent and principled – have to serve, for now, as the nearest thing we have to Bradley Manning’s own testament. They make it clear that he was not a thief, not venal, not mad, and not a traitor. He believed that, somehow, he was doing a good thing.

“Hypothetical question: if you had free rein over classified networks for long periods of time, say, 8-9 months, 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? (or Guantánamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC [Victory Base Complex] for that matter) Things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people, say, a database of half a million events during the Iraq war from 2004 to 2009, with reports, date time groups, lat[itude]-lon[gitude] locations, casualty figures? Or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?”

Manning confessed: “The air gap has been penetrated.” The air gap is computer jargon, in this context, for the way the military internet is kept physically separate, for security reasons, from civilian servers, on which the ordinary commercial internet runs.

Lamo prompted him: “How so?”

“Let’s just say ‘someone’ I know intimately well has been penetrating US classified networks, mining data like the ones described, and been transferring that data from the classified networks over the ‘air gap’ onto a commercial network computer: sorting the data, compressing it, encrypting it, and uploading it to a crazy white-haired Aussie who can’t seem to stay in one country very long.”

He went on: “Crazy white-haired dude = Julian Assange. In other words, I’ve made a huge mess. (I’m sorry. I’m just emotionally fractured. I’m a total mess. I think I’m in more potential heat than you ever were.)”

Lamo continued to press him: “How long have you helped WikiLeaks?”

“Since they released the 9/11 pager messages. I immediately recognised that they were from an NSA [National Security Agency] database, and I felt comfortable enough to come forward.”

“So, right after Thanksgiving timeframe of 2009?”

“Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public.”

“What sort of content?”

“Uhm … crazy, almost criminal, political back-dealings. The non-PR versions of world events and crises. Uhm … All kinds of stuff, like everything from the buildup to the Iraq war … to what the actual content of ‘aid packages’ is. For instance, PR that the US is sending aid to Pakistan includes funding for water/food/ clothing. That much is true, it includes that, but the other 85% of it is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing, instead of Americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis. There’s so much. It affects everybody on earth.

“Everywhere there’s a US post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madagascar: if it’s a country, and it’s recognised by the US as a country, it’s got dirt on it. It’s open diplomacy, world-wide anarchy in CSV format [a simple text format]. It’s Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It’s beautiful, and horrifying, and it’s important that it gets out. I feel for some bizarre reason it might actually change something. I just don’t wish to be a part of it, at least not now … I’m not ready. I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me plastered all over the world press as a boy. I’ve totally lost my mind. I make no sense. The CPU [central processing unit of a computer] is not made for this mother-board … >sigh< … I just wanted enough time to figure myself out, to be myself … and not be running around all the time, trying to meet someone else’s expectations.

“I’m just kind of drifting now, waiting to redeploy to the US, be discharged and figure out how on earth I’m going to transition – all while witnessing the world freak out, as its most intimate secrets are revealed. It’s such an awkward place to be in, emotionally and psychologically.

“I can’t believe what I’m confessing to you … I’ve been so isolated so long. I just wanted to be nice, and live a normal life but events kept forcing me to figure out ways to survive. Smart enough to know what’s going on, but helpless to do anything … No one took any notice of me … I’m self-medicating like crazy, when I’m not toiling in the supply office (my new location, since I’m being discharged, I’m not offically intel anymore).”

“What kind of scandal?”

“Hundreds of them.”

“Like what? I’m genuinely curious about details.”

“I don’t know. There’s so many. I don’t have the original material any more … uhmm … the Holy See and its position on the Vatican sex scandals.”

“Play it by ear.”

“The broiling one in Germany … I’m sorry, there’s so many. It’s impossible for any one human to read all quarter-million and not feel overwhelmed, and possibly desensitised. The scope is so broad, and yet the depth so rich.”

“Give me some bona fides … Yanno? Any specifics.”

“This one was a test: Classified cable from US Embassy Reykjavik on Icesave dated 13 Jan 2010. The result of that one was that the Icelandic ambassador to the US was recalled, and fired. That’s just one cable.”

“Anything unreleased?”

“I’d have to ask Assange. I zerofilled [deleted] the original.”

“Why do you answer to him?”

“I don’t. I just want the material out there. I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“I’ve been considering helping WikiLeaks with Opsec [operational security].”

“They have decent Opsec. I’m obviously violating it. I’m a wreck. I’m a total fucking wreck right now.”

The transcript edited by Lamo resumes a little while later, with some more confessions:

“I’m a source, not quite a volunteer. I mean, I’m a high profile source, and I’ve developed a relationship with Assange, but I don’t know much more than what he tells me, which is very little. It took me four months to confirm that the person I was communicating was in fact Assange.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I gathered more info when I questioned him, whenever he was being tailed in Sweden by state department officials. I was trying to figure out who was following him, and why – and he was telling me stories of other times he’s been followed, and they matched up with the ones he’s said publicly.”

“Did that bear out? The surveillance?”

“Based on the description he gave me, I assessed it was the Northern Europe Diplomatic Security Team, trying to figure out how he got the Reykjavik cable. They also caught wind that he had a video of the Garani airstrike in Afghanistan, which he has, but hasn’t decrypted yet. The production team was actually working on the Baghdad strike, though, which was never really encrypted. He’s got the whole 15-6 [investigation report] for that incident, so it won’t just be video with no context. But it’s not nearly as damning: it was an awful incident, but nothing like the Baghdad one. The investigating officers left the material unprotected, sitting in a directory on a centcom.smil.mil server but they did zip up the files, AES-256, with an excellent password, so afaik [as far as I know] it hasn’t been broken yet … 14+ char[acter]s. I can’t believe what I’m telling you.”

On 23 May, Lamo took the initiative in contacting Manning again. He did not tell the young soldier that he had already turned him in to the US military. Lamo subsequently said he thought it was his patriotic duty: “I wouldn’t have done this, if lives weren’t in danger. He was in a war zone, and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air.” Lamo set out to pump his new friend for yet more details:

“Anything new & exciting?”

“No, was outside in the sun all day, 110 degrees F, doing various details for a visiting band and some college team’s cheerleaders. Ran a barbecue, but no one showed up. Threw a lot of food away. Yes, football cheerleaders, visiting on off-season – a part of Morale Welfare and Recreation (MWR) projects. I’m sunburned, and smell like charcoal, sweat, and sunscreen. That’s about all that’s new.”

“Does Assange use AIM [AOL instant messaging] or other messaging services? I’d like to chat with him one of these days about Opsec. My only credentials beyond intrusion are that the FBI never got my data or found me, before my negotiated surrender, but that’s something. And my data was never recovered.”

“No he does not use AIM.”

“How would I get hold of him?”

“He would come to you … he does use OTR [Off The Record encryption for instant messaging] … but discusses nothing Opsec … He might use the ccc.de jabber server [the German Chaos Computer Club confidential messaging service] … but you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Gotcha.”

“I’m going to grab some dinner, ttyl [talk to you later].”

They do resume the talk later, with Lamo asking: “Are you Baptist by any chance?”

“Raised Catholic. Never believed a word of it. I’m godless. I guess I follow humanist values though. Have custom dog-tags that say ‘Humanist’ … I was the only non-religous person in town – more pews than people. I understand them, though, I’m not mean to them. They really don’t know. I politely disagree, but they are the ones who get uncomfortable when I make, very politely, good leading points … New Yorker is running 10k word article on wl.org on 30 May, btw [by the way].”

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.”

“Tor?”

“Tor + SSL + SFTP… I even asked the NSA guy if he could find any suspicious activity coming out of local networks. He shrugged and said, ‘It’s not a priority,’ went back to watching Eagle’s Eye. So, it was a massive data spillage, facilitated by numerous factors, both physically, technically, and culturally. Perfect example of how not to do Infosec … Listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history … Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis – a perfect storm. >sigh< Sounds pretty bad huh? … Well, it SHOULD be better! It’s sad. I mean what if I were someone more malicious? I could’ve sold to Russia or China, and made bank!”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because it’s public data. It belongs in the public domain. Information should be free. Because another state would just take advantage of the information, try and get some edge. If it’s out in the open, it should be a public good, rather than some slimy intel collector. I’m crazy like that. I’m not a bad person, I keep track of everything. I watch the whole thing unfold from a distance. I read what everyone says, look at pictures, keep tabs, and feel for them since I’m basically playing a vital role in their life without ever meeting them. I was like that as an intelligence analyst as well. Most didn’t care, but I knew I was playing a role in the lives of hundreds of people, without them knowing me. But I cared, and kept track of some of the details, made sure everybody was OK. I don’t think of myself as playing ‘god’ or anything, because I’m not: I’m just playing my role for the moment. I don’t control the way they react. There are far more people who do what I do, in state interest, on daily basis, and don’t give a fuck – that’s how I try to separate myself from my (former) colleagues … I’m not sure whether I’d be considered a type of ‘hacker’, ‘cracker’, ‘hacktivist’, ‘leaker’, or what. I’m just me, really … I couldn’t be a spy. Spies don’t post things up for the world to see.”

*

Right after Lamo denounced him, Manning was arrested, and flown out of Iraq to a military jail at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. A few weeks later, he was charged with “transferring classified data on to his personal computer and adding unauthorised software to a classified computer system in connection with the leaking of a video of a helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007”, and “communicating, transmitting and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source and disclosing classified information concerning the national defence with reason to believe that the information could cause injury to the United States.” Later, he was flown back to the US and has been imprisoned since at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, 30 miles south-west of Washington DC. Although he has not been tried or convicted, he is being made to suffer under harsh conditions. He spends 23 hours a day alone in a 6ft by 12 ft cell, with one hour’s exercise in which he walks figures-of-eight in an empty room. According to his lawyer, Manning is not allowed to sleep after being wakened at 5am. If he ever tries to do so, he is immediately made to sit or stand up by the guards, who are not allowed to converse with him. Any attempt to do press-ups or other exercise in his cell is forcibly prevented.

“The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes by asking him if he is OK. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is OK. He receives each of his meals in his cell. He is not allowed to have a pillow or sheets. However, he is given access to two blankets and has recently been given a new mattress that has a built-in pillow. He is not allowed to have any personal items.”

Manning’s friends say he is being subject to near-torture in an effort to break him and have him implicate Assange in a conspiracy charge. David House, one of only two people allowed to visit Manning, says he has witnessed the soldier’s deterioration, both mental and physical, over the months of incarceration. House says that every time he has seen Manning in the brig the prisoner has been a little less fluid in his speech, a little less able to express complex ideas and put them eloquently. “Each time I go, there seems to have been a remarkable decline. That’s physical, too. When I first saw him he was bright-eyed and strong like he was in early photographs, but now he looks weak, he has huge bags under his eyes and his muscles have turned to fat. It’s hard watching someone over the months sicken like that.”

The US army says that it prods him every five minutes for Manning’s own welfare. Because he is potentially suicidal, they say he has been placed under a prevention of injury order. Manning himself may well be recalling what he told his interlocutor in the chat logs: “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.” He is allowed books, and late in 2010 asked to be sent in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.