Defense says Manning sought aid for distress

FORT MEADE, Md. – He was late for meetings, and once curled in a fetal position on a storage room floor and clutched his head, a knife at his feet. He carved the words “I want” into a chair.

Another time, he pounded his fists and flipped over a table of computers before he was wrestled into submission. And in April 2010, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning emailed his sergeant a mug shot of himself wearing makeup, dark lipstick and a flowing blonde wig.

“This is my problem,” he wrote in the email. “I have had signs of it for a very long time.”

Signs of Manning’s emotional distress seemed everywhere. Yet according to testimony Tuesday in the sentencing phase of his court martial, Army officers at Fort Drum, N.Y., and in Iraq didn’t cancel Manning’s top secret security clearance, or seek to transfer him out of Iraq or discharge him from the Army.

Had they done so, Manning’s lawyers contend, he would have lost access to the 700,000 classified war logs, diplomatic cables, enemy combatant assessments and other materials that he secretly sent to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks to stop what he considered a cover-up of military atrocities and other abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defense lawyers are seeking to persuade a military judge not to impose the maximum 90-year sentence on Manning, who was convicted last month of espionage and other charges related to the illegal disclosures. They are trying to show that Army commanders ignored signs that Manning was mentally unstable and was nearing a breakdown.

Several defense witnesses testified that they believed Manning could handle sensitive material in Iraq as long as he received counseling. His master sergeant, Paul Adkins, who later was reprimanded and reduced in rank over his handling of Manning, said, “I felt that his therapy would eventually bear fruit. I certainly hoped that to be the case.”

Manning’s email and photo landed in Adkins’ inbox on April 24, 2010. The subject line said, “My Problem,” and Manning addressed his struggle with being gay.

“I thought a career in the military would get rid of it,” he wrote. “It’s not something I seek out for attention, and I’ve been trying very, very hard to get rid of it by placing myself in situations where it would be impossible. But it’s not going away. It’s haunting me more and more as I get older. Now, the consequences of it are dire, at a time when it’s causing me great pain.”

Adkins waited a month to alert his superiors. “I really didn’t think having a picture of one of my soldiers floating around in drag was in the best interest of the intel mission,” he said.

He also recalled when Manning once missed formation at Fort Drum and was found “tensed up and clinched his fists and started screaming.”

Still, Adkins deemed Manning fit for duty. He recommended more therapy and meetings with a chaplain. “We needed analysts to assess the Shia threat,” he said.