Tweet
So far every known piece of evidence against Bradley Manning comes from one source, Adrian Lamo, a hacker who was institutionalized by the police three weeks before he alleges Manning contacted him and confessed to turning over materials to Wikileaks. There are many inconsistencies in Lamo’s many stories, as Marcy Wheeler has documented, yet the normally excellent Charlie Savage lets Lamo serve as sole source for a highly dubious story in the pages of the New York Times:
Wired magazine has published excerpts from logs of online chats between Mr. Lamo and Private Manning. But the sections in which Private Manning is said to detail contacts with Mr. Assange are not among them. Mr. Lamo described them from memory in an interview with The Times, but he said he could not provide the full chat transcript because the F.B.I. had taken his hard drive, on which it was saved.
FDL has constructed a timeline of the events surrounding Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Adrian Lamo. To say that Lamo’s story does not hold water would be an understatement:
From the FDL Bradley Manning/Wikileaks Timeline:
April 28
- Adrian Lamo involuntarily committed to mental facility by the police
May 7
- Adrian Lamo discharged from mental hospital
May 20
- Wired Magazine reports on Adrian Lamo’s involuntary psychiatric hold
May 26
- Bradley Manning is taken into custody, per Wired Magazine
May 27
- Adrian Lamo turns over his entire chat log with Manning to Wired
May 29
- Bradley Manning actually taken into custody, per his official charge document
June 6
- Wired Magazine reports the arrest of Manning
June 9
- John Cook of Yahoo News asks Lamo to provide a portion of their chats; Lamo says he will have to check with his lawyer
June 10
- Wired posts the heavily redacted version of the chats
- Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima reports Lamo also turned over entire chat log to them, and also publishes excerpts
June 11
- Wired reports that Wikileaks is hiring a lawyer for Manning, and that Julian Assange has asked Lamo for a copy of the chats to assist in his defense. Lamo responds that “Private Manning’s attorney can get them by discovery like everyone else.”
June 13
- Comment appears in Xeni Jardin Boing Boing article, alleging that Wired Magazine reporter and Lamo “worked their target, Bradley Manning, for days — in co-operation with the FBI and US Army CID,” classic “COINTELPRO tactics.”
- Wired tells CJR they did not even find out Manning’s name until May 27, after he had already been arrested on May 26, therefore there could have been no collusion.
June 18
- Wired tells Glenn Greenwald that they published all of the chats that Lamo turned over to them, with the exception of “Manning discussing personal matters that aren’t clearly related to his arrest, or apparently sensitive government information.”
- Greenwald compares Wired’s published chats with the Washington Post’s, and finds there are things that are neither “personal matters” nor “sensitive government information,” which Wired nonetheless withheld.
June 19
- Boing-Boing receives an allegedly more complete version of the alleged Lamo/Manning chats, which were allegedly given from Lamo to Assange when he had a change of heart.
July 6
- Wired reports that Lamo says he turned Manning in because he was concerned over the 260,000 cables. But as Marcy Wheeler points out, the passage they quote–and its context–doesn’t appear in the IM logs Wired originally reproduced.
- The quote conveniently appears in the subsequent Boing Boing chat log
- Bradley Manning charged. Documents say he was taken into custody on May 29 and not May 26 as Wired reported
December 15
- Lamo tells Charlie Savage of references to Julian Assange in his chats with Manning, which don’t appear in the Wired excerpts, either. Lamo says he no longer has access to chats because the FBI seized his hard drive.
- Instead of asking Lamo to go back to Wired or the Washington Post and get copies, Savage prints the allegations without question.
For more on the inconsistencies on Lamo’s stories, see Marcy Wheeler’s posts here and here.
Suffice to say that it is very convenient that at a time when the government is trying desperately to make a case against Julian Assange and prove he induced Bradley Manning to turn over the documents to Wikileaks, Adrian Lamo suddenly “remembers” that his chats with Manning contain details of a physical hand-off of a disk.
And instead of asking Lamo to go back to Wired, or the Washington Post, and get copies of the chat transcripts he gave them, the New York Times says “no problem, we’ll just publish this convenient new information based on the recollections of someone who was in a mental institution two weeks before all this happened.”
Charlie Savage’s article says that Manning is being detained in very difficult conditions which are designed to get him to implicate Julian Assange. Meanwhile, all the known evidence against Manning comes from Lamo’s chat logs, which both Wired AND the Washington Post refuse to publish.
Heaven knows when Lamo will need to “remember” something else, I suppose.
- Sign the petition to stop the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning
- Julian Assange: Bradley Manning is a Political Prisoner (VIDEO)
- David House: Bradley Manning Speaks About his Conditions
- Dr. Jeff Kaye, Bradley Manning & the Torture That Is Solitary Confinement
- Michael Whitney on GritTV with Laura Flanders on Bradley Manning’s detention
- Bradley Manning/Wikileaks Timeline
51 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL Action
what has happened to/with Charlie Savage ???
he wins the Pulitzer Prize for revealing addington/cheney/bush signing statement crap while he was at the Boston Globe ( which is owned by the new york times ).
after he wins, he is transferred to the new york times, and i do not know if this is just me, but his reporting/writing has become borrrrrrrrrrrrring and he only writes about really obvious stuff. almost as if the nyt is intent on neutering him or something.
and now this water carrying stuff.
one has to wonder what happened to the Pulitzer Prize winning Charlie Savage.
Ah The New York times,
it’s the preferred medium for wrapping your halibut.
You don’t have to worry about it taking on the fish odor,
because…
it’s already got it!
It would be nice if he would contact Ellen Nakashima of the WaPo and ask if Lamo’s story is corroborated in the chat logs.
Glenn Greenwald asked her to publish them, and she flat-out refused.
Wow, I was not aware of this. From reading headlines and skimming articles, I had just assumed Bradley Manning was guilty. And worthy of our support. And being treated badly. But I had foolishly assumed the facts held water.
I didn’t realize the evidence was so dubious myself. And Manning can’t speak for himself, so there has been nobody out there who is talking about it consistently.
As always, it was the spot-on Marcy Wheeler who saw how shady it all is. And there’s much more. It really is incredible this story has not been examined more closely — Lamo’s stories are sketchy from start to finish.
So if they don’t have enough evidence to convict, they can just hold him indefinitely or send him abroad and have him murdered. Is this a great country or what? /S
Or suicide.
His suicide note will note how Assange contacted him and offered him money to get top secret info from the USG.
The press will report widely on the suicide note but say nothing of the suicide itself, where he shot himself in the back of the head. Three times.
Yes, thanks all you dirty scum hippie bloggers for the Great Investigating Reporting. What you have done is great because you have replaced those print pigs that have sold their sole to the corp./govt. store;)
Now to keep pressure on the scum in govt until Manning is treated correctly.
Conrad Black, Adrian Lamo…it seems apparent that for the New York Times the most credible source is the one willing to push the narrative.
The same thing that happened to Nate Silver. Narrative is “news” now.
Did Nakashima give any stated reason for refusing?
In yesterday’s MSNBC interview with Cenk Uygur, Julian Assange suggested that some U.S. media organizations are trying to distance themselves from WikiLeaks any way they can to avoid getting the same treatment from our government that WikiLeaks is getting. Pushing the official story is one way to accomplish this.
W00T Jane coming up the Ed Show !!
250,000 documents is a hell of a lot of documents…just sayin’. He must have started when he was 12..I believe there is someone/something else behind these leaks that could have the time and space to accomplish these leaks..
Go Jane!
Keep at it folks! Somebody’s got to do this….
She’s getting the whole story out there…sic ‘em.
The facts on something like this are vitally important – not only to get an innocent man out of prison but for several other reasons as well. If the government is holding (and torturing!) Manning for something they have no reasonable basis for believing he did, it will help to discredit the official line on many other things as well – including the charges against Assange. Also, if Manning didn’t give the documents to WikiLeaks, who did?
Jane, you need to make sure this story gets heard on TV! Maybe on Keith or Rachel? (If it’s LoDo, I won’t be able to watch live, but I can at least catch the segment on FDL TV.)
x2
She just did.
LOL. But laughing at gallows humor, the sad truth.
Jane hit out of the Park again with her concise knowledge of Bradley Manning’s seemingly illegal jailing under torturous conditions… Go Jane!!
adrian lame-o. was there ever a human more aptly named?
How long until it goes up on FDL TV?
The revolution will be _streamed_–not televised!
The official line has had no credibility for quite some time now. Anyone who still believes the official line lacks critical thinking skills.
Yeah, well, we have to appeal to those people too :-)
I don’t know, but I’m sure someone tivoed it or something. I’m sure it will appear in a post..maybe by Jane herself. It just happened. It is unbelievable how she was able to get all the information into a very short segment…absolutely brilliant!
Once again, all one of fdl’s top writers has to do is resort to that tried-but-true method of making something that confuses a lot of people simple, straightforward and very easy to understand – a timeline – and, “poof,” the reader sees it all a lot more clearly.
Thanks, Jane. Hope Ed doesn’t mess it up.
I agree about timelines. Chronology as the major organizing principle is an underappreciated way to present large amounts of information.
That is why it is weird that I missed this. I always read emptywheel. But it was a combination of my being busy and assuming I knew more about this story than I did. It was arrogance!
Something along the lines of “we don’t do that.”
Wow. Great job. Thanks for pulling this all together for us.
Charming. Your basic non-answer answer.
And then they want to know why you were willing to go on Fox! As if the mainstream media were fundamentally different.
Yes, I agree. I have already commented on this. Even if he did the attack helicopter, I’m convinced that others went through the door that he opened. I’m sure that sooner or later the thought police are going to start coming after all of the firepups.
I too always assumed it was an open and shut case and that he was a hero. Has he (manning) ever denied the allegations, through his attorney or what not?
Here’s another one:
July 30
• Lamo told CNN’s Ashley Fanz that he knew of one person in the military who had helped Bradley Manning but wouldn’t elaborate.
Adrian Lamo a lying f*cking a**hole.
Oh good one, I’m adding that now!
I’m finding tons of them tonight.
I put together a merged chat log: http://firedoglake.com/alleged-manninglamo-chat-logs/
And now I’m working on the “many stories of Adrian Lamo.” He almost never tells the same one twice, it’s going to be a long document.
Oh that’s too good, bmull!
He told CNN he couldn’t show them the chat transcripts because he had GIVEN it to the Department of Defense, and joked that “it was his get-out-of-awkward-question from reporter free card.”
He told Charlie Savage he couldn’t show him the transcripts because the FBI had TAKEN his hard drive.
I like Savage, but he got so played.
Isis,
Could the “leaks” have been masterminded to bring down Freedom of the Press, and Free Speech?
Wow. So, aside from the Peripatetic Hard Drive that may or may not have what Lamo says it has, we just have Lamo’s unsupported word — which changes about as often as a baby’s diaper — against PFC Bradley Manning.
This is what’s being used to hold Manning in solitary, with SERE-style thought-disruption games going on, for seven months and counting.
Good gravy.
If the case against Manning turns out to be as nonexistent as it’s starting to look, is there any hope of prosecuting the prosecutors for things like unlawful detention? Maybe arrange the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate crimes committed under color of authority in the way Manning has been treated, including both the detention itself and the torture?
My impression has been that these cases almost never get prosecuted, even when a valid legal basis for prosecution exists; but if the thing can be brought about, it should be. It could be Obama’s Watergate.
Just saw it on FDL TV – fantastic presentation!
It looks like there are further dates here that you might wish to incorporate into your timeline. It would be cool if you could maintain it continuously. It’s helpful to understand what’s happening, I think.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/lamo-classified-documents/
The ‘involuntary commitment?” That’s how you remind the prison snitch that ‘You still work for us, bitch.”
Even the redacted chat transcripts show that Lamo was working Manning.
Thanks, appreciate the link. That info is in the timeline now.
I am grateful that you and your associates are providing such an invaluable service by posting this information for the public. The Lamo/Manning Chat Logs and the Lamo/Manning/Wikipedia Timeline are exactly the kind of documentary evidence that any jury at a court martial or court trial will find most useful.
One suggestion for your consideration is to place additional highly prominent LINKS to the “Merged Lamo/Manning Chat Logs” at a highly prominent place at the top of this page and maybe elsewhere. It deserves extra attention. Otherwise, this wonderful presentation of the chat logs may be too easily overlooked by visitors to this webpage.
Another suggestion for your consideration is to clarify an editorial point: On a few of the chat entries for Manning (at least two) and for Lamo (at least one), Manning appears to refer to himself as “Manning” at the end of the Manning chat post item and Lamo appears to refer to himself as “Lamo” at the end of the the Lamo chat post item. But maybe those awkward self-references are editorial comments by someone else who is not identified.
It is an open question whether anyone has asked Julian Assange if he has access to a copy of the Lamo/Manning chat logs (other than the versions acknowledged by Wired, WaPo and Lamo), and if so, would he share a copy of his version for public distribution?
No.
Meh. They’ve got physical evidence that he dowloaded the Afghanistan materials. Even if that’s the only thing they get him for (and I’m sure they’ve got physical evidence of the theft of the cables), then he’s still in prison for life.
The Army wants Manning to cooperate so they can let him walk, because they might have to let him walk anyway. The Death Star orbiting the Army’s case against Manning is this Greenwald scoop:
“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”.
Under both the Federal Rules of Evidence (501) and the UCMJ’s RME (503) the “clergy-penitent privilege” is bad news for the Army’s case. Rules of Military Evidence 503 states (per Army training powerpoint):
A person has a privilege to refuse to disclose and to prevent another from disclosing a confidential communication by the person to a clergyman or a clergyman’s assistant, if such communication is made either as a formal act of religion or as a matter of conscience…
A “clergyman” is a minister, priest, rabbi, chaplain, or other similar functionary of a religious organization, or an individual reasonably believed to be so by the person consulting the clergyman…
A communication is “Confidential” if made to a clergyman in the clergyman’s capacity as a spiritual advisor… and is not intended to be disclosed to third persons…
According to the Army’s Chief of Chaplains
Confidentiality is Absolute: NO STATED EXCEPTIONS
…Reveal info ONLY when:
written consent given AFTER the information is passed to the Chaplain/Asst.
No Blanket “informed consent” of release from confidentiality.
…Protect Files, and destroy as soon as no longer needed (p. 14 of Army training powerpoint).
And there is case law (US v. Shelton) that MRE 503 covers civilian counselors as well as military chaplains.
Now it could be Lamo was lying when he said he was an “ordained minister”, it doesn’t matter. If Manning spoke to him about a “matter of conscience” and he reasonably believed Lamo to be, as he said he was, an ordained minister, their conversation is a privileged communication that can’t be used against Manning. It won’t help the Army’s case that FBI and CID agents were coaching Lamo (to be fair, the agents were probably were unaware of everything Lamo told Manning). As for anything they discovered about Manning as a result of Lamo breaching privilege, there’s also the little matter of the “fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine”.
To quote a college webinar conducted by a legal studies Professor (Miller) and civilian police Sergeant (McBride) (ironically, the college was American Military University):
Q: Have you ever heard of a request for a religious figure (priest, rabbi, etc)? Would deception in this matter bring a valid confession?
Prof. Miller: It would be totally inappropriate for an officer to pretend to be a religious figure. When people confess to a religious figure that confession is protected by clergy-penitent privilege and cannot be disclosed. Anything said to the fake priest would be inadmissible and any evidence discovered as a result that confession would be suppressed under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine.
Sgt. Mcbride: … In regards to masquerading as a religious figure, wow, I can‟t see where that would ever work. The outrage of the community would probably not be very pretty, not to mention the illegality of anything gotten from such a confession.