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To respond to non-specific apologists:

Manning is not necessarily “fried.” As far as I know, there is NO (NO) evidence even claimed against him at this point. And we SHOULD NOT be prepared to accept secret evidence against him.

People ARE going to benefit. Who will not? Unless Poulsen is lying, he will be treated like a journalist. And if he’s lying, fuck him. EVERYONE benefits. If this is the truth. (Except, I guess, Lamo.)

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Hopefully we’ll see properly redacted logs soon. And some serious analysis of the possibility of forgery. This is NOT trivial. Don’t let anyone tell you that it is. The blood of patriots, and all that.

thanks :)

Given that the evolving and at times contradictory or misleading responses, this might also be making things hard on any prosecutor wanting to use Lamo as the star witness, given his lack of credibility.

I assume that you mean for Manning’s Court Martial? I don’t know about that. Manning is going to be judged by his “peers”, which means that the jury will comprise of service members. Manning is fried, even if Lamo shows up to court high on acid and masturbating all the way to the stand.

The reason they’ve kept Manning under such harsh conditions is most likely to soften him up for a plea deal. Which means that Manning (and not Lamo) will be used as a “star witness” in a possible case against Assange.

I agree, but that’s straight up torture.

Anytime anyone says, “You ready to talk?”

The answer is: No.

“You ready to talk now?”

…that’s torture. That’s my working fucking definition. If it’s _relatively_ mild over a long period…it’s still torture.

When I say he’s NOT fried, I’m placing that burden on us Americans (with a capital “A”). You with me?

The only reason anyone even considered that there was some special relationship – the only reason it was even IN the conversation – was at Lamo’s word.

Lamo told a story and cannot back it up. It may be true, but without proof it’s hearsay.

you sound proud that someone who is presumed innocent until said judgement of his peers should be so harshly treated. That’s straight up sociopathic, and yes, that was ad hominem.

I already gave you a reason to discount my opinion, when I was right.

I’m a citizen. My name is William Felder, Corvallis, OR. The FBI already has a file, so what the fuck? I’d rather end this with my head above water, if I can. I oppose this. I oppose the conditions Bradly Manning is being held in, right now. To me, he’s innocent until proven guilty. And if guilty, he’s a hero. Daniel Ellsberg magnitude hero. Even if guilty, the penalty should be minimal. We need this.

A supposedly civilian controlled military was lying to the civilian population. It raises the question, “From where do their orders come?”

I bet Wired responded finally on Twitter in a succinct manner
only to initiate ‘damage control’ and not due to any honest, journalistic ethos. Of course, they must be quite shaken by this

experience and wake-up call….lol
Glenn is quite the Moses these days in my book

It is not a surprise that Adrian Lamo, again, shows he is not credible. A con-artist out to make a name for himself is what Lamo’s been about ever since he emerged as a purportedly homeless hacker.

Am I a fascist? Far from it. Am I desensitized? Probably. Blame my background as a political refugee and member of an oppressed people who don’t have their own country, and who have never benefited from the different generations’ flamboyant declarations of love for the [insert a color] Revolutions(tm), obscure Chinese dissidents (with pseudo-fascistic tendencies), Darfur (a place 99% of its Western supporters don’t even know the location of), and all the other “causes” Western mass media decide is important to you. I’ve given all ideologies my middle finger and I say that I’ve earned my independence, and the mountains are our only friends.

(Funny, not even Firefox recognizes “Darfur”.)

So, if I see torture, I will speak out against it. If I see an asshole who doesn’t have respect for women and can’t keep his dick in his pants, I will speak out against him. If it hurts his little baby project, so be fucking it. I don’t agree with his baby project because I don’t agree with his stupid choice of leaks when there are leaks much more meaningful (and he claims to have some of those, but where are they?). There is no thoughtfulness behind his actions, it’s all “FOR THE LULZ” (my independent opinion). Sterling came out and said it, and everybody started to run around like confused chickens trying to think of an ideology to stamp on Assange’s forehead. I mean, we can’t just do it for the sake of “crushing bastards”, can we? My god, that would be unethical…….

Well, and poor Manning. But he made a choice, nobody forced him into the military. He sat in front of an Army recruiter and signed a contract. He’s under the UCMJ now. Are they treating him harshly? What else did you expect of a military? You think the US military is the only military that does THAT to its own soldiers? Buddy, you should save your tears for the North Korean soldier who might spill some coffee on Kim Jong-Il’s new pants when it is his turn to serve The Great Leader.

Fuck, man. We’re a country that allowed the Patriot Act to pass. Don’t whine about your burned cookies when your whole house is on fire. You go donate your money to Wikileaks, and I’ll donate mine to EFF and ACLU.

(We’ve gone off-topic AGAIN, under yet another post. Some of you pro-Wikileakers like to bump into me, and some of you can obviously pull up old comments, so I’m not going to go into another “I think you suck because you think I suck”-discussion unless it’s the topic. Whenever you feel the urge, come back and read my reply again.)

Even if Assange created a ftp account for Manning this should not be espionage. If Assange gets charged for that then all sensitive information from any US government source will stop. Journalists will be threatened with espionage every time they talk to a source within the US government. This was never a smoking gun and to say so encourages those who wish to persecute Assange and limit freedom of information.

kevin and evan both independently verified that in the unpublished portions of the chat logs between adrian lamo and bradly manning there is no further reference to private ftp servers, and no further discussion about the relationship between manning and assange.

…except what is already public. this doesn’t exclude lamos statements. just as poulsens first tweet in the screenshot at the top of your article doesn’t seem to exclude anything.

please think twice, sean. i doubt that your deduction is as stringent as you think.

.~.

I’m a little confused how you can write such a long post and yet completely miss the point of this entire affair. Let me provide you with a timeline:

1) Wired posts partial chat logs obtained via Lamo

2) Lamo (who is both the source and Paulsens’ friend) goes around making contradictory statements unsupported by the published portion of the logs; in particular references to Assange providing material support to Manning in the form of a dedicated FTP server.

3) Greenwald points out that Wired has a journalistic duty to confirm or deny Lamo’s new claims since he is their source and they’re holding the chat logs.

4) Wired throws a hissy fit but eventually confirms that Lamo has been making things up

Is that simple enough for you?

Assange, who is neither a U.S. citizen nor resident there, is currently on bail in London, where he faces extradition to Sweden on unrelated charges.

Actually, as far as I know at least, Assange is not currently facing any charges in Sweden. They requested his detention and extradition so they could interview him. This is what made it so weird and suspect – that Assange would be placed on Interpol’s list of wanted for such a purpose was, according to Greenwald IIRC, unprecedented. But rather unprecedented or not, it seems passing strange to me in any event. Obviously, once he’s in detention, Assange will be vulnerable to extradition to the US. Understandably, this is a frightening prospect – not because of any implied guilt or even crime having been committed, but because at this stage the US has established itself as somewhat of a rogue nation who will detain without due process anyone it wishes to detain, for absurdly long periods of time. Especially foreign nationals and especially in any case tainted with the catch-all word, “terrorism”.

It wasn’t that long ago that there was a political fight in Britain, in which Blair wished to extend the time a suspect could be held without charges to a month – IIRC, he lost that battle. But even had he succeeded, compare a month to the numbers of years that people have been held in US custody on no more evidence than the characterization of high officials.

I wouldn’t want to get extradited to the US either, if I had crossed US federal power.

This reference to Assange facing charges in Sweden is pretty common in the media and, unless things have changed recently and my information is out of date, I think it’s important to set the record straight at every opportunity.

http://antoniomalcolm.com/journal/entry?media=journalEntry&no=17

This all happened about a month after you posted your article here. I’m opening it up a bit, as I was recently contacted by a journalist, and so I’m now digging back into it.

Fuck, man. We’re a country that allowed the Patriot Act to pass. Don’t whine about your burned cookies when your whole house is on fire. You go donate your money to Wikileaks, and I’ll donate mine to EFF and ACLU.

That’s a very important comment, I believe. Indeed, I was sympathetic to your entire post.

I didn’t look back to see the comment you were replying to, so I can’t really comment. I do sense a hint, as I do from everybody, virtually all the time, the scent of artificial dichotomy. I think that we are all products of a culture that imbues us with tendencies to think in binary manners (in fact, most of us believe this is how the human mind is constructed, and one could probably date such thinking to relative recent times, mostly the fifties, just post WWII) and I think we are all products of a reactionary culture as well. Thus I personally believe it’s important to catch oneself as often as possible to try to minimize the effects of, well, who we ARE. I think it’s fine to whine about burnt cookies, just as I think it’s fine to whine about the house burning down around one’s ears. Each has a perspective and each perspective can be important – whether important as a damaging element or a critical element vital for improvement. In short, the burnt cookies are very important too.

Having said that, I meant no part of it to be construed as negatively critical. I very much appreciate your post in its entirety and in particular, as I mentioned, the highlighted statement is a very important one. One must never forget the broad picture in the pursuit of detail. And man, I think you are so dead on about the Patriot Act and its important, that we should all be reminded of it on a regular basis, even if those reminders continue for a hundred years. It’s too easy to become dulled to such transformative events as time goes on, to eventually assimilate them, and that is the point at which we are lost – history is a succession of such ‘losses’ it seems.

The house is most definitely burning down. So I thank you for the comment.

The NYT got the cables from the Guardian. Wikileaks worked with them directly on other things, but not cablegate (apparently)

I usually value Greenwald’s opinion, moral absolutist though he is, but on this he appears to be little more than a blowhard (not unlike Andrew Sullivan on all matters Trig Palin). He’s made an emotional investment into defending Assange (with whom I personally sympathize) and Manning (less so, though his treatment seems abhorrent), and has now gone on tilt with personal assaults against Kevin Paulson. Maybe he’s just angry that Lamo didn’t come to him with the juicy story on Manning.

Look, I’m sure if the government thinks they can build a case on the complete text of these logs, they’ll supoena them, and likewise if it comes to trial, Assange’s lawyers will do the same if they think it has exculpatory evidence. Greenwald, his readers, and those of you here, lack such subpoena powers, and for good reason. Assange’s and Manning’s legal issues are not going to be resolved in the pages of Wired or Salon. The government hasn’t even charged Assange with anything yet, and Greenwald’s intent on having a grudge match over details that may or may not inform a hypothetical legal case.

I know that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but neither is it evidence of coverup. Unless you have some actual evidence that Wired is withholding details germane to the story, you’re just embarrassing yourself with your ever-widening conspiracy theories.