"I'm sorry that I could not be a friend to Manning": Adrian Lamo. “I will talk to you on camera under one condition: I won’t give you an address of where I live, and all driving directions must be over the phone, nothing can be written in a computer. " These were Adrian Lamo’s words in response to my request for an interview. The 29-year-old Colombian-American ex-hacker gave alleged Wikileaks source Private Bradley Manning over to authorities.
Ever since then he has become one of the most hated figures in cyberspace, receiving all types of threats, with “different degrees of credibility” according to him. I meet him in his small studio apartment. The place was a total mess, and he apologised - there were boxes and books on the floor, clothes, food and bottles of alcohol, a small scale (to weigh his pet leopard-gecko) and a poisonous type of cactus from Africa. Lamo says he has Asperger, a mental condition known as the “geek syndrome.” I think he did a brave yet stupid thing and he dishonored the oath he took to his country.” Watch the full Q&A here: Hospital bracelet. Investigation Lamo-Wired?? Greenwald @Poulsen. Poulsen hits back. Editor’s note: This is a two-part article, in which Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen and senior editor Kevin Poulsen respond separately to criticisms of the site’s WikiLeaks coverage.
Updated here The Case for Privacy Six months ago, Wired.com senior editor Kevin Poulsen came to me with a whiff of a story. A source he’d known for years claimed he was talking to the FBI about an enlisted soldier in Iraq who had bragged to him in an internet chat of passing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks. It’s probably nothing, Poulsen said. Acknowledging the long shot, Poulsen wanted to drive up to Sacramento, California, to meet Lamo in person and try to get a copy of the alleged chats. What followed was a days-long negotiation of two steps forward, one step back, familiar to investigative reporters whose social networks and reporting skills sometimes put them in touch with skittish sources holding the keys to serious news.
He is, again, wrong. Greenwald replies. Wired's refusal to release or comment. Last night, Wired posted a two-part response to my criticisms of its conduct in reporting on the arrest of PFC Bradley Manning and the key role played in that arrest by Adrian Lamo. I wrote about this topic twice — first back in June and then again on Monday. The first part of Wired‘s response was from Wired.com Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen, and the second is from its Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen. Both predictably hurl all sorts of invective at me as a means of distracting attention from the central issue, the only issue that matters: their refusal to release or even comment on what is the central evidence in what is easily one of the most consequential political stories of this year, at least.
That’s how these disputes often work by design: the party whose conduct is in question (here, Wired) attacks the critic in order to create the impression that it’s all just some sort of screeching personality feud devoid of substance. That’s the crux of the issue. Strange case. On June 6, Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he “boasted” in an Internet chat — with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo — of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records.”
Lamo, who holds himself out as a “journalist” and told Manning he was one, acted instead as government informant, notifying federal authorities of what Manning allegedly told him, and then proceeded to question Manning for days as he met with federal agents, leading to Manning’s detention. From the start, this whole story was quite strange for numerous reasons. Reviewing everything that is known ultimately raises more questions than it answers. Below is my perspective on what happened here. But there is one fact to keep in mind at the outset. Interview Lamo, 8-16-2010. On August 16, 2010, Queena Kim and Tanya Jo Miller interviewed Adrian Lamo on Cyberfrequencies. Lamo now describes himself as an “Associate Director for Project Vigilant,” and talks about a “velvet espionage ring” that includes himself.
Transcribed by Duncan. DAVID COHN: And you can almost see the movie of this, right? I mean, if someone isn’t following him around to get those movie rights they should start. CF: That’s David Cohn of Spot us, he’s been in touch with Assange by email, which, for the anonymous Assange, is kind of a big deal. David: From what you can tell he doesn’t have a steady place where he lives. LAMO: My name is Adrian Lamo, I’m a threat analyst for Reality Planning LLC and Associate Director for Project Vigilant. CF: –Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned in wiki-leaker Private Manning… CF: –Lamo himself was tried and convicted of hacking into the New York Times website. LAMO: I would have kept my mouth shut about the “collateral murder” video. LAMO: Mr. LAMO: Right.