in a Wikileaks fundraising missive. Surely Lamo, a famous hacker, once convicted on felony charges for his digital mischief, would understand the greatness of Manning’s alleged achievement. Besides, Lamo was bi; he has an ex who is male-to-female transgender; he has another ex who was counterintelligence in the army. Manning and Lamo flirted a little. Manning related his life story, his aspirations, his reasons for disclosing the documents. They joked about Lamo turning Manning in to the authorities.
What Manning didn’t know was that two days into the conversation, Lamo in fact went to the federal authorities. And his handlers were obviously feeding him questions to ask Manning—“in all seriousness, would you shoot if MP’s showed up?” On May 29, military police came to FOB Hammer to arrest Bradley Manning, who was soon taken to Kuwait for further interrogation under detention.
For turning in Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo has been cast both as a responsible, patriotic citizen and a duplicitous snitch. (He introduced himself to Manning as a journalist and a minister, free to take confessions in confidentiality. Was this a joke, or sarcasm? Did Manning ever believe it?) Famous as Lamo is inside hacking circles, to those outside that sphere he simply resembles other police informants: a convicted felon with a history of mental illness. (Lamo was involuntarily committed in California just a few weeks before his chats with Manning.24) Lamo has defended his decision to turn in Manning with a mix of faux-worldly cynicism and high-minded patriotism, neither quite ringing true. Adrian Lamo had much to lose from being implicated in another felony, especially the greatest security breach in United States history. He most likely turned in his new and unsolicited acquaintance to protect himself from a prison sentence. How many of us, in Lamo’s situation, would do otherwise?
The lengthy chatlogs between Lamo and Manning are the primary document of Manning’s life, his alleged leaks and motives. But for the amazing deeds they recount, the chatlogs read like the typical diary of an intelligent, intense, earnest twenty-two-year-old. The intel analyst’s intent is conscious, coherent, historically informed and above all it is political. These segments of the chatlogs are worth quoting at length, as they have for the most part been studiously ignored by a mass media determined not to comprehend Bradley Manning’s motives.
(12:15:11 PM) bradass87: hypothetical question: if you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time… say, 8–9 months… and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do?
(12:16:38 PM) bradass87: or Guantanamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC for that matter…
(12:17:47 PM) bradass87: things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people
(12:21:24 PM) bradass87: say… a database of half a million events during the iraq war… from 2004 to 2009… with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures… ? or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?
[…]
(12:52:33 PM) bradass87: Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and finds an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public… =L
(12:53:41 PM) bradass87: s/Hilary/Hillary
(12:54:47 PM) [email protected]: What sort of content?
[…]
(12:59:41 PM) bradass87: uhm… crazy, almost criminal political backdealings… the non-PR-versions of world events and crises… uhm… all kinds of stuff like everything from the buildup to the Iraq War during Powell, to what the actual content of “aid packages” is: for instance, PR that the US is sending aid to pakistan includes funding for water/food/clothing… that much is true, it includes that, but the other 85% of it is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing instead of americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis
(1:00:57 PM) bradass87: theres so much… it affects everybody on earth… everywhere there’s a US post… there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed… Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madagascar, if its a country, and its recognized by the US as a country, its got dirt on it
[…]
(1:10:38 PM) bradass87: its open diplomacy… world-wide anarchy in CSV format… its Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth… its beautiful, and horrifying…
(1:11:54 PM) bradass87: and… its important that it gets out… i feel, for some bizarre reason
(1:12:02 PM) bradass87: it might actually change something
[…]
(03:15:38 PM) bradass87: i dont know… im just, weird i guess
(03:15:49 PM) bradass87: i cant separate myself from others
(03:16:12 PM) bradass87: i feel connected to everybody… like they were distant family
(03:16:24 PM) bradass87: i… care?
(03:17:27 PM) bradass87: http://www.kxol.com.au/images/pale_blue_dot.jpg <– sums it up for me
(03:18:17 PM) bradass87: i probably shouldn’t have read sagan, feynman, and so many intellectual authors last summer…
(03:24:10 PM) bradass87: we’re human… and we’re killing ourselves… and no-one seems to see that… and it bothers me
(03:24:26 PM) bradass87: apathy
(03:25:28 PM) bradass87: apathy is far worse than the active participation
(03:26:23 PM) bradass87: >hug<
(03:29:31 PM) bradass87: http://vimeo.com/5081720 Elie Wiesel summed it up pretty well for me… though his story is much much more important that mine
(03:29:48 PM) bradass87: *than
(03:31:33 PM) bradass87: I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy.
[…]
(03:35:44 P.M) bradass87: i think ive been traumatized too much by reality, to care about consequences of shattering the fantasy
**
[..]
(02:20:57 AM) bradass87: well, it was forwarded to WL
(02:21:18 AM) bradass87: and god knows what happens now
(02:22:27 AM) bradass87: hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms
(02:23:06 AM) bradass87: if not… than we’re doomed
