You knew this was coming, right? In the tragicomedy of errors leading to the WikiLeaks dump, the notion that an Army private could not only access, but allegedly copy — and share with the world — data the U.S. government had labeled secret, we learn a key fact today: Army commanders sent Pfc. Bradley Manning to Iraq, where he purportedly pilfered more than a quarter-million documents, over the objection of his immediate superior, according to McClatchy Newspapers:
Investigators have concluded that Army commanders ignored advice not to send to Iraq an Army private who is now accused of downloading hundreds of thousands of sensitive reports and diplomatic cables that ended up on the WikiLeaks website in the largest single security breach in American history, McClatchy Newspapers has learned.
Pfc. Bradley Manning’s direct supervisor warned that Manning had thrown chairs at colleagues and shouted at higher-ranking soldiers in the year he was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y., and advised that Manning shouldn’t be sent to Iraq, where his job would entail accessing classified documents through the Defense Department’s computer system.
But superior officers decided to ignore the advice because the unit was short of intelligence analysts and needed Manning’s skills, two military officials familiar with the investigation told McClatchy Newspapers.
This kind of pressure not only led to Manning’s deployment (he’s currently being held in a Marine brig in Virginia pending a mental-health hearing), but to the deployment of thousands of troops that the Army should have kept at home but didn’t because they needed bodies on the front lines. Kind of makes you wonder what other surprises await us, either overseas or when these folks return.