INTERVIEW
WITH INTELLIGENCE SPECIALIST RE. WIKILeaks
Evan Knappenberger, an Iraq War veteran
and former intelligence specialist in the
Army, graduated from the same intelligence
school as Bradley Manning in May 2004 and was
given secret clearance.
By Will Graff
April 15, 2011 "Western Front" - -The
alleged leaker, intelligence specialist
Private First Class Bradley Manning, is now
in Quantico military prison in Virginia,
where he has been held in solitary
confinement since his arrest in July 2010. On
April 10, nearly 300 top legal scholars,
authors and experts signed a letter
condemning his treatment as torture.
Knappenberger
is now a junior at Western majoring in
mathematics.
He was
interviewed last week for a PBS Frontline
documentary about WikiLeaks, Manning and
military information security.
The Western
Front interviewed Knappenberger about his
experience in the military and his connection
to WikiLeaks.
What is your connection to
Bradley Manning?
Well, I have
a couple connections to Bradley. The first is
that we both went to the same intelligence
school. We went to the same basic training
company, pretty much an identical track all
the way through.
They have (Mannings)
chat logs with the guy who turned him in. He
talks about why he (leaked the documents). He
says on those chat logs that its out of
principle. He didnt like what he saw in
Iraq. He talks about the collateral murder
video, watching civilians get killed by
American soldiers pretty much unprovoked. He
had a change of heart, I think, thats
why he says he decided to release all these
documents if in fact, it was him that
did it.
I was
involved in torture in Iraq. Part of an intel
analysts job is targeting.You
take a human being and put him on a piece of
paper, distill his life into one piece of
paper. Youve got a grid coordinate of
where he lives and a little box that says
what to do with him: kill, capture, detain,
exploit, source you know, theres
different things you can do with him. When I
worked in targeting, it was having people
killed.
The thing
that gets me about that is I dont think
anybody whos aware of whats going
on can do that work for very long without
having a major problem come up. Most of the
guys I went through intel school with, who
went to Iraq with me, are either dead, killed
themselves, are in a long-term care
institution or completely disabled. Im
actually 50 percent disabled via PTSD (post
traumatic stress disorder), mostly because of
the stuff that happened.
What kind of access did you have here
and in Iraq?
Army security
is like a Band-Aid on a sunken chest wound. I
remember when I was training, before I had my
clearance even, they were talking about
diplomatic cables. It was a big scandal at
Fort Huachuca (Arizona), with all these kids
from analyst school. Somebody said (in the
cables) Sadaam wanted to negotiate and was
willing to agree to peace terms before we
invaded, and Bush said no. And this
wasnt very widely known. Somehow it
came across on a cable at Fort Huachuca, and
everybody at the fort knew about it.
Its
interesting the access we had. I did the
briefing for a two-star general every morning
for a year. So I had secret and top-secret
information readily available. The funny
thing is, Westerns password system they
have here on all these computers is better
security than the Army had on their secret
computers.
There are 2
million people, many of them not U.S.
citizens, with access to SIPRNet (Secret
Internet Protocol Router Network, the
Department of Defenses largest network
for the exchange of classified information
and messages). There are 1,400 government
agencies with SIPR websites. Its not
that secret.
Do you think private military
contractors play a role in this?
Oh yeah. I
worked in a place called a SCIF (Secret
Compartmentalized Information Facility) and
almost anybody, if they spoke English, could
get in there. It wasnt hard at all.
Every
military base has (a SCIF). Theres one
in Bellingham, too. Its by the airport.
The only security they have at the SCIFs I
worked at was one guy on duty at a desk. They
had barbed wire you could literally step
right over.
We basically
gave (the Iraqi army) SIPRNet. Its not
official, but if youve got a secret
Internet computer sitting there with a wire
running across from the American side of the
base, with no guard, youre basically
giving them access.
Then in every
Iraqi division command post, you have a
SIPRNet computer, with all the stuff Bradley
Manning leaked and massive amounts more.
I could look
up FBI files on the SIPRNet. In fact, I was
reading Hunter Thompsons
Hells Angels book, and I
was like this sounds cool, and I
looked up all the Hells Angels.
We looked up
the JFK assassination, I couldnt find
anything on that. It was kind of a game, but,
yeah, thats the SIPRNet. Youve
got access to every so-called sensitive piece
of information.
Youve
basically got us sitting there in an Iraqi
division command post, and to make it all
better, the U.S. Army put one guard guy there
to guard it. They would switch us off every
12 hours with another guy. If he gets up to
go to the bathroom, the SIPRNet is just
sitting there. All you need is knowledge of
the English language and knowledge of how to
use Internet Explorer.
Is all the information Bradley Manning leaked
on those computers, under the same security?
He has top-secret
clearance, and its a little better.
Its like theres one more door you
have to go through to get to the top-secret
computers, maybe. Sometimes there is and
sometimes there isnt.
What do you think the release of these
documents and WikiLeaks have accomplished?
I think it
has raised consciousness quite a bit of the
true nature of whats going on. Anybody
now can go see the daily incident log of what
happened in Iraq. What WikiLeaks did, what
all of this did, is give real credibility to
people who want to tell the truth. You can
corroborate stories.
What do you think the attacks on
WikiLeaks and Mannings imprisonment say
about freedom in the United States?
The fact we
think we can classify everything that goes on
in a war is ridiculous. And the fact that the
press really doesnt have the freedom to
report on the military is ridiculous.
The second
part of it is Bradley Manning and his
treatment. If he was in any other government
agency or private agency, hed be
considered a whistleblower. Hed have
protections, but hes not. It shows the
gap of human rights in our military.
If he was
anybody else, hed be covered under the
whistleblower protections or the freedom of
speech. If a reporter gets classified
information and publishes it, its not a
crime. WikiLeaks is a reporting agency, so
they should be covered under that. And
anybody that works for them, i.e. Bradley
Manning, should be covered under that, too.
What should people know about Bradley
Manning and why should they care about this
issue?
This is an
American citizen. Hes an all-American
kid. Born and raised in Oklahoma. If the
constitutional rights dont apply to him,
it should scare everybody. Even if you
dont agree with what he allegedly did,
you still have the obligation to care about
the fact that he hasnt been afforded
his trial and hes been treated with
cruel and unusual punishment. Even if
youre against freedom of the press in
this case, you still have the obligation to
care about the kid. Hes being tortured.
It has been
almost a year. They wake him up every five
minutes. Hes stripped naked every day.
The lights have been on in his cell 24/7 for
a year. He gets one visitor a week. He
cant exercise in his cell, gets an hour
a day to walk around a larger cell with no
bed in it for exercise. Every human rights
organization in the world has condemned his
treatment as torture. That should scare the
shit out of us because hes not some
Islamic fundamentalist who talks about Jihad,
hes an American kid, modern guy, who
listens to pop music and happens to be gay.