During the War on Terror, a particularly loathsome character named Bradley Manning enlisted in the Army. Manning didn’t enlist out of patriotism. Manning was running away from an already troubled life. He was a malcontent. A bad fit to be a soldier. His entire existence, from his mid-teens through his enlistment in the Army, had revolved around “getting back at the man.”
Manning argued with everyone. It didn’t take long before he was sent to the discharge unit to be processed out. It was apparently obvious to everyone that Manning wasn’t fit for soldiering. So what did the Army do with Manning? It rescinded the discharge order and instead sent him to Advanced Individual Training (AIT) to be an intelligence analyst. Manning the malcontent was handed a TS/SCI (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information) clearance.
Soon, Manning posted YouTube videos of what a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) looked like. Although Manning was reprimanded, he didn’t have his clearance pulled. What happened later is well documented. Manning downloaded over 700,000 documents, many of them Top Secret documents. He was arrested, court-martialed, and sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Although his supporters tried to paint him as a hero, even his lawyers didn’t buy that myth:
[Manning] was a gay man in a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell military, struggling with gender identity issues, who never should have had access to the files in the first place. His attorney focused on Manning’s alter ego, Breanna Manning, and quoted an email from Manning where he said his “entire life feel(s) like a bad dream that won’t end. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what will happen to me. But at this point I feel like I am not here anymore.”
Although the Army claimed that Manning’s leaks didn’t result in human assets being compromised, that is almost certainly a lie. The Army is good at covering its own failures. The Army was motivated to downplay the damage. With so many TS documents leaked, it is reasonable to assume that some contained information on locals who had aided America. If the bad guys had the analytical skills of 3-year-olds, locals were almost certainly marked for death. That was 10 years ago, when the Taliban was still weak.
Once Biden decided to disengage from America’s longest war, the result was a murderous mess. Thirteen Americans died at the airport. Those who helped America (if they were known to the Taliban) were hunted down. Some avoided being fingered right away. That was 2021.
In 2022, a film titled “Retrograde” was released. The film’s synopsis:
RETROGRADE captures the final nine months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives: one of the last U.S. Special Forces units deployed there, a young Afghan general and his corps fighting to defend their homeland against all odds, and the civilians desperately attempting to flee as the country collapses and the Taliban take over.
It won film awards and an “Edward R. Murrow Award.” Now, the film has been withdrawn from streaming services, and the Edward R. Murrow Award rescinded.
The unprecedented decision to strip the prestigious journalism award from National Geographic for director Matthew Heineman’s “Retrograde” follows revelations in a Washington Post article earlier this year that filmmakers showed the faces of Afghan contractors who cleared mines for U.S. soldiers despite being warned by at least five active-duty and former U.S. military service members not to do so.
One of the Afghans, whose face is shown in close-up, was captured by the Taliban shortly after the film’s December 2022 release and died from wounds inflicted by torturers while he was being held, according to an interpreter and two others who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity to describe the sequence of events without imperiling themselves and their own families in Afghanistan.
The filmmakers blamed the US military for not “warning” them not to show the faces of Afghans.
According to The Washington Post’s reporting, at least five people — three active-duty U.S. military personnel and two former Green Berets — warned the filmmakers before “Retrograde’s” December 2022 cable and streaming debuts that they could be putting Afghans who were hired to work with the U.S. military in danger by showing their faces in the documentary. At that time, there had already been hundreds of documented Taliban revenge killings of Afghans who worked for the U.S. military and their family members. Those issuing warnings considered the Afghans shown in the film to be in greater danger because of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 — about eight months after filming began in Helmand Province.
The filmmakers wouldn’t answer inquiries and directed communications to their attorney. They also issued a statement – in part saying:
That is the tragic story that warrants attention. But any attempt to blame ‘Retrograde’ because the film showed faces of individuals in war zones — as has long been standard in ethical conflict reporting — would be deeply wrong.”
Warnings from Green Berets were apparently ignored or, according to the filmmakers, never received. “Reporting,” it seems, trumped lives.
And, it seems, the makers of the documentary needed to be told repeatedly, like a parent lecturing children, that terrorists might take revenge. Common sense was left on the cutting room floor.
As to consequences? Manning served only a few years of a 35-year sentence for exposing human assets to terrorists’ eyes. His prison sentence was commuted by Obama.
“Retrograde’s” filmmakers lost a trophy.
