U.S. National Security Culture: From QueerPsychopathology to Queer CitizenshipHamilton Bean

ABSTRACT

The case of Chelsea Manning represents both continuity and change in the history ofU.S. national security culture. Manning’s stated motives are similar to the motives ofother national security leakers; however, pre-court-martial media discourse (June 2010–January 2012) often emphasizes Manning’s sexual orientation, implying that queerpsychopathology uniquely explains her decision to provide classified material toWikiLeaks. Such commentary reflects and reinforces the persistent institutional andcultural myth that homosexuality endangers national security. Manning’s case,however, suggests opportunities for the development of queer citizenship within U.S.national security affairs.

Daniel Ellsberg leaked the top-secret “Pentagon Papers” to the New York Timesin 1971. The leak exposed presidential deception concerning the Vietnam War,thereby undermining public support for the War and hastening its end.1 The leakalso catalyzed a series of events, including the Watergate burglary, that led to theresignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. Commentators have under-standably drawn parallels between Ellsberg and Chelsea Manning. The Guard-ian’s Glenn Greenwald wrote, “Those wanting the Army Private [Manning]imprisoned are afraid to condemn the virtually identical acts of Daniel Ells-berg.”2 The Christian Science Monitor’s Anna Mulrine asked in a headline: “IsBradley Manning the new Ellsberg?”3 Ellsberg has, in fact, become one of Man-ning’s most vocal defenders. He famously asserted in a March 2011 interview withCNN, “I was that young man; I was Bradley Manning.”4 Ellsberg simply may have

Copyright © 2014 Michigan State University. Hamilton Bean, “U.S. National Security Culture: FromQueer Psychopathology to Queer Citizenship,” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 1.1 (2014): 52–79. ISSN 2327-1574. All rights reserved.

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meant to convey his sympathy and support for Manning; however, one objectiveof this article is to explore the meaning and accuracy of Ellsberg’s statement inorder to contextualize pre-court-martial media discourse (June 2010–January2012) concerning the significance of Manning’s sexual orientation.5

Comparing the Ellsberg and Manning cases reveals the persistent culturalassumption that homosexuality represents a form of psychopathology. Thisassumption, in turn, underwrites the enduring myth that homosexuality pro-motes the divulging of state secrets.6 In particular, Ellsberg and Manning sharemembership within a U.S. national security culture that has long depictedhomosexuality as a destabilizing and dangerous condition. The Nixon adminis-tration attempted to label Ellsberg a homosexual in order to discredit him,7 andpre-court-martial media portrayals of Manning often implied that her leaks werecaused by queer psychopathology—an ill-defined condition that presumablymakes homosexuals prone to disloyalty and emotional instability, and, therefore,more likely to spill secrets.8 The Nixon administration failed in its efforts toattribute queer psychopathology to Ellsberg. In Manning’s case, however, bothright- and left-leaning commentators succeeded in drawing public attention toManning’s sexual orientation. For example, American Conservative Daily’s GeneLalor declared, “Being gay is what led him [Manning] to turn traitor and attemptto embarrass and undermine his country by feeding secret documents to anotherlowlife, Julian Assange.”9 In a profile in the New York Times, Ginger Thompsonwrote that Manning’s “social life was defined by the need to conceal his sexualityunder [the U.S. Army’s policy of] ‘don’t ask, don’t tell [DADT].’”10 Suchcommentary deflected attention away from problematic U.S. national securitypolicies and practices that Manning’s leaks exposed.

Attempts to identify a causal connection between sexual orientation andnational security leaking are both misguided and futile. Manning’s rhetoric isfilled with ambiguity, contradiction, and outright confusion, thereby undermin-ing commentators’ preferred framings of her leaks. Deterministically attributingthese leaks to the emotional distress that Manning suffered due to homophobicabuse perpetuates American culture’s longstanding “amputation of personalcomplexity into categories of simple identity.”11 Manning’s rhetoric insteadinvites audiences to consider the “queerness” of her case.12 Categorical indeter-minacy and potentiality lie at the heart of queer theorizing; thus, analysis ofManning’s rhetoric supports a second objective of this article, namely, to identifyopportunities for the development of queer citizenship within U.S. nationalsecurity affairs.13

With these two objectives in mind (contextualization of pre-court-martialmedia discourse concerning the significance of Manning’s sexual orientation and

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identification of opportunities for the development of queer citizenship), thestructure of this article is as follows. It first outlines the heteronormative historyof U.S. national security culture. The section describes how interrelated institu-tional and cultural assumptions about the nature of homosexuals, which arose inearly 20th century, have endured in the 21st. Drawing upon this history, thesecond section compares the Nixon administration’s attempt to label Ellsberg ahomosexual with pre-court-martial media commentary concerning the signifi-cance of Manning’s sexual orientation. I show how both cases draw on thepresumed existence of a queer psychopathology that uniquely endangers nationalsecurity. The third section of the article explains that despite the similarity ofManning’s rhetoric to that of other national security leakers, some of theepistemological foundations that undergirded leaking in the 20th century havebegun to crumble.14 Nevertheless, Manning’s case points to possibilities forthe development of queer citizenship within U.S. national security affairs. Thearticle concludes with a gesture toward these possibilities and their implicationsfor GLBTQ worldmaking.

) ) ) Homosexuality and U.S. National Security Culture

Scholars including Lauren Berlant, Allan Bérubé, Margot Canaday, DavidJohnson, Adi Kuntsman, Jasbir Puar, and Jennifer Terry argue that questions ofidentity, sexuality, nationalism, and national existence are intimately con-nected.15 These scholars, and others, have shown that U.S. national securityculture overwhelmingly reflects and promotes heterosexual values and norms.For example, Canaday traces the influence of homosexuality within U.S. na-tional security culture to World War I and its aftermath, when military officialsbegan to note the “problem of perversion” within the ranks.16 In the 1920s,military psychiatrists, following trends in European sexology, began to describehomosexuality as “one of the most common markers of a psychopathic person-ality.”17 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, officials considered how the presenceof “perverts” might harm the U.S. military, but it was only following World WarII, when the massive expansion of national security institutions coincided withthe deepening resources of the state, that homophobia was codified as officialpolicy and practice.18

Along these lines, Johnson chronicles the government’s repeated campaigns topurge homosexuals from federal agencies between 1947 and 1969 (the U.S.military conducted similar purges under its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” [DADT]policy between 1993 and 2011). The “Lavender Scare,” as Johnson dubs it, was

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driven by “a fear that homosexuals posed a threat to national security and neededto be systematically removed from federal government.”19 Sparked by Republi-can congressmen’s anxiety about the presence of homosexuals in the StateDepartment at the onset of the Cold War (and emboldened by Senator JosephMcCarthy’s well-publicized conflation in 1950 of the terms “homosexual” and“communist”), the Lavender Scare developed into a fully fledged “panic” withinAmerican culture that resulted in the decades-long elimination of thousands ofsuspected homosexuals from the government.20

Throughout this period, “security risk” served as a euphemism for homosex-ual.21 Federal security officials characterized homosexuals as “gregarious,” pos-sessing “a great desire to talk,” “confess,” and “name names.”22 As one StateDepartment security officer testified before Congress, “It is quite clear tome . . . that these homosexuals are sick people, and they just don’t know whatthey are doing, they do some of the most foolish things, which lead to thecompromising of our particular type of work.”23 Invoking World War I-erapsychiatric discourse, government witnesses called to testify about the dangers ofhomosexuality described homosexuals as “psychologically disturbed” as a resultof “maladjustment and early childhood development problems.”24 Johnsonnotes, “This was not merely the thinking of psychologists and psychiatrists; itpermeated the culture.”25 National security officials feared that homosexualscould be more easily blackmailed or coerced into divulging state secrets for fear ofbeing publicly revealed.

Johnson traces the codification of this myth within the U.S. federal bureau-cracy to the 1950 Hoey investigation, which focused on the presumed dangersthat homosexuals posed to national security. The testimony of Admiral RoscoeHillenkoetter, then director of the newly created CIA, included the story ofColonel Alfred Redl, a World War I-era Austrian counterintelligence officerrumored to have been successfully blackmailed by the enemy as a result of hishomosexuality. Commentators (including the U.S. Navy in 1957) later deter-mined that Hillenkoetter’s account was exaggerated and misleading. In fact, nowitness could provide Senator Hoey’s committee with evidence to support theassertion that homosexuals posed a greater security risk than heterosexuals.Nevertheless, Hoey’s final report determined that homosexuals were “intrinsi-cally weak, cowardly, unstable, neurotic, and lacking in moral fiber.”26 Theconsequences of this conclusion were significant. As Canaday explains, “[h]omo-sexuality was a novel concern in the years that the American bureaucracy tookshape, and so it was etched deeply into federal institutions, giving us a state thatnot only structures but is itself structured by sexuality.”27 Thus, longstandingcultural myths about homosexuals, coupled with distorted and/or fabricated

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examples of their ostensible disloyalty or instability drew an enduring connectionbetween homosexuality and espionage that has remained deeply entrenchedwithin U.S. national security culture.

However, there are gaps and omissions in this history. The role of race islargely missing from scholarly accounts, and Manning’s case potentially bolstersthe dominance of the “transparent white subject” within queer studies.28 Man-ning joins a list of U.S. national security leakers who are overwhelmingly whiteand male.29 Also missing from these accounts are the connections amongnonnormative sexuality, national security culture, and state-sanctioned violence.Kuntsman argues that queer members of national security culture may not onlybe victims of violence, but also its perpetrators and supporters.30 For Kuntsman,violence constitutes, as well as contradicts, a sense of institutional and nationalbelonging. Such claims add a layer of complexity to Manning’s case in that“access to and performance of violence might become a move away frommargins, carry a fantasy or promise of integration.”31 Such claims compel aninterpretation of Manning’s rhetoric in a way that avoids valorization of her case.Before providing that interpretation, however, the next section illustrates thenation’s enduring anxiety about the “tendencies” of homosexuals. Lendingcredence to Ellsberg’s assertion, “I was Bradley Manning,” this section clarifieshow the divulging of state secrets has remained linked within the public imagi-nation to the presumed emotional instability of homosexuals, i.e., their queerpsychopathology.

) ) ) The Persistence of Queer Psychopathology

Homosexuality has long been associated with espionage.32 Rhetorically speaking,national security “leaking” is espionage’s close cousin, as both evoke images ofanonymity and disloyalty. The connection between the cases of Alger Hiss (analleged Soviet spy) and Ellsberg illustrates this claim. In particular, central to theHiss case in 1948 were rumors of his homosexual relationship with alleged co-conspirator and communist sympathizer, Whittaker Chambers. As Johnson states,“[t]he rumor and innuendo surrounding the Hiss-Chambers controversy . . . linkedcommunism and homosexuality in the minds of many public officials, securityofficials, and opinion leaders.”33 This link was especially strong for PresidentNixon, who, as a young Republican congressman, had served on the HouseUn-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and gained notoriety for his role inthe Hiss case. For Nixon, the case offered a blueprint for how to undermineEllsberg. “Just get everything out there and try him [Ellsberg] in the press. . . . I

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want to destroy him in the press. Is that clear?” Nixon instructed his aides.34 “Wewon the Hiss case in the papers. We leaked stuff all over the place. . . . I playedit in the press like a master. . . . I leaked out everything that I could.”35 Nixon’sleaks presumably included rumors of Hiss’s homosexual relationship withChambers. Imploring his aides to follow the Hiss case script, Nixon intimated,“You’ll see how it was done.”36

Thus, according to Ellsberg biographer Tom Wells, “[t]he White Housewould have liked to paint Ellsberg as not only a subversive with foreign commu-nist ties but a homosexual to boot.”37 Along these lines, Wells describes an FBIreport of an alleged homosexual liaison between Ellsberg and an unidentifiedfigure who claimed to have blackmailed Ellsberg into giving him a portion of the“Pentagon Papers” that were later sold to the Soviet Union. Although the FBIevaluated the story as “implausible,” it nevertheless circulated among reporters,prompting Ellsberg to deny it.38 In addition, at least two of Ellsberg’s colleaguestold the FBI that he possessed “homosexual tendencies.”39 The FBI ultimatelyfound little evidence of homosexuality in Ellsberg’s past. Therefore, Nixon’schief of staff, John Ehrlichman, approved a plan to burglarize the Beverly Hillsoffice of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding. The plan’s masterminds, G.Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, explained during a meeting with deputyassistant to the president, Egil Krough, that the covert operation would providethe “mother lode” of psychological information on Ellsberg that, when leaked tothe press, would thoroughly damage his credibility.40 The Fielding burglary,however, yielded no worthwhile information.41 As a result, Liddy and Huntpressed CIA psychiatrists for their analysis of “the subject’s [Ellsberg’s] sexualproclivities and how they might be manipulated.”42 The subsequent CIA profiledid not include reference to homosexuality. Unable to identify “how Ellsberg’ssexual background could be used as a point of leverage” against him, Liddyconcluded that the CIA profile was “of no use.”43

It is mostly forgotten that the Nixon administration attempted to labelEllsberg a homosexual in order to discredit him. As Charles Morris’s work onpublic memory and usable history suggests, however, recovering this element ofthe Ellsberg case helps to contextualize pre-court-martial media discourse regard-ing Manning’s sexual orientation.44 Because some audiences continue toassociate homosexuality with perversion, dysfunction, and deviance, success-fully labeling national security leakers as homosexual potentially underminestheir credibility. Pre-court-martial media commentary concerning Manning’ssexual identity provides rich evidence for this claim.45 In particular, conservativecommentators depicted Manning as a “poster boy” for the necessity of barringhomosexuals from access to classified information.46 In a profile of Manning

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posted on FoxNews.com, Justin Fishel wrote, “Manning is gay and there is somespeculation the military’s policy banning openly serving gays served as hismotivation for leaking classified documents.”47 Fishel implied a causal connec-tion between Manning’s sexual orientation and her leaks. Likewise, Red State’sJeff Lukens directly cited the Family Research Council’s (FRC) president, TonyPerkins, who stated, “Manning’s betrayal painfully confirms what groups likeFRC have argued all along: the instability of the homosexual lifestyle is adetriment to military readiness.”48 Invoking Lavender Scare-era institutionalrhetoric, Ann Coulter wrote that Manning is an “angry gay” who, in a “snit,”“betrayed his country.”49 Echoing the CIA’s Hillenkoetter, Coulter speculated,“Maybe there’s a reason gays have traditionally been kept out of the intelligenceservices, apart from the fact that closeted gay men are easy to blackmail.”50 CitingGinger Thompson’s New York Times’s profile of Manning, Coulter wrote: “They[friends of Manning] suspected ‘his desperation for acceptance—or delusions ofgrandeur’ may have prompted his document dump. Let’s check our ‘Gay Profileat a Glance’ and . . . let’s see . . . desperate for acceptance . . . delusions of gran-deur . . . yep, they’re both on the gay subset list!”51

Seeking to amuse his radio listeners, G. Gordon Liddy remarked, “The sin thatonce dare not say its name now won’t shut up!”52 In contrast to Coulter, Liddydeclared, “I did not see anything about his [Manning’s] homosexuality in themainstream media at all when they were covering this breach of security.”53 Asignificant amount of media commentary regarding Manning’s sexual orienta-tion would soon emerge. For example, the Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashimawrote that Manning “clashed with a roommate he thought was anti-gay and onehe thought was racist” and that Manning’s supervisor “noted that he was showingsigns of ‘instability’ and required him to seek mental health counseling.”54

Likewise, a soldier who undertook basic training with Manning explained in aGuardian Films profile, “[t]hey’d call him a faggot or call him a chapter 15—inthe military world, being called a chapter 15 is like a civilian being called a faggotto their face on the street.”55 The soldier added, “[t]o say it was rough is anunderstatement. He was targeted, he was targeted by bullies, by the drill ser-geants. Basically, he was targeted by anybody who was within arm’s reach ofhim.”56 Think Progress’s Alyssa Rosenberg stated that Manning had “prettyserious emotional problems and turned out not to be a particularly effectivewhistleblower, the former probably having quite a bit to do with the latter.”57

After her analysis of the Manning-Lamo chat logs, Democratic pundit Joy Reidasked readers, “Does that sound like someone heroically changing the world, ora guy seeking anarchy as a salve for his own personal, psychological torment?”58

A Frontline profile suggested that as a teenager Manning concealed her sexual

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orientation in order to avoid being victimized by bullies, who neverthelesstargeted her due to her slight physical build and quirkiness. Frontline reporterMartin Smith emphasized Manning’s sexual orientation, asking Manning’sfather, “At what point does he tell you about his homosexuality? How does thatgo down?”59 Smith chronicles Manning’s history of emotional instability andfraught relationships, later telling NPR listeners, “He hit a fellow soldier. Hethrew chairs. He yelled at superiors. So this was a pattern that might have raisedsome concern.”60

Manning, in fact, acknowledged the incongruence of her situation. During anonline chat with gay activist Zack Antolak, Manning wrote, “I’m surprised youhaven’t asked the usual question: why is a gay, libertarian, atheist, computer nerdin the army?”61 Manning’s defense counsel embraced the homophobic (andtransphobic) abuse narrative, portraying her as struggling with gender identityissues during the twilight of DADT. The defense argued that Manning’s supe-riors were aware of her fragile emotional state and therefore should have kept heraway from classified information. One of Manning’s supervisors, Jihrleah Show-man, testified to Manning’s erratic behavior, citing a time when the private was“screaming at the top of his lungs and waving his hands.”62 Manning laterpunched Showman in the face.

For some audiences, such reports highlighted the obvious danger of Man-ning’s queer psychopathology; yet, such reports also generated public backlash.As one commentator sarcastically wrote on the Frontline Web site, “Gee, I amstill waiting to hear about every argument Daniel Ellsberg had with his sister.When is Frontline going to do that salacious in depth hit? Because it really reallywould have changed the way I thought about Ellsberg, as someone not acting onprinciple, but acting out of some psychological symptom.”63 This commentdraws attention to a premise underlying pre-court-martial commentary aboutthe significance of Manning’s sexual orientation; namely, homophobic prejudiceand abuse directly led to her emotional instability, and her disclosures toWikiLeaks, in turn, served as a psychic balm that helped alleviate her emotionaldistress. This framing implies that GLBTQ service members who suffer preju-dice and abuse are more likely to disclose classified information than heterosexualmembers.

Within this framing, the Army’s DADT policy of “institutionalized ho-mophobia” is assumed to have been a major cause of Manning’s “instability.”DADT was still in place prior to Manning’s arrest, and homophobic abuse hasindeed been shown to generate low self-esteem or self-loathing, as well as feelingsof confusion and isolation among GLBTQ youth.64 As Daniel Brouwer ex-plained, “[h]omophobia works to punish at a deep individual level to create

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psychological distress; it shames the self and requires a young person to deal withbeing positioned, because of their sexual desire, as abnormal, dirty and disgust-ing.”65 Likewise, Josh Gunn stated, “[h]omosexuality as a category is a histori-cally specific, modern production of sexual deviance, meaning that to recognizeoneself as having a gay identity was and is also to harbor a secret pathology.”66

Thus, the rhetorical dynamics of secrecy and disclosure at work in Manning’scase appear to mirror the institutional dynamics of DADT. However, Manning’sreferences to DADT in her chats with Lamo downplay the policy’s significance.“DADT isn’t really enforced,” she stated.67 Calling DADT a “disaster,” sheadded, “[I] keep my DADT trail semi-secure . . . I figure its plausible deniabil-ity . . . for the more extreme stuff.”68 Nevertheless, as discussed below in thisarticle, the dismantling of DADT that followed Manning’s arrest has notsignificantly undermined cultural assumptions about the threat that homosexu-ality poses to national security.

Media commentary concerning the significance of Manning’s sexual orienta-tion generates a paradoxical dilemma. On the one hand, such commentary drawsneeded public attention to the effects of institutionalized homophobia amongGLBTQ youth.69 On the other hand, such commentary perpetuates erroneousassumptions about the dangerous “tendencies” of people who identify withanything other that heteronormative sexuality. Although rarely depicted any-more within mainstream media as innately “psychopathic,” indicators of emo-tional distress stemming from homophobic abuse nevertheless continue to markmembers of GLBTQ communities as weak, fragile, and unstable. As a result,some audiences will conclude that the 1950s State Department security officercited above was basically correct, i.e., members of GLBTQ communities “aresick people, and they just don’t know what they are doing, they do some of themost foolish things, which lead to the compromising of our particular type ofwork.”70 Whether members of GLBTQ communities are characterized asinnately pathological (e.g., the 1950 Hoey investigation report) or emotion-ally damaged due to abuse (e.g., Manning), the implication is clear: Membersof GLBTQ communities continue to represent a “security risk.”71 Mediaspeculation about the significance of Manning’s sexual orientation either inten-tionally or unintentionally reduced her acts of conscience to some of the same“homosexual traits” that Nixon administration officials sought to attribute toEllsberg—delusion, foolishness, and narcissism. In this way, Manning’s casedemonstrates continuity with Ellsberg’s case, as well as with the treatment ofhomosexuals within the U.S. national security culture writ large. Analysis ofManning’s own rhetoric reveals both continuities and discontinuities with thishistory.

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) ) ) Manning’s Queer Rhetoric and the Trajectory ofNational Security Leaking

Wells acknowledges in his biography of Ellsberg that, “without question,” hehoped to end the war in Vietnam by leaking the “Pentagon Papers.”72 Neverthe-less, Wells also argues that it is “virtually certain” that Ellsberg leaked the documentsto sooth his ego and to “achieve greater recognition.”73 Likewise, Manning’smotivations presumably stem from multiple causes that she may not fullyunderstand or be aware of. This analysis, however, will avoid speculating abouthow her sexual orientation and psychological needs influenced her inner conflict.Instead, the examples of Manning’s rhetoric discussed in this section emphasizeits “queerness.” By queerness, I refer to the rhetoric’s difference and strangenessin a positive sense—its ability to frustrate, counteract, and undermine establishedassumptions.74 Queer theory highlights the shifting nature of identities, theinsufficiency and arbitrariness of binary categorization, intersectionality, and thepossibilities for social change.75 In the same way that queer theory resistshomo/heterosexual categorization, Manning’s rhetoric defies clear-cut labels; itcan be interpreted as heroic and misguided, selfless and selfish. At root, Man-ning’s rhetoric reflects the complex, ambiguous, and contradictory motives thathuman beings share. It is significant that in crafting any interpretation ofManning’s rhetoric, audiences are easily able to obtain her archived chat logs,Facebook posts, tweets, courtroom statement, and various other digital traces. Asthe most transparent national security leaker of all time, Manning’s digital tracespoint to important discontinuities between her case and Ellsberg’s.

Examples of Manning’s queer rhetoric abound. For example, although pre-court-martial media commentary concerning Manning’s sexual orientation of-ten echoed Lavender Scare-era institutional discourse, her courtroom statementof January 29, 2013 made scant reference to sexual orientation. In her 34-pagestatement, Manning noted that she occasionally participated in online chatsabout “queer rights;” she recalled a disappointing visit with her then “boyfriend”in Boston during mid-tour leave in January 2010; she explained that she gave themoniker “Nathaniel Frank” (an author of a book about homosexuality and themilitary) to an anonymous WikiLeaks interlocutor; and she emphasized hersocial isolation: “For instance, I lacked close ties with my roommate due to hisdiscomfort regarding my perceived sexual orientation.”76 When given the op-portunity to affirm the media’s dominant homophobic abuse narrative (as well asher own defense counsel’s strategy), Manning instead ascribed only minorinfluence to either her sexual orientation or to institutionalized homophobia:“The decisions I made to send documents and information to WLO [WikiLeaks]

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and the website were my own decisions, and I take full responsibility for myactions.”77 Her courtroom statement was not the speech of a member of astigmatized group testifying to a hostile public “the muted and anxious history ofher imperiled citizenship.”78 In other words, Manning demonstrates queertheory’s premise that an individual’s placement within a social category does notnecessarily lead that individual to act in a particular way.

Manning declared, “I believed that if the general public, especially the Amer-ican public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I andCIDNE-A tables [the “Iraq War Log” and “Afghanistan War Dairy”] it couldspark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy ingeneral as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.”79 Such information, Manningbelieved, “would help document the true cost of the wars.”80 Of the leaked StateDepartment cables, Manning explained, “I soon began to think the documentedbackdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity didn’t seem characteristic of thede facto leader of the free world.”81 She stated, in a matter-of-fact way, that “[t]hemore I read the cables, the more I came to the conclusion this was the type ofinformation that should become public.”82 Manning’s justifications resembledEllsberg’s, who stated in a 1973 interview:

The only thing that I could personally hope to achieve by my own efforts was tomake these documents available to the American public for them to read and to learnfrom. I couldn’t force them to read the documents—let alone to learn from and acton them—but I could hope to make it possible for them to read them as opposed tothe situation where the studies were sitting in my safe at the Rand Corporation.83

Thus, similar to other national security leakers, both Manning and Ellsberginvoked the values of transparency and public deliberation to justify theirdisclosures.84 Commentators who emphasized this shared rhetoric, however,tended to downplay ambiguous statements that undermined Manning’s image asa heroic national security leaker. For example, in her courtroom statement,Manning noted, “I once read and used a quote on open diplomacy written afterthe First World War, and how the world would be a better place if states wouldavoid making secret pacts and deals with or against each other. I thought thesecables were a prime example of the need for more open diplomacy.”85 Here,Manning referred to the title of a New York Times editorial published January 20, 1919

that she posted without commentary after logging on for a routine chat with Lamo.The editorial focused on the deliberations then occurring at the Paris Peace Confer-ence that marked the end of World War I. The first part of the editorial resonatedwith Manning’s values of transparency and public deliberation:

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Open diplomacy is the opposite of secret diplomacy, which consisted in theunderhand negotiation of treaties whose very existence was kept from the world.It [secret diplomacy] consisted also in the modification of openly negotiatedtreaties by secret treaties by some of the Powers behind the backs of the others. Itis against this kind of double dealing and secret dealing, the mother of wars, thatthe world protested. It has demanded the substitution of open diplomacy forsecret diplomacy.86

However, Manning did not post the editorial’s conclusion:

The conferees, by reserving the right of holding executive sessions while theyadmit the [newspaper] correspondants [sic] to open sessions, have gone as far asthe needs of the public demand. The world has intrusted [sic] the PeaceConference with the work of preparing the treaty. It [the “world”] wishes toknow what is done, and why it is done; but the sensible part of it, at any rate, hasno desire to have spread before it all the heart-to-heart talks and turns of phraseof men performing the gigantic task of reconciling national differences andcoming to agreement.87

Manning’s leak of the State Department cables did more-or-less what theeditorial writer objected to, i.e., “spread before [the world] all the heart-to-hearttalks and turns of phrase of men [and women] performing the gigantic task ofreconciling national differences and coming to agreement.” In this case, Man-ning’s rhetoric is queer in the sense that her omission potentially undermined thestability of her patriotic national security leaker identity.

The widespread availability of these and other examples of Manning’s rhetoricallude to a shift in the traditional epistemological foundations of nationalsecurity leaking. Networked digital technologies reshape (but do not whollydetermine) possibilities for the rhetorical construction of national security leak-ers’ character/motives, as well as the efficacy of their leaks. Archived messagesacross these technologies challenge commentators’ ability to categorize theidentity of a given national security leaker. As professor of government C. FredAlford stated, the leaker “wants his or her story told in his or her terms: thecontent is everything.”88 However, the examples of Manning’s rhetoric notedabove illustrate how networked digital technologies can leave contradictorytraces (e.g., posts, likes, images, links, comments, chat logs) that rapidly under-mine the leaker’s preferred story. As Manning’s case demonstrates, when thosetraces contain indicators of one’s nonnormative sexual orientation, commenta-tors can all too easily leverage them to perpetuate erroneous assumptions andprejudice.

Of course, audiences may willfully ignore contradictory statements, as well ascondone homophobic interpretations of events; nevertheless, networked digital

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technologies create undeniable intertextual challenges for the authors of bio-graphical narrative. Archived posts, tweets, chats, images, and other messages addto the volume and complexity of the fragments immediately available to biogra-phers in constructing preferred narratives of their subjects. Biographers mustnominally account for these fragments because, as Bryan Taylor explains, mostbiographers operate as “‘artist[s] under oath,’ sworn to the ideal of transparencyin faithfully ‘capturing’ the subject’s essence.”89 Networked digital technologiescreate both practical and ethical challenges for biographers in that the sheerabundance of digital traces can render a subject’s “essence” indeterminable.Networked digital technologies therefore reflect and reinforce recent changes in“the historical and cultural conditions under which biographical discourse aboutthe subject is produced and consumed.”90 Consider how Ellsberg asserts hisabsolute moral clarity, “I have never doubted that, under the circumstancesfacing me, I did the right thing when I copied and revealed the contents of thetop-secret Pentagon Papers.”91 Although Wells attempts to undermine Ellsberg’sassertion, no texts (e.g., letters, memoirs, recordings) have significantly destabi-lized it. Ellsberg remains a hero of the Left, in part, because there is scant evidenceof contradictions that would challenge his narrative. The narratives of all leakerspotentially are open to reinterpretation, contestation, and inversion; the pointhere is that Manning’s case suggests that in the digitally networked era, definitiverhetorical constructions of national security leakers are evermore unlikely.92

Indeed, a recent high-profile documentary, “War on Whistleblowers: FreePress and the National Security State,” avoids discussion of Manning due to theambiguities of her case.93 A perfunctory acknowledgement is presented near theend of the film, with Ellsberg providing a brief voiceover about Manning’swillingness to be imprisoned for her leaks as photos of Manning drift across theframe. In the film’s commentary, producer and director, Robert Greenwald,stated,

We struggled with the Bradley Manning [sic] and how to handle it [sic]. Clearly,it should be a movie of its own, and I believe there are movies being made orhave been made, but I felt it would be malpractice if there wasn’t some referenceto it. And Dan [Ellsberg] had mentioned it in his interview, so we experimentedquite a bit until we found a place for that reference.94

Greenwald’s ambivalence about “how to handle” the figure who undertook thelargest disclosure of classified information in U.S. history demonstrates howambiguous and contradictory digital traces challenge commentators’ ability tovalorize national security leakers.

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Another indicator of epistemological shift is the efficacy of contemporaryleaks. The “Pentagon Papers” offered a coherent and compelling narrative aboutthe U.S. government’s effort to deceive the American public about the course ofthe war in Vietnam. The impact of the “Pentagon Papers” was significant.95

Manning, by contrast, disclosed immense and undifferentiated data streams thatwere difficult for lay audiences to interpret. Although the Afghan War Diary,Iraq War Logs, and Cablegate generated widespread media coverage throughout2010 and 2011, most commentators agreed that the influence of these materials onboth public opinion and official policymaking was negligible.96 U.S. officialsadmitted that internal reviews determined that the impact of the disclosures wasminor.97 Some commentators nevertheless claimed that this trove revealed warcrimes (e.g., the torture of Iraqi prisoners of war).98 However, only one officialinquiry resulted from the material that Manning provided to WikiLeaks—anIraqi government investigation of an alleged massacre of an Iraqi family by U.S.soldiers in 2006.99

Although the types of information that Manning disclosed may account fortheir lack of efficacy, the concept of “communicative capitalism” also helps toexplain why no official investigations into alleged war crimes or governmentmisconduct has occurred.100 The term communicative capitalism refers to theproliferation, distribution, acceleration, and intensification of communicativeaccess and opportunity afforded by networked technologies. As political scientistJodi Dean explained, “[i]deals of access, inclusion, discussion and participationcome to be realized in and through expansions, intensifications and interconnec-tions of global telecommunications.”101 According to Dean, however, “[s]pecificor singular acts of resistance, statements of opinion or instances of transgressionare not political in and of themselves; rather, they have to be politicized, that isarticulated together with other struggles, resistances and ideals in the course orcontext of opposition.”102 In other words, the diffusion of Manning’s disclosuresacross innumerable Web sites, blogs, social media platforms, and so forth doesnot in-and-of-itself affect U.S. politics. Dean suggested that one’s ability tocontribute leaked national security information to the global data stream maygenerate feelings of political participation and empowerment, but the “fantasies”of communicative capitalism reduce political struggle to technological practices.Berlant anticipated Dean by asserting that “there is no public sphere in thecontemporary United States, no context of communication and debate thatmakes ordinary citizens feel they have a common public culture, or influence ona state that holds itself accountable to their opinions, critical or otherwise.”103

Indeed, Manning explicitly disavowed the political: “Too many words in polit-ical spheres . . . too short of an attention span . . . too short of goals.”104 She

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instead celebrated the technological: “The reaction to the video [“CollateralMurder”] gave me immense hope . . . CNN’s iReport was over-whelmed . . . Twitter exploded.”105 Despite widespread publicity, the release of“Collateral Murder” resulted in no formal reinvestigation of the incident. As longas Manning’s disclosures circulated within the circuits of communicative capi-talism, they posed little danger to the interests of national security elites.

The same forces of communicative capitalism that simultaneously encouragedand undermined Manning’s leaks can also be seen to have influenced thedisclosure of her personal, sexual secret. In particular, the Twitter account thatManning established a few days before her arrest contains two messages. The firstmessage stated, “I’ve entered a transitional phase of my life. Though, for now I’mback on the grid.” One minute later, Manning posted a second message,“[Breanna] is setting up public blog in future. More will follow. :)” The taglinethat Manning chose for “Breanna’s” Twitter account—“Click, move, and com-municate”—eerily evokes communicative capitalism’s emphasis on intercon-nected, instantaneous, and mobile communications. “Breanna” is significantbecause it illustrates how, under communicative capitalism, where image, affect,and opinion must ever-circulate, “setting up [a] public blog” and being “on thegrid” are an imperative.

It must be acknowledged that Manning’s disclosures to WikiLeaks at leastafforded audiences the possibility of citing classified documents in their efforts topromote change, and there is some speculation that Manning’s disclosures mayhave been “politicized” by Arab Spring activists in the way that Dean de-scribed.106 Without initial leaks, there can be no subsequent publicity needed tospur transformations of national security policy. Thus, a more charitable view ofManning’s disclosures acknowledges their role as a potential catalyst of a multi-step process.107 Manning was not simply circulating mundane content amongsocial networks; through her disclosures, she was actively attempting to spurcitizen awareness and political reform. Nevertheless, despite differences in thenature of the information that Manning acquired (and the means by which sheacquired it), in the United States, her “efforts at political engagement” weremostly transformed “into contributions to the circulation of content.”108 Al-though Manning wanted American audiences “to see the truth” of her disclo-sures—and presumably become so outraged that they would demand politicalreform—readers of this article will find little potential within communicativecapitalism to support such an ambitious vision.109

For Edwin Black, Manning can be seen as a “translator”—albeit an unsuccess-ful one given the conditions of communicative capitalism—between the worldof U.S. national security culture and the world of engaged citizenship.110 Such

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translators, Black asserts, often disclose secrets “in the belief that such exposurewill work to the detriment of whatever is revealed—that the secret, which issimultaneously concealed because it is evil and evil because it is concealed, willshrivel in the luminosity of revelation.”111 Here, disclosure is assumed to have“purgative power . . . what suppurates and corrupts in the darkness will heal inthe light.”112 Likewise, in Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing, LarryGross explained how exposing homophobic hypocrisy to the purgative light ofpublicity has underwritten the “outing” of closeted homosexuals.113 Thus, na-tional security leaking resides within the same rhetorical and ethical terrain asouting—including those outings officially compelled by DADT. However,although Manning repeatedly voiced her opposition to DADT, she appears tohave been much more distressed by the immorality of her superior officer’sdecisions, as well as her own complicity within a national security system thatpromoted, as she saw it, “incredible things, awful things . . . things that belongedin the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room inWashington DC.”114

Yet, Black cautioned, “In the form of paranoia associated with the overdeter-mination of messages . . . the world is animated by purpose and the sole barrierto its disclosure is the imperceptiveness of those who would spurn its message.”115

Manning told Lamo: “[I] recognized the value of some things . . . knew whatthey meant . . . dug deeper.”116 She declared: “[I]ve seen far more than a 22 y/oshould.”117 As a translator in Black’s sense, Manning asserted privileged access to(an unseen) reality that demanded public disclosure: “The magnification ofopenness and candor is strongly related to the promotion of sincerity as a virtue.Behind the reprehension of secrecy and hypocrisy is an abhorrence of anydisparity between appearance and reality.”118 Manning’s leaks were intended toensure that audiences juxtaposed the managed appearance of U.S. foreign policywith its (classified) actuality. The conditions of communicative capitalismhelped to ensure, however, that Manning’s disclosures would not significantlyinfluence institutional politics.

This section has described examples of Manning’s queer rhetoric to explainhow contemporary conditions undermine commentators’ ability to valorizenational security leakers, as well as diminish the prospective efficacy of their leaks.A question therefore arises: Why does Manning consistently assert the transfor-mative potential of her disclosures? In other words, why does leaking haverhetorical resonance for her? One answer is that Manning’s case represents atransitional moment in the history of national security leaking—a momentcharacterized by the limited efficacy of leaks under contemporary conditions andalluring images of heroism, patriotism, and self-sacrifice. Manning’s rhetoric

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reveals that her subjectivity does not neatly fit into any particular category. EvenManning is unsure of how to categorize herself: “I’m not sure whether I’d beconsidered a type of ‘hacker’, ‘cracker’, ‘hacktivist’, ‘leaker’ or what.”119 Just aswhen individuals act in ways that fall outside of normative gendered discourses,they become “queer,” so too does Manning’s rhetoric render her categoricalstatus unrecognizable. Nevertheless, a task of queer theorists is “to subvert theunified notion of gay and lesbian identity and to paint a picture of multiple andconflicting sexual/gendered experiences.”120 The final section of this articleresponds to this task in order to identify possibilities for the development ofqueer citizenship.

) ) ) Conclusion: From Psychopathology to Citizenship

Queer citizenship within U.S. national security affairs involves foregroundingqueerness “in relation to patriotism, war, torture, security, death, terror, terror-ism, detention, and deportation.”121 For example, in Terrorist Assemblages:Homonationalism in Queer Times, Puar identified the contours of an emergingshift in the way that queer subjects relate to the United States. In contrast to theLavender Scare era, according to Puar, the “benevolence” that mainstreamAmerican culture has recently afforded homosexual, gay, and queer bodiesinvolves a parallel process of “targeting . . . queerly raced bodies for dying.”122

Although some of Manning’s supporters have nominated her for the Nobel PeacePrize, her statement, “[a]nd the weird part is . . . I love my job . . . I was verygood at it . . . I wish this didn’t have to happen like this,”123 typifies the increas-ingly “convivial” relations between queerness and U.S. war machines in thepost-9/11 era.124 The vision of queer citizenship outlined in this conclusioninvolves critical scrutiny of these relations. Throughout its history, U.S. nationalsecurity culture has relied upon heteronormative ideologies, but it now increas-ingly accommodates “homonormative” ideologies that reproduce racial, class,and gender prejudices. Manning’s boast to Lamo that she “punched a dyke in thephace [sic],” as well as her professed “love” for her job as an intelligence analyst,call attention to the intersectionality of homosexual constituencies and to howsome groups have embraced U.S. nationalist agendas.125

At root, this process of “homonationalization” risks strengthening the “con-tainer metaphor” that serves as the conceptual basis of national security—ametaphor that suppresses citizen deliberation and participation within the for-eign policy arena.126 The container metaphor is based on the opposition of“inner” and “outer” spheres. Elites have historically prescribed the form of the

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nation’s defense and security from external threats. This rhetorical formulationhas allowed elites to represent the “inside” of the nation and its interests. Fromelites’ perspective, Manning’s case confirms their long-held mistrust of thedemos—the people—especially homosexuals. For homonormative constituen-cies, Manning’s leaks demonstrate that national security requires a musculardefense against the naïve idealism and ignorant demands of peripheral, unstable,and irrational citizens.

Nevertheless, leaking is one way that citizens can momentarily upend theirsubordination to elites. Moved to publicize classified information as a result ofintense reactions to the hypocrisy, injustice, and cruelty of certain U.S. nationalsecurity practices, the cases of Ellsberg and Manning highlight this dialecticaltension. As an act of “risky dramatic persuasion,” leaking is premised upon thebelief that, in a democracy, national security elites must in some way respond tomajor shifts in public opinion.127 In this way, leaking somewhat resembles whatBerlant called “Diva Citizenship,” which occurs “when a person stages a dramaticcoup in a public sphere in which she does not have privilege.”128 Like Ellsberg’sacts before hers, Manning’s defiance of institutional norms potentially placedelites’ dominant narrative of national security in peril. Manning’s disclosureschallenged American audiences to question the foreign policies of their govern-ment and to identify with the suffering of others. Her leaks rightly called uponcitizens to better scrutinize their nation’s security policies and practices. Yet, likeDiva Citizenship, leaking potentially involves a “spectacle of subjectivity” thatrisks conflating disclosure with social change.129 Ellsberg and Manning exemplifyhow leakers who forgo anonymity (whether voluntarily or involuntarily) inevitablydraw public attention to themselves and away from institutional wrongdoing: “Theirtestimony remains itself personal, specifically about them, their sensations andsubjectivity.”130 Manning’s public disclosure of August 22, 2013 concerning hertransgender identity illustrates these dynamics (and post-sentencing public dis-course about Manning is an area requiring further research).131 Leaking mayoccasionally rattle national security’s container metaphor, yet it clearly consti-tutes a risky rhetorical strategy for queer citizenship within national securityaffairs.

Nevertheless, both Diva Citizenship and queer citizenship alert citizens to thepossibilities of building an affective politics that keeps our “senses open toemergent and unknown forms of belonging, connectivity, [and] intimacy.”132 Incontrast to the rational knowledge associated with elite guardianship of nationalsecurity, queer citizenship involves “illuminating the importance of rhetoricalaffect, instead of merely tracing a message’s persuasive logic.”133 Crystalizing thispoint, when asked by Wells about her husband’s motivation for leaking the

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“Pentagon Papers,” Patricia Ellsberg responded, “It was [that] the children wereburning alive. They were being burned alive. And he felt it.”134 Manning’saccount of her decision to release the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video(“Collateral Murder”) is similarly affective:

They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not valuehuman life, and referred to them as quote-unquote ‘dead bastards,’ and congratulatedeach other on their ability to kill in large numbers. At one point in the video there isan individual on the ground attempting to crawl to safety. The individual is seriouslywounded. Instead of calling for medical attention to the location, one of the aerialweapons team crew members verbally asks for the wounded person to pick up aweapon so that he can have a reason to engage. For me, this seemed similar to achild torturing ants with a magnifying glass.135

Manning’s disclosure of the video briefly directed public attention to war’sdehumanization. Manning’s hope was that the crewmembers’ sickening callous-ness would undermine the “convivial relations” between queerness and warmachines. In contrast to misleading and sanitized reports of the incident, thevideo reminds viewers that war is about cruelty, pain, and death. Behind modernwarfare’s sterile depiction in televised briefings and info-graphics lay the torturedand mutilated bodies of men, women, and children. Manning’s plea—largelyignored—was for Americans to be more responsible for the killing and destruc-tion conducted in their name.

In sum, queer citizenship confronts war in human terms. Like Diva Citizen-ship, at times, Manning’s statements resemble acts of “pedagogy” in which sheasks fellow citizens “to learn and to change; to trust their desire to not beinhuman.”136 Queer citizenship involves generating affect and activism in waysthat combat the injustices and cruelties of war. Manning’s acts of conscience, likeEllsberg’s, were intended to spur public deliberation about such issues. Yet, inManning’s case, media commentators tended to attribute her acts to queerpsychopathology stemming from homophobic abuse. Commentary about hersexual orientation restored a familiar and soothing individualism to events. As aresult, her disclosures mostly reflected and reinforced the atomization of politicsthat has occurred within the circuits of communicative capitalism—with its falsepromise of meaningful citizenship performed in “simultaneously lived privateworlds.”137 Queer citizenship offers a different vision.

How Manning’s case relates to the development of this vision is likely toremain an open question. In the end, perhaps Manning’s case can compelcitizens to reconsider the meaning of national security and their personal rela-tionship to it. Conceptually, it can be said that when citizens—of any sexual

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orientation—are reasonably certain that they, their loved ones, and their cher-ished values and possessions are free from threat, a state of “security” obtains.Although the achievement of such conditions appear extraordinarily remote inthe early 21st century, they nonetheless remain an appealing prospect forGLBTQ worldmaking.

N O T E S

The author thanks Thomas R. Dunn, James McDonald, Charles E. Morris III, andThomas Nakayama for their guidance in the development of this article.

1. Heidi Kitrosser, “What if Daniel Ellsberg Hadn’t Bothered?” Indiana Law Review45 (2011): 89–129; Tom Wells, Wild Man: The Life of Times of Dan Ellsberg (NewYork: Palgrave, 2001).

2. Glenn Greenwald, “The Intellectual Cowardice of Bradley Manning’s Critics,”Salon, December 24, 2011, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.salon.com/2011/12/24/the_intellectual_cowardice_of_bradley_mannings_critics/.

3. Anna Mulrine, “Pentagon Papers vs. WikiLeaks: Is Bradley Manning the NewEllsberg?” The Christian Science Monitor, June 13, 2011, accessed June 15, 2013,http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0613/Pentagon-Papers-vs.-WikiLeaks-Is-Bradley-Manning-the-new-Ellsberg.

4. Ashley Fantz, “Pentagon Papers Leaker: ‘I was Bradley Manning,’” CNN, March11, 2011, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/19/wikileaks.ellsberg.manning/index.html.

5. Manning was convicted of espionage and other charges on July 30, 2013. As thisarticle was going to press, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison; therefore, mediacommentary following Manning’s August 22, 2013 statement concerning hertransgender identity is not analyzed herein. Pre-court-martial media discourseabout Manning’s sexuality is significant, however, because it drew public attentionaway from the content of her disclosures and their implications for citizenparticipation in U.S. national security affairs.

6. David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays andLesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

7. Wells, Wild Man.8. Johnson, The Lavender Scare. In this volume, Johnson uses the term “queer” as a

broad, inclusive category of nonnormative sexualities.9. Gene Lalor, “Pfc. Bradley Manning: Soldier, Homosexual, Traitor,” American

Conservative Daily, December 1, 2010, accessed July 24, 2013, http://www.americanconservativedaily.com/2010/12/pfc-bradley-manning-soldier-homosexual-traitor/.

10. Ginger Thompson, “Early Struggles of Soldier Charged in Leak Case,” New YorkTimes, August 8, 2010, accessed July 23, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/us/09manning.html.

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11. Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex andCitizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2002), 19.

12. As an umbrella term, “queer” refers to both “culturally marginal sexual self-identifications,” as well as a theoretical and political project characterized by itsdefinitional elasticity, indeterminacy, and potentiality. I use the term “queerness”here to dramatize “incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations” between sex,gender, and identity. Annamarie Jogose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (NewYork: New York University Press, 1997), 1–3. I also use the term to evoke its usefulnessin “undermining stable notions of identity and subjecting all categories of identity toscrutiny for the differences that they mask.” James McDonald, “Coming Out in theField: A Queer Reflexive Account of Shifting Researcher Identity,” ManagementLearning 44, no. 2 (2013): 5.

13. Some readers may question whether a nonmember of the GLBTQ communitycan adequately represent Manning’s case and/or advance queer citizenship.McDonald’s articulation of “queer reflexivity” suggests that one can; shared sexualorientation need not be a litmus test for scholarly engagement or politicalactivism. As a former contractor in the defense and intelligence sector, I sharewith Manning the experience of directly witnessing how U.S. security practicesboth contradict and undermine the nation’s espoused democratic ideals. Iespecially identify with Manning’s interest in intelligence analysis and whatManning repeatedly refers to in her archived chats and court statement as “opensource intelligence.” In my late twenties, I served as director of businessdevelopment for a Washington, D.C.-based open source intelligence contractor.Some of Manning’s stated interests, experiences, and ideals are similar to my own.In short, there are multiple ways for people to identify with Manning: as aGLBTQ activist, Oklahoman, hacker, soldier, etc. My commitment to queerreflexivity involves questioning how the boundaries of all categories, includingthose used to construct my own identity, are created, regulated, contested, andsubject to change.

14. National security “leaking” is a communication strategy that relies on anonymity.Such anonymity, ideally, preserves one’s career while permitting public scrutinyof organizational wrongdoing. “Whistleblowing,” on the other hand, evokesimages of urgency, intensity, and publicity. A whistleblower usually draws publicattention to oneself in the process of revealing organizational malfeasance.“Leakers” do not wish to “go public.” In this article, I refer to Manning as a“leaker” because, according to the Manning-Lamo chat logs, she did not believethat she was going to be arrested for her disclosures, did not wish to “go public,”and did not refer to herself as a whistleblower. She did, however, refer to herself asa “hacktivist”—someone who uses computers as a means of political protest. Iacknowledge that the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWC) doesnot establish “going public” as a precondition for whistleblower status, and thelack of legal protections for those who disclose government wrongdoing certainly

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accounts for anonymous leaks. Therefore, the terms “leaker” and “whistleblower”can be substituted for each other without undermining the arguments herein.

15. Berlant, The Queen of America; Allan Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire: The Historyof Gay Men and Women in World War Two (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 2010); Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality andCitizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 2011); Johnson, The Lavender Scare; Adi Kuntsman, Figurations of Violenceand Belonging (New York: Peter Lang, 2009); Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages:Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007);Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality inModern Society (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1999).

16. Canaday, The Straight State, 57.17. Ibid., 65.18. Ibid.19. Johnson, Lavender Scare, 9.20. Ibid., 2; See also ‘homosexual panic,’ 98.21. Ibid., 7.22. Ibid., 8.23. Ibid., 75.24. Ibid., 35.25. Ibid., 35.26. Ibid., 112.27. Canaday, Straight State, 258.28. Daniel L. Eng, Judith Halberstam and José Esteban Muñoz, “What’s Queer

about Queer Studies Now?” Social Text 23, nos. 3–4, (2005): 12.29. The 2012 documentary War on Whistleblowers profiles four cases, Thomas Drake,

Thomas Tamm, Franz Gayl, and Michael DeKort. All four figures are depicted ashonorable family men. Other whistleblowers mentioned in the film include VinceDiMezza, Daniel Ellsberg, Jim Holzrichter, and Ken Pedeleose. Jesselyn Radack isthe only female whistleblower mentioned in the film. War on Whistleblowers: FreePress and the National Security State, Robert Greenwald, Director (Culver City,CA: Brave New Foundation, 2013), DVD.

30. Kuntsman, Figurations of Violence and Belonging.31. Ibid., 4.32. Canaday, Straight State; Johnson, Lavender Scare.33. Johnson, Lavender Scare, 33.34. Wells, Wild Man, 417.35. Ibid.36. Ibid.37. Ibid., 465.38. Ibid., 466.39. Ibid., 465.

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40. Egil Krogh, “The Break-In That History Forgot,” New York Times, June 30,2007,accessedJune15,2013,http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/opinion/30krogh.html.

41. The burglary nevertheless set in motion a series of events, including the break-inof the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate officecomplex in Washington, D.C., that would eventually lead to the conviction ofdozens of government officials for burglary, obstruction, and perjury, as well asculminate in the resignation of President Nixon on August 9, 1974.

42. Wells, Wild Man, 488.43. Ibid., 489.44. Charles E. Morris III, ed., Queering Public Address: Sexualities in American

Historical Discourse (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007).45. The texts selected for this analysis were chosen from relatively well-known media

commentators or outlets, both Right-leaning and Left-leaning, rather than lesserknown blogs or social media sites. Intertextuality drove their selection, e.g., bothGinger Thompson’s and Ann Coulter’s discussions of Manning’s sexualorientation are referenced by scores of online commentators.

46. Ann Coulter, “Bradley Manning: Poster Boy For ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’”December 1, 2012, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2010-12-01.html.

47. Justin Fishel, “Who is Pfc. Bradley Manning?” Fox News, November 29, 2012,accessed June 15, 2013, http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/29/who-pfc-bradley-manning.

48. Jeff Lukens, “Gay Activists Leaked WikiLinks Documents,” RedState, August 3,2012, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.redstate.com/jplukens/2010/08/03/gay-activist-leaked-wikilinks-documents/; See also Chris Johnson, “Gay SoldierAccused of Leaking Classified Files,” Bay Window, June 15, 2013, accessed June 15,2013, http://www.baywindows.com/gay-soldier-accused-of-leaking-classified-files-108933.

49. Coulter, “Poster Boy.”50. Ibid.51. Ibid.52. G. Gordon Liddy, “Manning Has An Axe to Grind,” Blubrry, August 4, 2010,

accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.blubrry.com/ggliddy/800418/manning-had-an-axe-to-grind/.

53. Ibid.54. Ellen Nakashima, “Bradley Manning is at the Center of the WikiLeaks

Controversy. But Who is He?” The Washington Post, May 4, 2011, accessed June15, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/who-is-wikileaks-suspect-bradley-manning/2011/04/16/AFMwBmrF_print.html.

55. “Bradley Manning: Fellow Soldier Recalls ‘Scared, Bullied Kid,’” The Guardian,May 28, 2011, accessed March 1, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/28/bradley-manning-video-transcript-wikileaks.

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56. Ibid.57. Alyssa Rosenberg, “Bradley Manning and the Drama of Instant Messaging,”

Think Progress, January 2, 2012, accessed June 15, 2013, http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/01/02/395669/bradley-manning-and-the-drama-of-instant-messaging/.

58. Joy Reid, “The Manning Chat Logs: TMI and Corroboration of Guilt,” ReidReport, July 14, 2011, accessed June 15, 2013, http://blog.reidreport.com/2011/07/manning-chat-logs/.

59. Martin Smith, “The Private Life of Bradley Manning,” Frontline, February 28,2011, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/wikileaks/bradley-manning/interviews/brian-manning.html.

60. NPR Staff, “WikiLeaks Suspect Manning: A Troubled Home Life,” NPR, March29, 2011, accessed June 15, 2013, http://m.npr.org/news/U.S./134931695.

61. Steve Fishman, “Bradley Manning’s Army of One,” New York Magazine, July 3,2011, accessed June 15, 2013, http://nymag.com/news/features/bradley-manning-2011-7/.

62. Ginger Thompson, “Last Witness for Military Takes Stand in Leak Case,” NewYork Times, December 20, 2011, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/us/governments-last-witness-takes-stand-at-bradley-manning-hearing.html.

63. Smith, “The Private Life of Bradley Manning.”64. Elizabeth McDermott, Katrina Roen, and Jonathan Scourfield, “Avoiding Shame:

Young LGBT People, Homophobia and Self-Destructive Behaviours,” Culture,Health & Sexuality 10 (2008): 815–29.

65. Daniel C. Brouwer, “Corps/Corpse: The U.S. Military and Homosexuality,”Western Journal of Communication 68 (2004): 821.

66. Joshua Gunn, “On Queer Secrecy,” Review of Communication 9 (2009): 116.67. Evan Hansen, “Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed,” Wired, July 13, 2011,

accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/manning-lamo-logs/.

68. Ibid.69. McDermott et al, “Avoiding Shame.”70. Johnson, Lavender Scare, 75.71. The author thanks Dr. James McDonald for the insight that perceived

emotionality leads not only to institutional prejudice against homosexuals, butalso to women and minorities. Although heterosexuals within national securityinstitutions also display emotional instability and fraught relationships,emotionality is often invoked to exclude particular types of people (usuallywomen) from particular occupational roles and leadership positions. See GailHarris, A Woman’s War: The Professional and Personal Journey of the Navy’s FirstAfrican American Female Intelligence Officer (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press,2010).

U.S. National Security Culture ) 75

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72. Wells, Wild Man, 341.73. Ibid.74. Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (New York: New York

University Press, 2003).75. McDonald, “Coming Out in the Field.”76. Michael Isikoff, “Defying Court’s Rules, Anti-Secrecy Group Posts Tape of

Bradley Manning Statement,” Open Channel, NBC News, March 12, 2013,accessed June 15, 2013, http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/12/17276268-defying-courts-rules-anti-secrecy-group-posts-tape-of-bradley-manning-statement?lite.

77. Kevin Zeese, “We Must Not Fail Wikileaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning,”Eurasia Review: News & Analysis, March 3, 2013, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.eurasiareview.com/03032013-we-must-not-fail-wikileaks-whistleblower-bradley-manning-oped/.

78. Berlant, The Queen of America, 222.79. Zeese, “We Must Not Fail.”80. Isikoff, “Defying Court’s Rules.”81. Zeese, “We Must Not Fail.”82. Ibid.83. Manuel Klausner and Henry Hohenstein, “Why I Did It! An Interview with

Daniel Ellsberg: An Interview With Daniel Ellsberg Concerning GovernmentSecurity, Government Hypocrisy, and the Pentagon Papers,” June 1973, accessedJune 15, 2013, http://reason.com/archives/2008/06/06/why-i-did-it-an-interview-with.

84. National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, “NSWBC Press Advisory/Release,”accessed June 16, 2013, http://www.nswbc.org/press.htm.

85. Micah Lee, “Help Spread Bradley Manning’s Words Across the Internet,” Freedom ofthe Press Foundation, March 12, 2013, accessed June 15, 2013, https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/03/help-spread-bradley-mannings-words-across-internet.

86. Walter Duranty, “Paris Conference Guards Secrets: No ‘Open Diplomacy’ inthe Sense of Indiscriminate Publicity,” New York Times, January 20, 1919,accessed June 15, 2013, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res�F50911F7395511738DDDAC0994D9405B898DF1D3.

87. Ibid.88. C. Fred Alford, “Whistle-Blower Narratives: The Experience of Choiceless

Choice,” Social Research, 74, no. 1 (2007): 224.89. Bryan C. Taylor, “Organizing the ‘Unknown Subject’: Los Almos, Espionage,

and the Politics of Biography,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88, no. 1 (2002): 34.90. Ibid.

76 ( Hamilton Bean

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1.1, Spring 2014, published by Michigan State University Press.

91. Daniel Ellsberg, “Secrecy and National Security Whistleblowing,” HuffingtonPost, January 1, 2013, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-ellsberg/secrecy-and-national-secu_b_2469058.html. See also Daniel Ellsberg,Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002).

92. The recent case of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is currently providingadditional evidence for this claim.

93. Greenwald, “Whistleblowers.”94. Ibid.95. Kitrosser, “What if Daniel Ellsberg Hadn’t Bothered?”96. Larry Shaughnessy, “Manning Lawyer Questions How Sensitive Leaked Files

Really Were,” CNN, December 16, 2011, accessed June 15, 2013, http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/16/manning-lawyer-questions-how-sensitive-leaked-files-really-were/; Bill Keller, “Private Manning’s Confidant,” New York Times, March10, 2013, accessed June 15, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/keller-private-mannings-confidant.html?pagewanted�all.

97. Mark Hosenball, “U.S. Officials Privately Say WikiLeaks Damage Limited,”Reuters, January 18, 2011, accessed June 28, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/18/us-wikileaks-damage-idUSTRE70H6TO20110118.

98. Ewen MacAskill, “WikiLeaks Disclosure Reopens Iraqi Inquiry into Massacre ofFamily,” Guardian, September 2, 2011, accessed June 28, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/02/wikileaks-iraq-massacre-inquiry.

99. Ibid.100. Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism

and Left Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2009).101. Jodi Dean, “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of

Politics,” Cultural Politics 1 (2005): 55.102. Ibid., 57.103. Berlant, The Queen of America, 3.104. Hansen, “Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed.”105. Ibid.106. “USA Must Allow Bradley Manning to Use ‘Public Interest’ Defence,” Amnesty

International, June 3, 2013, accessed June 15, 2013 at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/usa-must-allow-bradley-manning-use-public-interest-defence-2013-06-03.

107. The author thanks an anonymous reviewer for this insight.108. Dean, Democracy, 32.109. It may be too soon to tell, but NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures

appear to be no more influential than Manning’s in spurring changes to U.S.national security policy or practice.

110. Edwin Black, “Secrecy and Disclosure as Rhetorical Forms,” Quarterly Journal ofSpeech 74 (1988): 136.

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111. Ibid., 136.112. Ibid., 137.113. Larry Gross, Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press 1993).114. Hansen, “Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed.”115. Black, “Secrecy and Disclosure,” 138.116. Hansen, “Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed.”117. Ibid.118. Black, “Secrecy and Disclosure,” 146.119. Hansen, “Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed.”120. McDonald, “Coming Out in the Field,” 5.121. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, xii.122. Ibid.123. Hansen, “Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed.”124. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, 49.125. Hansen, “Manning-Lamo Chat Logs Revealed.” For a discussion of

intersectionality, see Thomas R. Dunn, “Remembering Matthew Shepard:Violence, Identity, and Queer Public Memories,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 13,no. 4 (2010): 611–52.

126. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1980).

127. Berlant, The Queen of America, 223.128. Ibid.129. Ibid., 100.130. Ibid. It appears, however, that Manning was aware of these dynamics,

preferring to wait until after her sentencing to publicly declare hertransgender identity.

131. The author thanks Dr. James McDonald for pointing out that every individualcan be stigmatized or be deemed nonnormative in a particular way based onmultiple forms of difference, i.e., if Manning were a gay Muslim, for instance,commentators may have focused a lot less on her sexuality and a lot more on herreligious affiliation.

132. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, xxviii.133. Davin Grindstaff, “A Review of: ‘Charles E. Morris III, ed., Queering Public

Address: Sexualities in American Historical Discourse,’” Southern CommunicationJournal 74, no. 2 (2009): 230.

134. Wells, Wild Man, 341.135. “Bradley Manning’s Statement Taking Responsibility for Releasing Documents to

WikiLeaks,” Bradley Manning Support Network, February 28, 2013. AccessedJune 15, 2013 at: http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/bradley-mannings-statement-taking-responsibility-for-releasing-documents-to-wikileaks.

78 ( Hamilton Bean

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1.1, Spring 2014, published by Michigan State University Press.

136. Berlant, The Queen of America, 223.137. Ibid., 5.

)))

Hamilton Bean is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication atthe University of Colorado-Denver. His research intersects the fields ofcommunication, organization, and national security affairs. He is he author of NoMore Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (2011),and his essays have appeared in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Intelligence and NationalSecurity, Homeland Security Affairs, Journal of Homeland Security and EmergencyManagement, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, andelsewhere. He formerly served in management positions for a Washington, D.C.-based provider of open-source intelligence and analytical support services to clientsin the U.S. intelligence community.

U.S. National Security Culture ) 79

This work originally appeared in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 1.1, Spring 2014, published by Michigan State University Press.