On Thursday, Manning had recounted a detention regime under which he “started to fall apart,” where he was forced to stand to attention naked in his cell and had encountered angry responses when he questioned guards’ orders.
But Major Fein sought to undermine those claims, citing tape recordings taken in prison over a period of eight months where Manning did not raise his alleged mistreatment with anyone who visited him.
“Better than a significant part of the population,” was how Manning described his condition to one Quantico visitor, according to Fein, in November 2010.
However, the soldier said he did not talk about conditions at Quantico as he knew such conversations were being recorded and he did not want friends and family to worry about him.
On Thursday, Manning said his guards in Kuwait repeatedly searched his cell and scattered his possessions, but a day later he told Fein his treatment there had been “very professional.”
Fein also asked the soldier about his Quantico cell, which consisted of three walls, a toilet, a sink and a row of bars, where the accused agreed that the small room received natural light and was identical to that of other detainees.
Manning was moved from Quantico in April 2011 to a prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was placed under less restrictive conditions.
He is due to go on trial in February next year.
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