NATIONAL POST: Son of a broken marriage between American father and a Welsh mother, the young Bradley Manning was teased for being a geek and gay.In light of this, his choice of the U.S. military as a career seems unlikely but it appears he was attracted by the chance to expand his computer expertise. It was also a way of getting the army to pay for college.
Today, he's accused of being the man behind the WikiLeaks furor, a disgruntled squaddie in Iraq who downloaded thousands of sensitive U.S. documents and handed them over to the whistleblowing website.
"He was a funny little character, really on the ball, a really bright kid. [He] loved computers, absolutely loved them," said James Kirkpatrick, who knew him at school in Harverfordwest [sic], Wales, his mother's hometown to which she returned after her divorce.
"Obviously the Army there has got very good technology and good training for computers so I can see why he may have joined it but you never would have expected him to do so," he told the BBC.
But Private First Class Manning, now 23, had a trigger-hair temper and would slam books on the desk in rage if fellow students didn't pay attention.
"It was probably the worst experience anyone could go through," said Rowan John, a former classmate who was openly gay, according to The New York Times. "Being different like me, or Bradley, in the middle of nowhere is like going back in time to the Dark Ages." >>> Araminta Wordsworth, National Post news services | Thursday, December 02, 2010
