The Wikileaks Question

[JackRiddler]

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I missed that Greenwald had done a long expose on Lamo in June after Manning's detention, and before the "Collateral Murder" video release. A lot of it is news to me. Though Greenwald doesn't say it, it clearly raises the possibility, if not that Manning was framed outright, then that Lamo was used to construct the case against him. The publicly available evidence of Manning as the leaker is an edited June 10 release of supposed Lamo-Manning chat logs through Wired reporter Kevin Poulsen, here:

‘I Can’t Believe What I’m Confessing to You’: The Wikileaks Chats
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/0 ... eaks-chat/

Poulsen's original report, June 6:

U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/

Poulsen has his own dubious background and goes back a long way with Lamo. Greenwald's account is full of links and his own emphases, so go there:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... /wikileaks

Friday, Jun 18, 2010 09:20 ET
The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks

By Glenn Greenwald

AP
Bradley Manning and a still from the Apache helicopter attack that appeared on WikiLeaks.

(updated below)

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.

On June 10, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, writing in The Daily Beast, gave voice to anonymous "American officials" to announce that "Pentagon investigators" were trying "to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks [Julian Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security." Some news outlets used that report to declare that there was a "Pentagon manhunt" underway for Assange -- as though he's some sort of dangerous fugitive.

From the start, this whole story was quite strange for numerous reasons. In an attempt to obtain greater clarity about what really happened here, I've spent the last week reviewing everything I could related to this case and speaking with several of the key participants (including Lamo, with whom I had a one-hour interview last night that can be heard on the recorder below, and Poulsen, with whom I had a lengthy email exchange, which is published in full here). A definitive understanding of what really happened is virtually impossible to acquire, largely because almost everything that is known comes from a single, extremely untrustworthy source: Lamo himself. Compounding that is the fact that most of what came from Lamo has been filtered through a single journalist -- Poulsen -- who has a long and strange history with Lamo, who continues to possess but not disclose key evidence, and who has been only marginally transparent about what actually happened here (I say that as someone who admires Poulsen's work as Editor of Wired's Threat Level blog).

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. In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a classified report (ironically leaked to and published by WikiLeaks) which -- as the NYT put it -- placed WikiLeaks on "the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States." That Report discussed ways to destroy WikiLeaks' reputation and efficacy, and emphasized creating the impression that leaking to it is unsafe:



In other words, exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide "manhunt" for its Editor-in-Chief. Even though WikiLeaks did absolutely nothing (either in this case or ever) to compromise the identity of its source, isn't it easy to see how these screeching media reports -- WikiLeaks source arrested; worldwide manhunt for WikiLeaks; major national security threat -- would cause a prospective leaker to WikiLeaks to think twice, at least: exactly as the Pentagon Report sought to achieve? And that Pentagon Report was from 2008, before the Apache Video was released; imagine how intensified is the Pentagon's desire to destroy WikiLeaks now. Combine that with what both the NYT and Newsweek recently realized is the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, and one can't overstate the caution that's merited here before assuming one knows what happened.

* * * * *

Adrian Lamo and Kevin Poulsen have a long and strange history together. Both were convicted of felonies relating to computer hacking: Poulsen in 1994 (when he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, ironically because a friend turned government informant on him), and Lamo in 2004 for hacking into The New York Times. When the U.S. Government was investigating Lamo in 2003, they subpoenaed news agencies for any documents reflecting conversations not only with Lamo, but also with Poulsen. That's because Lamo typically sought media publicity after his hacking adventures, and almost always used Poulsen to provide that publicity.



Despite being convicted of serious hacking felonies, Poulsen was allowed by the U.S. Government to become a journalist covering the hacking world for Security Focus News. Back in 2002, Information Week described the strange Lamo-Poulsen relationship this way: "To publicize his work, [Lamo] often tapped ex-hacker-turned-journalist Kevin Poulsen as his go-between: Poulsen contacts the hacked company, alerts it to the break-in, offers Lamo's cooperation, then reports the hack on the SecurityFocus Online Web site, where he's a news editor." When Lamo hacked into the NYT, it was Poulsen who notified the newspaper's executives on Lamo's behalf, and then wrote about it afterward. Poulsen told me that the above picture was taken at a lunch the two of them had together with convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick back in 2001. When I asked Poulsen if he considers Lamo his friend, he would respond only by saying: "He's a subject and a source."

Actually, over the years, Poulsen has served more or less as Lamo's personal media voice. Back in 2000, Poulsen would quote Lamo as an expert source on hacking. That same year, Poulsen -- armed with exclusive, inside information from Lamo -- began writing about Lamo's various hacking adventures. After Lamo's conviction, Poulsen wrote about his post-detention battles with law enforcement and a leaked documentary featuring Lamo. As detailed below, Lamo is notorious in the world of hacking for being a low-level, inconsequential hacker with an insatiable need for self-promotion and media attention, and for the past decade, it has been Poulsen who satisfies that need.

On May 20 -- a month ago -- Poulsen, out of nowhere, despite Lamo's not having been in the news for years, wrote a long, detailed Wired article describing serious mental health problems Lamo was experiencing. The story Poulsen wrote goes as follows: after Lamo's backpack containing pharmaceutical products was stolen sometime in April (Lamo claims they were prescribed anti-depressants), Lamo called the police, who concluded that he was experiencing such acute psychiatric distress that they had him involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for three days. That 72-hour "involuntary psychiatric hold" was then extended by a court for six more days, after which he was released to his parents' home. Lamo claimed he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a somewhat fashionable autism diagnosis which many stars in the computer world have also claimed. In that article, Poulsen also summarized Lamo's extensive hacking history. Lamo told me that, while he was in the mental hospital, he called Poulsen to tell him what happened, and then told Poulsen he could write about it for a Wired article. So starved was Lamo for some media attention that he was willing to encourage Poulsen to write about his claimed psychiatric problems if it meant an article in Wired that mentioned his name.

It was just over two weeks after writing about Lamo's Asperger's, depression and hacking history that Poulsen, along with Kim Zetter, reported that PFC Manning had been detained, after, they said, he had "contacted former hacker Adrian Lamo late last month over instant messenger and e-mail." Lamo told me that Manning first emailed him on May 20 and, according to highly edited chat logs released by Wired, had his first online chat with Manning on May 21; in other words, Manning first contacted Lamo the very day that Poulsen's Wired article on Lamo's involuntary commitment appeared (the Wired article is time-stamped 5:46 p.m. on May 20).

Lamo, however, told me that Manning found him not from the Wired article -- which Manning never mentioned reading -- but from searching the word "WikiLeaks" on Twitter, which led him to a tweet Lamo had written that included the word "WikiLeaks." Even if Manning had really found Lamo through a Twitter search for "WikiLeaks," Lamo could not explain why Manning focused on him, rather than the thousands of other people who have also mentioned the word "WikiLeaks" on Twitter, including countless people who have done so by expressing support for WikiLeaks.

Although none of the Wired articles ever mention this, the first Lamo-Manning communications were not actually via chat. Instead, Lamo told me that Manning first sent him a series of encrypted emails which Lamo was unable to decrypt because Manning "encrypted it to an outdated PGP key of mine" [PGP is an encryption program]. After receiving this first set of emails, Lamo says he replied -- despite not knowing who these emails were from or what they were about -- by inviting the emailer to chat with him on AOL IM, and provided his screen name to do so. Lamo says that Manning thereafter sent him additional emails encrypted to his current PGP key, but that Lamo never bothered to decrypt them. Instead, Lamo claims he turned over all those Manning emails to the FBI without ever reading a single one of them. Thus, the actual initial communications between Manning and Lamo -- what preceded and led to their chat -- are completely unknown. Lamo refuses to release the emails or chats other than the small chat snippets published by Wired.

Using the chat logs between Lamo and Manning -- which Lamo provided to Poulsen -- the Wired writers speculated that the Army Private trusted Lamo because he "sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker." Poulsen and Zetter write that Manning confessed to being the leaker of the Apache attack video "very quickly in the exchange," and then proceeded to boast that, in addition, "he leaked a quarter-million classified embassy cables" to WikiLeaks. Very shortly after the first chat, Lamo notified federal agents of what Manning told him, proceeded to speak to Manning for the next several days while consulting with federal agents, and then learned that Manning was detained in Iraq.

* * * * *

Many of the bizarre aspects of this case, at least as conveyed by Lamo and Wired, are self-evident. Why would a 22-year-old Private in Iraq have unfettered access to 250,000 pages of diplomatic cables so sensitive that they "could do serious damage to national security?" Why would he contact a total stranger, whom he randomly found from a Twitter search, in order to "quickly" confess to acts that he knew could send him to prison for a very long time, perhaps his whole life? And why would he choose to confess over the Internet, in an unsecured, international AOL IM chat, given the obvious ease with which that could be preserved, intercepted or otherwise surveilled? These are the actions of someone either unbelievably reckless or actually eager to be caught.

All that said, this series of events isn't completely implausible. It's possible that a 22-year-old who engaged in these kinds of significant leaks, sitting in isolation in Iraq, would have a desire to unburden himself by confessing to a stranger; the psychological compulsion to confess is not uncommon (see Crime and Punishment), nor is the desire to boast of such acts. It's possible that he would have expected someone with Lamo's hacking and "journalist" background to be sympathetic to what he did and/or to feel compelled as a journalist not to run to the Government and disclose what he learns from a source. Still, the apparent ease with which Manning quickly spilled his guts in such painstaking detail over an Internet chat concerning such serious crimes -- and then proceeded to respond to Lamo's very specific and probing interrogations over days without ever once worrying that he could not trust Lamo -- is strange in the extreme.

If one assumes that this happened as the Wired version claims, what Lamo did here is despicable. He holds himself out as an "award-winning journalist" and told Manning he was one ("I did tell him that I worked as a journalist," Lamo said). Indeed, Lamo told me (though it doesn't appear in the chat logs published by Wired) that he told Manning early on that he was a journalist and thus could offer him confidentiality for everything they discussed under California's shield law. Lamo also said he told Manning that he was an ordained minister and could treat Manning's talk as a confession, which would then compel Lamo under the law to keep their discussions confidential (early on in their chats, Manning said: "I can't believe what I'm confessing to you"). In sum, Lamo explicitly led Manning to believe he could trust him and that their discussions would be confidential -- perhaps legally required to be kept confidential -- only to then report everything Manning said to the Government.

Worse, Lamo breached his own confidentiality commitments and turned informant without having the slightest indication that Manning had done anything to harm national security. Indeed, Lamo acknowledged to me that he was incapable of identifying a single fact contained in any documents leaked by Manning that would harm national security. And Manning's capacity to leak in the future was likely non-existent given that he told Lamo right away that he was "pending discharge" for "adjustment disorder," and no longer had access to any documents (Lamo: "Why does your job afford you access?" - Manning: "because i have a workstation . . . *had*").

If one believes what the chat logs claim, Manning certainly thought he was a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives, and probably was exactly that. And if he really is the leaker of the Apache helicopter attack video -- a video which sparked very rare and much-needed realization about the visceral truth of what our wars entail -- then he's a national hero similar to Daniel Ellsberg. Indeed, Ellsberg himself said the very same thing about Manning just yesterday on Democracy Now:

The fact is that what Lamo reports Manning is saying has a very familiar and persuasive ring to me. He reports Manning as having said that what he had read and what he was passing on were horrible -- evidence of horrible machinations by the US backdoor dealings throughout the Middle East and, in many cases, as he put it, almost crimes. And let me guess that -- he’s not a lawyer, but I'll guess that what looked to him like crimes are crimes, that he was putting out. We know that he put out, or at least it's very plausible that he put out, the videos that he claimed to Lamo. And that's enough to go on to get them interested in pursuing both him and the other.

And so, what it comes down, to me, is -- and I say throwing caution to the winds here -- is that what I've heard so far of Assange and Manning -- and I haven't met either of them -- is that they are two new heroes of mine.

To see why that's so, just review some of what Manning said about why he chose to leak, as reflected in the edited chat logs published by Wired:

Lamo: what's your endgame plan, then?. . .

Manning: well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] - and god knows what happens now - hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . - i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

Manning described the incident which first made him seriously question the U.S. war in Iraq: when he was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi "insurgents" who had been detained for distributing "insurgent" literature which, when he had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than "a scholarly critique against PM Maliki":

i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…

i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

And he explained why the thought of selling this classified information he was leaking to a foreign power never entered his mind:

Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious- i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?

Lamo: why didn’t you?

Manning: because it's public data

Lamo: i mean, the cables

Manning: it belongs in the public domain -information should be free - it belongs in the public domain - because another state would just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge - if its out in the open… it should be a public good.

That's a whistleblower in the purest form: discovering government secrets of criminal and corrupt acts and then publicizing them to the world not for profit, not to give other nations an edge, but to trigger "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms." That's the person that Adrian Lamo informed on and risked sending to prison for an extremely long time.

Making Lamo's conduct even worse is that it appears he reported Manning for no reason other than a desire for some trivial media attention. Jacob Appelbaum, a well-known hacker of the Tor Project who has known Lamo for years, said that Lamo's "only concern" has always been "getting publicity for Adrian." Indeed, Lamo's modus operandi as a hacker was primitive hacking aimed at high-profile companies that he'd then use Poulsen to publicize. As Appelbaum put it: "if this situation really fell into Adrian's lap, his first and only thought would have been: how can I turn this to my advantage? He basically destroyed a 22-year-old's life in order to get his name mentioned on the Wired.com blog." [There are efforts underway to help secure very competent legal counsel for Manning, including a legal defense fund for him; assuming the facts are what the current narrative suggests, I intend to post more about that shortly].

None of Lamo's claims that he turned informant out of some grave concern for "national security" and "the lives of his fellow citizens" make any sense. Indeed, Lamo several months ago contributed $30 to WikiLeaks, which he's use to tout his support for whistle-blowing, and told me has has long considered himself on "the far left." Yet in the public statements he's made about what he did to Manning, he's incoherently invoked a slew of trite, right-wing justifications, denouncing Manning as a "traitor" and a "spy," while darkly insinuating that Manning provided classified information to a so-called "foreign national," meaning WikiLeaks' Assange. Lamo told me that any embarrassment to the U.S. Government could cause a loss of American lives, and that he believes anyone who breaks the law with leaks should be prosecuted. Yet he also claims to support WikiLeaks, which is run by that very same "foreign national" and which exists to enable illegal leaks.

Then there's the fact that, just in the last two weeks, Lamo's statements have been filled with countless contradictions of the type that suggests deliberate lying. Lamo told me, for instance, that Manning first contacted him with a series of emails, but told Yahoo! News that "Manning contacted him via AOL Instant Messenger 'out of the blue' on May 21." Lamo told Yahoo! "that he spelled out very clearly in his chats with Manning that he wasn't ... acting as a journalist," that it "was clear to Manning that he had taken his journalist hat off for the purposes of their conversation," and that "Manning refused" a confidentiality offer, but last night he said to me that he told Manning their conversations would have journalist-source confidentiality and that Manning never refused or rejected that. Just listen to the interview Lamo gave to me and make your own judgment about his veracity.

* * * * *

And what about Wired's role in all of this? Both WikiLeaks as well as various Internet commentators have suggested that Poulsen violated journalistic ethical rules by being complicit with Lamo in informing on Manning. I don't see any evidence for that. This is what Poulsen told me when I asked him about whether he participated in Lamo's informing on Manning:

Adrian reached out to me in late May to tell me a story about how he'd been contacted by an Army intelligence analyst who'd admitted to leaking 260,000 State Department diplomatic cables to a "foreign national." Adrian told me he had already reported the matter to the government, and was meeting the Army and FBI in person to pass on chat logs. He declined to provide independently verifiable details, or identify the intelligence analyst by name, because he said he considered the matter sensitive.

Several days passed before he was willing to give me the chat logs under embargo. I got them on May 27. That's when I learned Manning's name and the full details of his claims to Adrian. . . . If you're asking if I informed on Manning or anyone else, the answer is no, and the question is insulting.

At the time when Lamo was conspiring with federal agents to induce Manning into making incriminating statements, Poulsen, by his own account, was aware that this was taking place, but there's no indication he participated in any way with Lamo. What is true, though, is that Lamo gave Wired the full, unedited version of his chat logs with Manning, but Wired published only extremely edited samplings of it. This is what Poulsen told me when I asked if Lamo gave him all of the chat logs:

He did, but I don't think we'll be publishing more any time soon. The remainder is either Manning discussing personal matters that aren't clearly related to his arrest, or apparently sensitive government information that I'm not throwing up without vetting first.

This part of Wired's conduct deserves a lot more attention. First, in his interview with me, Lamo claimed that all sorts of things took place in the discussion between him and Manning that are (a) extremely relevant to what happened, (b) have nothing to do with Manning's personal issues or sensitive national security secrets, and yet (c) are nowhere to be found in the chat logs published by Wired. That means either that Lamo is lying about what was said or Wired is concealing highly relevant aspects of their discussions. Included among that is Manning's explanation about how he found Lamo and why he contacted him, Manning's alleged claim that his "intention was to cripple the United States' foreign relations for the foreseeable future," and discussions they had about the capacity in which they were speaking.

Second, one can't help but note the irony that two hackers-turned-journalists -- Poulsen and Lamo -- are now the self-anointed guardians of America's national security, the former concealing secrets he learned as a journalist on vague national security grounds and the latter turning informant by invoking the most extreme, right-wing platitudes about "traitors" and "spies" and decrees that his actions were necessary to "save American lives."

Third, Wired should either publish all of the chat logs, or be far more diligent about withholding only those parts which truly pertain only to Manning's private and personal matters and/or which would reveal national security secrets. Or they should have a respected third party review the parts they have concealed to determine if there is any justification for that. At least if one believes Lamo's claims, there are clearly relevant parts of those chats which Wired continues to conceal.

Given Poulsen's mutually beneficial and multi-layered relationship with Lamo, they have far more than a standard journalist-source relationship. None of Poulsen's articles about the highly controversial Lamo is ever even remotely critical of him, in any sense of the word. From the start, there were countless bizarre aspects to Lamo's story which Poulsen never examined or explored, at least not when writing about any of this. I see no reason to doubt Poulsen's integrity or good faith. Still, in light of the magnitude of this story on several levels and his long relationship with Lamo, Kevin Poulsen should not be single-handedly deciding what the public is and isn't permitted to know about the Lamo-Manning interaction.

* * * * *

The reason this story matters so much -- aside from the fact that it may be the case that a truly heroic, 22-year-old whistle-blower is facing an extremely lengthy prison term -- is the unique and incomparably valuable function WikiLeaks is fulfilling. Even before the Apache helicopter leak, I wrote at length about why they are so vital, and won't repeat all of that here. Suffice to say, there are very few entities, if there are any, which pose as much of a threat to the ability of governmental and corporate elites to shroud their corrupt conduct behind an extreme wall of secrecy.

What makes WikiLeaks particularly threatening to the most powerful factions is that they cannot control it. Even when whistle-blowers in the past have leaked serious corruption and criminal conduct to perfectly good journalists at the nation's largest corporate media outlets, government officials could control how the information was disclosed. When the NYT learned in 2004 that the Bush administration was illegally eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, George Bush summoned the paper's Publisher and Executive Editor to the Oval Office, demanded that the story not be published, and the paper complied by sitting on it for a full year until after Bush was safely re-elected. When The Washington Post's Dana Priest learned that the CIA was maintaining a network of secret prisons -- black sites -- she honored the request of "senior U.S. officials" not to identify the countries where those prisons were located so as to not disrupt the U.S.'s ability to continue to use those countries for such projects.

Both WikiLeaks and Manning have stated that The Washington Post's David Finkel, when writing his book on Iraq two years ago, had possession of the Apache helicopter video but never released it to the public (Manning: "Washington Post sat on the video … David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here"). As Columbia Journalism Review reported, both the Post and Finkel were quite coy and evasive in addressing that claim, pointedly insisting that "the Post" had never possessed that video while refusing to say whether Finkel did. The same thing happened when, on the same day, I called Finkel to ask him about WikiLeaks' claim that they possessed but never released that video. He very curtly told me, using careful legalistic language, that "the Post never had the video," but before I could ask whether Finkel himself did, he abruptly told me he couldn't talk anymore and had nothing else to say, and then hung up on me. My inquiries to the Post were met with a pro forma response that "The Washington Post did not have the video, nor did we sit on anything," but these Journalistic Crusaders for Transparency refused to answer my question as to whether Finkel himself did.

By stark contrast, WikiLeaks isn't interested in helping governments, militaries and corporations keep secrets. They're interested in the opposite: forcing transparency on institutions which conduct the vast, vast bulk of their substantive conduct in the dark. They're not susceptible to pressure from political and corporate officials; rather, they want to hold them accountable. That's what makes WikiLeaks so uniquely threatening to elite institutions, and anyone who doubts that should simply read the 2008 Pentagon Report discussing ways to destroy it, or review the Obama administration's unprecedented and rapidly escalating war on whistle-blowers generally.

Any rational person would have to acknowledge that government secrecy in rare cases is justifiable and that it's possible for leaks of legitimate secrets to result in serious harm. I'm not aware of a single instance where any leak from WikiLeaks has done so, but it's certainly possible that, at some point, it might. But right now, the scales are tipped so far in the other direction -- toward excessive, all-consuming secrecy -- that the far greater danger comes from allowing that to fester and grow even more. It's not even a close call. Any efforts to subvert that secrecy cult are commendable in the extreme, and nobody is doing that as effectively as WikiLeaks (and their value is not confined to leaking, as they just inspired a serious effort to turn Iceland into a worldwide haven for investigative journalism and anonymous whistle-blowers).

This Manning detention -- whether it was by design or just exploited opportunistically -- is being used to depict WikiLeaks as a serious national security threat and associations with it as dangerous and subversive. Just in the last week alone, several people have expressed to me fears that supporting or otherwise enabling WikiLeaks could subject them to liability or worse. There's no reason to believe that's true, but given the powers the U.S. Government claims -- lawless detentions, renditions, assassinations even of American citizens -- that's the climate of intimidation that has been created. This latest incident is clearly being used to impede WikiLeaks' vital function of checking powerful factions and imposing transparency, and for that reason alone, this is an extremely serious case that merits substantial scrutiny, along with genuine skepticism to understand what happened.

* * * * *

My one-hour discussion with Lamo last night can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorders below. It is in two segments (the first roughly 40 minutes, the second roughly 20) because Lamo requested at one point that we go off the record, which we did for 1 minute or so to discuss the parts of Manning's chat that Lamo claims are too personal to publish (Lamo spoke only in generalities about that and I learned nothing specific). The only other part that is edited out is the first two minutes or so of the discussion, before the interview begins, where Lamo for some reason insists that I respond to a Tweet of his before we begin, which I then did.

Part 1:


Part 2:




UPDATE: Four relevant items from today: (1) The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports on Julian Assange's fear of being arrested by U.S. authorities, as well as what appears to be the imminent release by WikiLeaks of a video showing a horrendous U.S. air strike in Afghanistan that killed far more civilians than the U.S. military acknowledged; (2) After interviewing Poulsen, Columbia Journalism Review publishes a timeline reporting that, shortly before Lamo's scheduled May 27 meeting with FBI agents about Manning, Poulsen traveled on that date to Sacramento and "spent a few hours with Lamo"; (3) Judging by this June 10 article, The Washington Post obtained at least some of the Lamo-Manning chats, and quoted parts which Wired has not published -- proving that Wired is withholding more than just "personal issues" and national security secrets; and (4) Gawker's Adrian Chen has an excellent post demanding that Wired provide far more transparency regarding the parts of the Lamo-Manning chats they continue to conceal.
More: Glenn Greenwald

[JackRiddler]

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This is a start. Clear now that UK imposed the detention, not Sweden. We can hope the case falls apart in Sweden before the US makes its move on "espionage."

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Not likely. He'll resist extradition, the indictment will be made sooner than later (no other option really) and he'll stand in a US court eventually, extradited from either the UK or Sweden. It's either that or skip and become the hunted (it would certainly add to his "legend" and cachet in some circles)...IMO. He'll continue to threaten TPTB with "the Key" if he is held and his bluff will be called. He (or his associates) may release the key, he/they may not. A question I have if this occurs is this. Since anyone could have downloaded what I'll assume is an un-redacted cable dump, and there is indeed information that may put lives in danger in various parts of the world for whatever reason, would/could JA be charge as an accomplice in any violence which may occur as a result?

It seems as if this is where the saga is headed...and I'm just asking.

The intent of the gradual release strategy seems to be in drawing attention to the cables, without overwhelming everyone (after which most of the stories would be forgotten and the material would go mostly unread and untreated for years to come). So far it's been effective for that purpose, and the "History Insurance" is supposed to guarantee that it can't be stopped. The negative is allowing establishment media control over the sequence of release and much of the spin. The positives are in using their far greater resources to help with the warranted editing, have the means to expose them when they use their editing to cover-up, and have the protection of them being among the publishers.

You're absolutely right to highlight the dangers in this. The Justice Department has sent a letter to Wikileaks demanding the "return" of their "stolen property." Their thinking seems to be that while they may be helpless about what's already out, and although all cables are already in the hands of multiple publications, they may yet be able to criminalize further releases. Or, at least, construct an actionability against Wikileaks for publishing "new" material, and make an example of them whether or not the releases can be stop.

If Wikileaks releases the key at this stage, and thus everything (including whatever may be on the insurance file besides the cables), it might indeed merit the thermonuclear metaphor, as in: mutual assured destruction. The prosecutors would try to argue that this was the real leak, and no doubt the state would immediately hit Assange and Wikileaks with every means at their disposal, legal and otherwise.

Now that the History Insurance is in hundreds of thousands of hands, Wikileaks can't go back and edit it to omit material, e.g. of the kind that might cause informant killings. As though this would even be possible in an airtight fashion. And they can't release a revised History Insurance without undermining their credibility.

We also have no way of knowing who may have visited Assange in the last nine days to threaten or negotiate.

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[nathan28]

Is there any indication of what is claimed to be in the "history insurance" file?


@ Cowbell's original question: While I am not a lawyer, I think it would be on shaky legal grounds to charge Assange as an accomplice or conspirator for any resultant deaths caused by his actions--it would require "both overbroad and underbroad" application of the law. It would be like, e.g., claiming Google Maps was an accessory, or claiming that a newspaper was behind a politically-motivated killing. Likewise reasoning that there was an expectation of secrecy, therefore there should be an expectation of security makes little sense to me: if there is material that can motivate killings in the leaks, then the people in the docs should have at least anticipated the possibility that a hostile state would have interest in grabbing the docs.

Similarly, Cryptome has never faced anything but name-calling to that extent and arguably Cryptome would be an anti-american's dream more so than wikileaks. I'd also point out that Cryptome has gotten into more trouble over IP claims than free speech issues.

That said I wouldn't be surprised if charges were filed as a possible negotiating chit, or a "some of it will stick" approach or an effort to set precedent.

[JackRiddler]

Is there any indication of what is claimed to be in the "history insurance" file?

It's somewhere upthread what Wikileaks said about it, but if I remember it's supposedly all cables unredacted, with intimations of "plus."

@ Cowbell's original question: While I am not a lawyer, I think it would be on shaky legal grounds to charge Assange as an accomplice or conspirator for any resultant deaths caused by his actions--it would require "both overbroad and underbroad" application of the law.

All you say about the legalities sounds reasonable. They might decide they'll worry about a dismissal of the charges or a not-guilty verdict after detention and procedural shit has dragged on for years. Or they might not be thinking this through very far beyond getting their hands on him. It would be politically risky to go the legal route -- imagine years of "Free Julian Assange" movements, plus the cables and other leaks keep coming out anyway to keep it warm -- as it would be to try extralegal solutions. Maybe Obama already figures he's out in 2012 and doesn't care about the 3 or 4 points this affair would knock off his vote share. If the latter's any consideration at all.

That said I wouldn't be surprised if charges were filed as a possible negotiating chit, or a "some of it will stick" approach or an effort to set precedent.

Well, yeah.

[eyeno]

Hactivist
I have not revealed nothing about *myself*. I merely came to set the record straight if not for you for those who may read this in the future and also for my own conscience, I cannot allow someone liek Mr. Assange to continue to be villified, even by those who should know better and be ashamed for doing so, for doing the right thing, namely exposing corruption at the highest levels of our government.

We have a right to know what our elected leaders are up to and Mr. Assange has found a way to ensure we do.

As for my "special knowledge" I have none, I simply stated he is legit and I know that for a fact. You could know that too if you wanted to do the work, you havent, so you dont.

Again it is not magic or mystery, its work, its skill and its a desire to know the truth.

Maybe we have the desire but our lack of the skillz blinds in a way that does not allow us to see the foot prints of a real deal when it walks by. Could you explain the tracks in the sand that allowed you to notice that he was the real deal?

I'm fond of supreme without black olives.

[JackRiddler]

.

Assange on Channel 4 today. Anchor tries to bully him into announcing his retirement as a "leaker":


http://www.youtube.com/v/C30UhZDOO9A&hl ... &version=3

[DrVolin]

...and could be applied to cast doubt on the victim of any repressive act.

Yes.

[nathan28]

...and could be applied to cast doubt on the victim of any repressive act.

Yes.

I missed that earlier bit. It's possible Assange is just a patsy in some larger scheme. Like I've said five or six times before that email about "fleecing" that John Young posted bears notice. But at present I have little idea who or what is behind the fleecing, and I don't see the Tin Foil Brigade out and about connecting dots yet beyond Gordon Duff's totally speculative assertion (backed by his amazing precognitive abilities) that WikiLeaks = Israel.

[The Hacktivist]

Jack writes:

My "decrying" of RI posts has been directed mainly at those who in my view use imagination to substitute altogether for evidence, and who twist facts and logic on behalf of set prior conclusions. I don't wonder and cannot know much about personal motivations, although it's hard not not see them at all when confronted with a consistent pattern of twisting. However, explicitly politics, conclusions and beliefs are entirely another matter, and fair game. I have noted that many of the statements on this board (and not the ones from you) harmonize with the anti-Wikileaks propaganda and attacks from politicians and corporate media.

That and the right wing anti-Israel stuff.



Why did Israel come out looking so good here? Because like they said themselves " We arent worried about the cables because what we say in public is the same thing we say in private, only the hypocrites of the world need be worried about such matters."

The cables clearly show the likes of the US saying one thing in private and another in public, Israel is certainly no saint and they have plenty of blood on their hands, but they dont play that game, they are too smart for it because they know sooner or later it will come back and bite you in the ass like it is now re: the US, et. al.

Why is that so hard to understand for some? That has been Israel's policy forever.

I am telling you, as I did earlier, you are going to see, soon enough, that Wikileaks and Assange are exactly what they appear to be, this is not staged, its not a double game and it isnt manufactured, he did what he did and they are going to crucify him and use him as an example for it.

Will they use Wilileaks and Assange to bring about "certain ends"? Yes, but it wasnt created for that purpose by them, they are just using it for such, it fell on their lap so to speak.

[nathan28]

Jack writes:

My "decrying" of RI posts has been directed mainly at those who in my view use imagination to substitute altogether for evidence, and who twist facts and logic on behalf of set prior conclusions. I don't wonder and cannot know much about personal motivations, although it's hard not not see them at all when confronted with a consistent pattern of twisting. However, explicitly politics, conclusions and beliefs are entirely another matter, and fair game. I have noted that many of the statements on this board (and not the ones from you) harmonize with the anti-Wikileaks propaganda and attacks from politicians and corporate media.

That and the right wing anti-Israel stuff.



Why did Israel come out looking so good here? Because like they said themselves " We arent worried about the cables because what we say in public is the same thing we say in private, only the hypocrites of the world need be worried about such matters."

Why is that so hard to understand for some? That has been Israeli's policy forever.

I am telling you, as I did earlier, you are going to see,soon enough, that Wikileaks and Assange are exactly what they appear to be, this is not staged, its not a double game and it isnt manufactured, he did what he did and they are going to crucify him and use him as an example for it.

See also the Wash. Post quoting on background two officials from the Bush and Clinton admins--that's 16 years' worth--saying that Israel tends to avoid using the State Dep't. See the cable summarizing the mtg. b/w a US official and Mossad, where they agree to discuss black ops in another setting with less people present.

Never mind that it ignores things previously established, though. The basic logic is:

If WikiLeaks was an Israeli psyop it would portray Israel in a positive light.
The cables WikiLeaks released did not portray Israel negatively in the cables themselves.
Therefore, WikiLeaks is an Israeli psyop.

That's a formal error. ((X => Y) != (Y => X)). There's absolutely nothing to back up the assertion. Even Alice's suggestion, that Assange was cool with the US Reykjavik Embassy, does not at all associate him with the Mossad or other Israeli forces, and that's as close as anyone has come to showing a possible connection.

[seemslikeadream]

I am telling you, as I did earlier, you are going to see, soon enough, that Wikileaks and Assange are exactly what they appear to be, this is not staged, its not a double game and it isnt manufactured, he did what he did and they are going to crucify him and use him as an example for it.

Will they use Wilileaks and Assange to bring about "certain ends"? Yes, but it wasnt created for that purpose by them, they are just using it for such, it fell on their lap so to speak.

Yes and if he's good enough for these folks he's good enough for me. Someone please tell me these savvy guys are all being fooled by Assange. Pilger? give me a fuckin' break

Michael Moore

John Pilger

Bianca Jagger

Daniel Ellsberg

Jemima Khan

Ken Loach

Chris Floyd

Alexander Cockburn

Arthur Silber

Patrick Cockburn

[compared2what?]

It's as simple as Bush v. Gore. If they get away with that, they'll think they can get away with anything. And they'll probably be right.

No disagreement from me. How's Padilla doing these days, anyway?

Funny you should mention him. And also, thank you for bringing him up. I have no disagreement with you, either, btw. Except that it's not really as breezily and casually incidental a point as "by the way" suggests it is in every sense, obviously. I just mean that at least for the purposes of this discussion (and as far as I know, in general), I have no disagreement with you.

Anyway. I was just thinking of Padilla, as I have every time I've gotten to this sentence in that Glenn Greenwald essay on Manning's detention since he published it:

It's one thing to impose such punitive, barbaric measures on convicts who have proven to be violent when around other prisoners; at the Supermax in Florence, inmates convicted of the most heinous crimes and who pose a threat to prison order and the safety of others are subjected to worse treatment than what Manning experiences.

Because that's where Jose Padilla is. As are Ted Kaczynski, Richard Reid, H. Rap Brown, Terry Nichols, Robert Hanssen, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Ramzi Yousef, among others.

Every inmate there is in solitary confinement in a cell that's made entirely out of poured concrete (including the bed and other permanent fixtures) that was designed to make it impossible for its occupant to determine its physical orientation relative to the facility as a whole 22 to 23 hours a day. At best, and without additional disciplinary measures.

Nobody should be held under those conditions, both as a matter of law and human decency. It's not necessary. Even for the restraint and/or protection of convicts who have been proven to be violent when around other prisoners. I believe, although I'm not certain, that there isn't any subset or category of concerns under which anyone could argue that it is, including cost-efficiency and the mental or physical health and well-being of the prison guards.

Likewise, nobody should be held in solitary confinement without communication privileges for non-disciplinary or safety-related reasons for longer than 48 hours, on any kind of systematic basis or as a matter of institutional policy.

Or, I personally would argue, at all, under any circumstances.

But since I can see a reasonable argument that there might be no better or lower-risk option on a contingency basis for, let's say, some prisoners who were processed in on Fridays after most courts had recessed for the weekend (or whatever), for the sake of rhetorical convenience, I'm setting the terms somewhere in the approximate vicinity of the lowest rather than the highest acceptable range -- eg, it's not like I'd necessarily go to the mat for the difference between 48 and 72 hours if you threw in this or that set of variables on the grounds that one was cruel and inhuman punishment and the other wasn't. Broadly speaking, my point is just that it's non-productively punitive to hold prisoners in extreme isolation for more than a couple of days. Among other things, it's potentially significantly hazardous for the health of people with any number of relatively common physical and mental ailments. Both in the long term and in the short term.

Again, not every single real-life example of that would necessarily be an outrage that would go to the very top of my personal Amnesty-International list of individual instances of criminal injustice urgently in need of immediate redress. But, you know, moot point, since there's not really any way for a concerned citizen to know about every single real-life example of it anyhow.

I mean, that's kind of why you have to advocate for a cause on constitutional or other generally codifiable principle by using the most persuasive and clear-cut examples available to you that are likely to speak to one or more of the popular interests of the polity as a whole to begin with: A fair system is the best guard against individual abuses that it's presently politically possible to attain. And also kind of why you have to stand and fight for the first-amendment rights of all if you fight for any. No kind of popular cause is attainable without them, absent recourse to armed insurgency.

Which is why I said that the abuse of Julian Assange's rights was on the same continuum as the abuses at Gitmo. They violate the same principles that underlie the same assortment of rights guaranteed under the first and fourth amendments. And by my standards, equally so, actually, insofar as I regard those rights as absolutely inviolable, actually. But that's just between you and me. Because it's obviously not very likely to be a winning argument for political advocacy purposes from the perspective of the polity as a whole, right at the moment.

Also, and for the reasons just stated, I guess I should make it clear that I have no disagreement with Glenn Greenwald's decision not to mention Jose Padilla's confinement at ADX Florence in his Bradley Manning essay. He's got a background in constitutional and civil-rights litigation and therefore, (I feel pretty safe in assuming) a strong professional inclination to make the most persuasive and/or winnable argument that he can make, based on the best evidence available to him.

As I have no doubt at all he that he knows, Manning does not represent the best case that would actually be winnable in court. (As opposed to "in the court of public opinion," where he arguably does, at least to a broadly and conventionally liberal-minded American constituency.) Because whatever one thinks of the military justice system, it would be very fucking difficult to argue that it's not the proper first venue for adjudicating the charges against Manning, in reality. In fact, it would be fucking impossible, afaic. But IANAL** and that's not a question I've ever tried to answer. So I can't say that I really know, for sure.

Julian Assange, on the other hand, represents a pretty to very good case from a popular perspective. And an excellent one, from a legal and/or political perspective. In a political environment where people still have relatively good access to some form of their rights of free speech and assembly, anyway. Which is not to say that he mightn't easily be convicted. After all, Bush was appointed President in 2000 in a Supreme Court ruling that wasn't even defensible on constitutional grounds from the perspective of the judges*** who wrote it. The objective political conditions for successful popular protest didn't really exist then. Specifically, there was no largely alienated and economically dissatisfied middle-class then. There is now, though.

Needless to say, I can neither say with any confidence that popular political protest in 2000 would have resulted in change for the better had there been any, nor that it would have that result now were there to be. Just that the odds that it might start to rise above none at all when people are actively trying to achieve it. And don't when they're not.

BTW, both the "pretty to very good" and "excellent" in the paragraph that's two above this one are intended to be read with the unspoken qualification, "That's how I'd rate them in the overall context of politically winnable fights, based on the presently perceptible popular response." I personally haven't seen an occasion to say that very often during my politically aware lifetime. And not at all over any issue of real political primacy since some point in the 1980s.

Which is not to say that there's no point in continuing to fight when you don't have any reasonable expectation of winning, of course. You have to keep the ball in play until you see a chance to score, among other things. I see one now. Potentially. I could be wrong. I could be right.



__________________



Um....That was a rhetorical question about Padilla. Right?
__________________

** I am not a lawyer.

*** Text of decision here.

And there are actually two ways that you can tell that the people who wrote it know it's not constitutionally defensible, I'd forgotten about one of them. The one I remembered was the sentence:

Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.

That's just unheard of. Decisions by the United States Supreme Court set legal precedent for all other courts thenceforth. Period. They don't just write stuff that applies on a one-time, special-exception basis to the matter under immediate consideration. That's not their job.

So one can infer from the express stipulation regarding the decision's unique applicability to that case and that case only that they knew it was bad law.

The other is that it was a per curiam decision, which in this case basically means "unsigned." (Literally it means "by the court" or "through the court.") Per curiam opinions are typically unanimous. And, even more typically, used by courts when there's not much to do besides reflexively issue a routine and non-controversial, vanilla appellate ruling.

Bush v. Gore was a highly controversial 5-4 decision, with signed dissent from Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens and Breyer. So there were five cowards hiding their wittingly unconstitutional shit behind that "per curiam." Not to put too fine a point on it.

[Ben D]

The cables clearly show the likes of the US saying one thing in private and another in public, Israel is certainly no saint and they have plenty of blood on their hands, but they dont play that game, they are too smart for it because they know sooner or later it will come back and bite you in the ass like it is now re: the US, et. al.

Why is that so hard to understand for some? That has been Israel's policy forever.

Et, to the extent that one reads between the lines when we hear the statement "we neither confirm or deny ...", generally the Israelis don't pull any punches but I would not conclude from that that they don't 'play that game' of duplicity.

In any event, since I'm not convinced that Wikileaks is the real deal due to fact that I would consider that had it really posed as a potential thorn to imperial global ambitions, it would have been either infiltrated and taken over or put out of play long ago. I also take it as a given that CIA, MI6, MOSSAD, and some other intelligence agencies including ASIO, cooperate at some levels regarding potential threats to the world order envisaged by imperial elite, Therefore it follows that to my mind, the Wikileaks question is still an open one, but I trust that if I postulate MOSSAD as a player, it is no more an attack on Israel as it is on Australia, USA, or UK.

I too like it when people say what they mean and mean what they say!

[The Hacktivist]

The cables clearly show the likes of the US saying one thing in private and another in public, Israel is certainly no saint and they have plenty of blood on their hands, but they dont play that game, they are too smart for it because they know sooner or later it will come back and bite you in the ass like it is now re: the US, et. al.

Why is that so hard to understand for some? That has been Israel's policy forever.

Et, to the extent that one reads between the lines when we hear the statement "we neither confirm or deny ...", generally the Israelis don't pull any punches but I would not conclude from that that they don't 'play that game' of duplicity.

In any event, since I'm not convinced that Wikileaks is the real deal due to fact that I would consider that had it really posed as a potential thorn to imperial global ambitions, it would have been either infiltrated and taken over or put out of play long ago. I also take it as a given that CIA, MI6, MOSSAD, and some other intelligence agencies including ASIO, cooperate at some levels regarding potential threats to the world order envisaged by imperial elite, Therefore it follows that to my mind, the Wikileaks question is still an open one, but I trust that if I postulate MOSSAD as a player, it is no more an attack on Israel as it is on Australia, USA, or UK.

I too like it when people say what they mean and mean what they say!

Good point SLAD with the list.


Ben, I agree, when the intell discussion is happening MOSSAD is as in play as CIA or anyone else and that isnt necessarily an attack on Israel.

But I dont see that here and like I said, a little more than just a peek has proven to me that it is real, but by all means lets keep this debate going, my feelings to the contrary should not stop anyone from believing it isnt what I say it is.

Despite the fact that a real, living and breathing human, Assange, is behind this and likely not being treated very well by his captors (up until his bail that is) we are probably all in for some very interesting times (or theatre as some of you may want to call it).

There is a lot ahead.

This is a good thread.

[The Hacktivist]

It's as simple as Bush v. Gore. If they get away with that, they'll think they can get away with anything. And they'll probably be right.

No disagreement from me. How's Padilla doing these days, anyway?

Funny you should mention him. And also, thank you for bringing him up. I have no disagreement with you, either, btw. Except that it's not really as breezily and casually incidental a point as "by the way" suggests it is in every sense, obviously. I just mean that at least for the purposes of this discussion (and as far as I know, in general), I have no disagreement with you.

Anyway. I was just thinking of Padilla, as I have every time I've gotten to this sentence in that Glenn Greenwald essay on Manning's detention since he published it:

It's one thing to impose such punitive, barbaric measures on convicts who have proven to be violent when around other prisoners; at the Supermax in Florence, inmates convicted of the most heinous crimes and who pose a threat to prison order and the safety of others are subjected to worse treatment than what Manning experiences.

Because that's where Jose Padilla is. As are Ted Kaczynski, Richard Reid, H. Rap Brown, Terry Nichols, Robert Hanssen, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Ramzi Yousef, among others.

Every inmate there is in solitary confinement in a cell that's made entirely out of poured concrete (including the bed and other permanent fixtures) that was designed to make it impossible for its occupant to determine its physical orientation relative to the facility as a whole 22 to 23 hours a day. At best, and without additional disciplinary measures.

Nobody should be held under those conditions, both as a matter of law and human decency. It's not necessary. Even for the restraint and/or protection of convicts who have been proven to be violent when around other prisoners. I believe, although I'm not certain, that there isn't any subset or category of concerns under which anyone could argue that it is, including cost-efficiency and the mental or physical health and well-being of the prison guards.

Likewise, nobody should be held in solitary confinement without communication privileges for non-disciplinary or safety-related reasons for longer than 48 hours, on any kind of systematic basis or as a matter of institutional policy.

Or, I personally would argue, at all, under any circumstances.

But since I can see a reasonable argument that there might be no better or lower-risk option on a contingency basis for, let's say, some prisoners who were processed in on Fridays after most courts had recessed for the weekend (or whatever), for the sake of rhetorical convenience, I'm setting the terms somewhere in the approximate vicinity of the lowest rather than the highest acceptable range -- eg, it's not like I'd necessarily go to the mat for the difference between 48 and 72 hours if you threw in this or that set of variables on the grounds that one was cruel and inhuman punishment and the other wasn't. Broadly speaking, my point is just that it's non-productively punitive to hold prisoners in extreme isolation for more than a couple of days. Among other things, it's potentially significantly hazardous for the health of people with any number of relatively common physical and mental ailments. Both in the long term and in the short term.

Again, not every single real-life example of that would necessarily be an outrage that would go to the very top of my personal Amnesty-International list of individual instances of criminal injustice urgently in need of immediate redress. But, you know, moot point, since there's not really any way for a concerned citizen to know about every single real-life example of it anyhow.

I mean, that's kind of why you have to advocate for a cause on constitutional or other generally codifiable principle by using the most persuasive and clear-cut examples available to you that are likely to speak to one or more of the popular interests of the polity as a whole to begin with: A fair system is the best guard against individual abuses that it's presently politically possible to attain. And also kind of why you have to stand and fight for the first-amendment rights of all if you fight for any. No kind of popular cause is attainable without them, absent recourse to armed insurgency.

Which is why I said that the abuse of Julian Assange's rights was on the same continuum as the abuses at Gitmo. They violate the same principles that underlie the same assortment of rights guaranteed under the first and fourth amendments. And by my standards, equally so, actually, insofar as I regard those rights as absolutely inviolable, actually. But that's just between you and me. Because it's obviously not very likely to be a winning argument for political advocacy purposes from the perspective of the polity as a whole, right at the moment.

Also, and for the reasons just stated, I guess I should make it clear that I have no disagreement with Glenn Greenwald's decision not to mention Jose Padilla's confinement at ADX Florence in his Bradley Manning essay. He's got a background in constitutional and civil-rights litigation and therefore, (I feel pretty safe in assuming) a strong professional inclination to make the most persuasive and/or winnable argument that he can make, based on the best evidence available to him.

As I have no doubt at all he that he knows, Manning does not represent the best case that would actually be winnable in court. (As opposed to "in the court of public opinion," where he arguably does, at least to a broadly and conventionally liberal-minded American constituency.) Because whatever one thinks of the military justice system, it would be very fucking difficult to argue that it's not the proper first venue for adjudicating the charges against Manning, in reality. In fact, it would be fucking impossible, afaic. But IANAL** and that's not a question I've ever tried to answer. So I can't say that I really know, for sure.

Julian Assange, on the other hand, represents a pretty to very good case from a popular perspective. And an excellent one, from a legal and/or political perspective. In a political environment where people still have relatively good access to some form of their rights of free speech and assembly, anyway. Which is not to say that he mightn't easily be convicted. After all, Bush was appointed President in 2000 in a Supreme Court ruling that wasn't even defensible on constitutional grounds from the perspective of the judges*** who wrote it. The objective political conditions for successful popular protest didn't really exist then. Specifically, there was no largely alienated and economically dissatisfied middle-class then. There is now, though.

Needless to say, I can neither say with any confidence that popular political protest in 2000 would have resulted in change for the better had there been any, nor that it would have that result now were there to be. Just that the odds that it might start to rise above none at all when people are actively trying to achieve it. And don't when they're not.

BTW, both the "pretty to very good" and "excellent" in the paragraph that's two above this one are intended to be read with the unspoken qualification, "That's how I'd rate them in the overall context of politically winnable fights, based on the presently perceptible popular response." I personally haven't seen an occasion to say that very often during my politically aware lifetime. And not at all over any issue of real political primacy since some point in the 1980s.

Which is not to say that there's no point in continuing to fight when you don't have any reasonable expectation of winning, of course. You have to keep the ball in play until you see a chance to score, among other things. I see one now. Potentially. I could be wrong. I could be right.



__________________



Um....That was a rhetorical question about Padilla. Right?
__________________

** I am not a lawyer.

*** Citation TK.

Everytime I think of Ted Kaczynski it breaks my heart. Now there, my friends, is a mind controlled puppet, and a brilliant one at that.

And you are correct, of course, nobody should be held in the conditions you describe, I lose sleep over it personally.