On August 16, 2010, Queena Kim and Tanya Jo Miller interviewed Adrian Lamo for Cyberfrequencies.  The extended audio clip and transcript are available here.  Transcribed by Katie F.

TITLE CARD: Hacker Adrian Lamo shows us his electronic cig and talks about Wikileaks’ Julian Assange

LAMO: It may, may have enough of a charge now to actually show how it works. The atomizer is this little thing here which superheats briefly in order to vaporize the, the nicotine contained in the cartridge into steam which contains nicotine. And if we’re lucky, we’ll have a battery charge on this.

CYBERFREQUENCIES: I know it’s speculation, but what do you think drives Assange?

LAMO:  I’d have to go with money and ego. When this story first broke, he sent me an e-mail  essentially trying to induce me to lie about my motives and about how the events had taken place.

Assange wanted me to claim that I had been uh, coerced by my supposed crippling fear of the authorities following my criminal case. And the fact that I have Asperger’s syndrome which is an autism spectrum mental issue.

That my most effective personal strategy would be to say that I was scared due to my previous experiences, unthoughtful due to quote-unquote recent drug problems (laughs), and made the decision that I now (inaudible) regret and under no circumstances repeat. Uh (laughs)

CF: And do you think he thought that you would, do this, go for this?

LAMO:  I believe that he genuinely believed that I would. For the precise reason that, when someone is in the public eye to that degree and takes themselves too seriously they start to believe that light really will bend around them. That they can manufacture reality.