The Closet Case

I have to admit that I haven't been following this WikiLeaks case all that closely. But when Jon Stewart reported that it was amazing that accused leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning hadn't run afoul of "don't ask, don't tell" by purportedly pretending to be lipsynching Lady Gaga songs while "exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history," I assumed he was just making a joke about the Gaga's fan base. Apparently he wasn't.

The New York Times reports:

He spent part of his childhood with his father in the arid plains of central Oklahoma, where classmates made fun of him for being a geek. He spent another part with his mother in a small, remote corner of southwest Wales, where classmates made fun of him for being gay.

Then he joined the Army, where, friends said, his social life was defined by the need to conceal his sexuality under “don’t ask, don’t tell” and he wasted brainpower fetching coffee for officers.

But it was around two years ago, when Pfc. Bradley Manning came here to visit a man he had fallen in love with, that he finally seemed to have found a place where he fit in, part of a social circle that included politically motivated computer hackers and his boyfriend, a self-described drag queen. So when his military career seemed headed nowhere good, Private Manning, 22, turned increasingly to those friends for moral support.