Army commanders were warned against sending to Iraq an Army private who is suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks.

Pfc. Bradley Manning's supervisor at Ft. Drum in New York had told his superiors that Manning had discipline problems and had thrown chairs at colleagues and shouted at higher-ranking soldiers, according to a report by McClatchy News service.

But Manning was deployed to Iraq anyway because the Army needed his skills and was short-staffed with intelligence analysts, according to anonymous military officials who spoke with McClatchy. Manning's superiors believed his discipline problems could be addressed in Iraq, but then they failed to properly monitor him once he got there.

The information was uncovered by a six-member taskforce that was charged with investigating how Manning was trained and whether his supervisors had made mistakes. Their report is due to be delivered to Army Secretary John McHugh by Feb. 1.

The taskforce found that although the military had followed procedures in giving Manning his security clearance, they neglected to re-assess this decision to determine whether he should have retained his clearance once he exhibited disciplinary problems.

Three officers in Manning's chain of command could face disciplinary action over their handling of the soldier, according to McClatchy.

Manning was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq in late October 2009. There, he served as an intelligence analyst with a rank of Specialist and with a Top Secret/SCI clearance. He had access to classified networks, including SIPRnet, the Army’s secret-level wide area network linked to WikiLeaks’ most high-profile releases. He allegedly began leaking within months of being deployed.

He was arrested in Iraq in May 2010, after allegedly confessing to a former hacker in online chats that he had illegally downloaded thousands of classified and sensitive documents from classified networks and passed them to WikiLeaks. He also revealed in the chats that he had similar discipline problems in Iraq, where he had punched a colleague in the face. The action resulted in his demotion from Specialist to Private First Class shortly before his arrest.

In the chats, Manning told Lamo that he first contacted WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange in late November 2009, after Wikileaks posted 500,000 pager messages covering a 24-hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Manning said he had already been sifting through the classified networks for months when he discovered a classified Iraq video in late 2009. The video showed a 2007 Army helicopter attack on a group of men.

In January 2010, while on leave in the United States, Manning visited a close friend in Boston and confessed he’d gotten his hands on unspecified sensitive information, and was weighing leaking it. He allegedly then passed the video to Wikileaks in February, which published it online in April last year.

In early May, Manning was demoted after punching a colleague during an argument. “Something I never do …!?” he told Lamo.

“It was a minor incident, but it brought attention to me,” he said. At this point, his life, which was already in turmoil, began to unravel as his career began to implode.

“I had about three breakdowns, successively worse, each one revealing more and more of my uncertainty and emotional insecurity," he told Lamo.

Last July, Threat Level reported that Manning's behavior had raised red flags as early as 2008 when he was still in training and before he was stationed at Ft. Drum. He was admonished then for uploading YouTube videos in which he discussing classified facilities.

Manning had enlisted in October 2007 and was only three months into his 16 weeks of training as an intelligence analyst when about 25 of his fellow recruits reported him for the videos. At the time, he had completed basic training and was receiving advanced individual training at the Army’s Intelligence Center of Excellence at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

The videos were messages that Manning shot for his family from his room at the barracks. Manning would talk about how his day was going and although he did not disclose classified information in the videos, he talked about the base’s SCIFs, secure rooms where classified information is processed.

“It was brought up to his command, and his command took action on that,” an official told Threat Level last July. “A lot of his actions back then, you couldn’t tell it would come to what it’s come to now, but it was a red flag.”

Manning was ordered to remove the videos but he did not lose his then-provisional Top Secret security clearance.