We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks Page #4

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NARRATOR:
Adrian Lamo was known

as "the homeless hacker,"

a couch-surfing

computer infiltrator

who had been convicted of hacking

into The New York Times.

In 2010, not long after the release

of the Collateral Murder video,

Lamo used Twitter to urge his

followers to donate to WikiLeaks.

Only one day later he was contacted

by someone with the screen name

"bradass87."

LAMO:
Frankly, I just didn't find what he

had to say all that interesting at first,

until he started making

references to spilling secrets.

LAMO:
At that point, I knew that

this wasn't some kind of game.

It was for real and that I was going to

have to make some very hard choices.

In Star Trek, every prospective

commanding officer

is expected to pass a test

called the "Kobayashi Maru."

SAAVIK:
Starship Enterprise

on training mission

to Gamma Hydra.

COMPUTER:
Alert. Klingon

torpedoes activated. Alert.

Evasive action!

[BEEPING]

SAAVIK:
Ah!

LAMO:
The test

cannot be passed.

It is there to see how they

deal with a no-win situation.

A no-win situation's a possibility

every commander may face.

Has that never

occurred to you?

No, sir, it has not.

LAMO:
In this case,

it was a no-win situation,

deciding what you're going to

do when no matter what you do,

you're going to screw

somebody over.

NARRATOR:
Unsure what to do,

Adrian contacted Tim Webster,

a friend and former Army

counterintelligence agent

TIM WEBSTER:
Adrian

called me and said,

"Hey, Tim, what would you do

if somebody had approached you

"and said, 'Hey,

I'm leaking secrets. "'

I thought it was

a pretty stupid question,

because of course Adrian knows exactly

what I would have done in that situation.

INTERVIEWER:
What

would you have done?

Well, of course,

turned them in.

There's no... There's nothing else

you can do in that situation.

But Adrian was on the

fence about it ethically.

On one hand, here was this kid leaking

all this classified information,

could potentially cost lives.

On the other hand, here was this

kid who had reached out to Adrian

in confidence

and trusted him.

And Adrian took

that pretty seriously.

He indicated he didn't know

who this person was,

they were just a screen name.

So, very quickly, of course,

the first thing that

anybody would be interested

in is, who is this guy?

JASON EDWARDS:
I first met Bradley

Manning at a New Year's Eve party.

It was a 1930s theme party.

I was the Prince of Wales.

And Brad showed up

without any kind of

costume or persona.

I looked at him

and he was small

and had this kind of ingnue

expression on his face.

This bright blond hair. And so

I said, "Oh, Jean Harlow. "

Wrote that on a name tag,

slapped it on his chest,

then we went on with

the rest of the evening.

When I met him at the party,

he made no mention to me

that he was in the Army.

This came as a surprise to me.

NARRATOR:
To get

government money for college,

Bradley Manning

enlisted in the Army.

In 2007, Manning

began basic training.

He was 19 years old.

Just weeks after he started, he

was sent to a discharge unit

to determine if he

should stay in the Army.

My locker was next to his

and that's when I met him.

Nobody puts their sister's picture

with him posing next to his sister.

It was kind of weird,

but... Oh, well.

But we knew right away he was gay.

It was so obvious. But, so...

Not that I have

a problem with it.

He was small, a little bit

effeminate and that made him

public enemy number one for drill

sergeants to beat the macho into him.

We're talking professional

Army, 30-40-year-old people

that would pick on him

just to torment him.

INTERVIEWER:
And what happened?

Did he get discharged?

No, the funny thing is, he was the

least Army material of anybody there.

And they all got

discharged and he didn't.

NARRATOR:
Instead

of discharging Manning,

the Army decided to make him

an intelligence analyst.

INTEL ANALYST:
There's

a lot of components

that go with Intel analyst.

US Army Intelligence

Recruitment Video

I'm in charge of the security,

document security,

physical security, personal

security, like people's clearances.

Does it make me feel like

James Bond a little bit?

Yeah, to some degree.

What would I like the public

to know about the Army'?

We love what we do.

JIHRLEAH SHOWMAN: He was

definitely what society

would label as

a computer nerd.

He was constantly up all night

building specific computer programs.

INTERVIEWER:
So he was

unusually adept at computers?

He's probably the first person

in the military that I had met

that is as talented as

he was with computers.

But I had to pull him aside several

times for his lack of sleep.

He was desperately

addicted to soda.

He drank approximately a liter

to two liters every night.

So he literally did

not sleep, ever.

[COMMANDER SHOUTING ORDERS]

SHOWMAN:
One time he was

late for a formation

and he had a very public

display, physically.

He was jumping up and down,

flailing his arms,

screaming at the top

of his lungs.

And to me, I had never

seen a soldier do that before.

It had to be something else.

A seizure or

something like that

because it was very

radical body movement.

But it wasn't something else.

He didn't like messing up.

He had to have

everything perfect.

I actually recommended three

times that he not deploy.

[PHONE RINGING]

[ANSWERING MACHINE BEEPS]

Hi, you've reached Brad Manning

at my deployment phone number.

Please leave a message or call

me back later. Thank you.

[BEEPS]

NARRATOR:
In October 2009, Bradley

Manning was sent to Iraq,

posted at Forward Operating Base

Hammer, just outside of Baghdad.

Baghdad

SHOWMAN:
We were the furthest FOB east

that you could go around the Baghdad area.

FOB Hammer

It was definitely the best,

most uneventful place

you could have

been deployed to.

We never had any enemy fire.

We could walk around

without battle gear.

We had a full gym. There was pool tables.

There was a basketball court.

We had a little movie theater.

We had a Pizza Hut,

a Burger King.

A place to get your hair cut.

A place to get a massage.

We had air-conditioned

living quarters.

You could actually get cable

and Internet in your room.

It was literally just

a home away from home.

[GUNFIRE]

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]

[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]

When you receive intel in,

it's extremely raw.

A lot of the times

it's even in Iraqi,

so we have to actually get it

translated and build a product

so that the commander can

actually make military decisions.

NARRATOR:
But much of the information

available to Manning's intelligence unit

had nothing to do with

day-to-day combat operations.

All of the analysts had access

to central computer networks

for the Armed Forces

and the State Department.

With a few key strokes, a

skilled user could gain access

to vast streams of

classified emails, memos

and reports from

around the world.

INTERVIEWER:
Why was it that Private Manning

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