Manning says that these individuals are “politically tied,” which confirms what I’ve heard before regarding his tenure in DC. If so, did the status of these ex-boyfriends have an impact on his conditions? Was he locked away in solitary confinement, unable to talk to almost anyone for months, because nobody wanted it known the extent to which he had cultivated sources and relationships at the “highest levels”?

You would have to have been f&#%ing r#*&rded to believe that in an era of unprecedented intolerance for press leaks of any kind, that the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, the FBI, the NSA, the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Cyber Defense Crime Center knowingly and willingly not only allowed convicted hacker Adrian Lamo to hold on to chat logs that contained sensitive classified information, but to distribute them unexpurgated to the press.

I only see two possibilities. One, Wired had the chat logs before Lamo made any calls to authorities, and was a party to whatever subsequently happened. Or two, the copies of the chat logs that have been given to the press have been done so at the instigation of the US government, and with their full approval.

Of course there’s always c) all of the above, which is what I’m guessing is the most likely scenario.

We here at FDL headquarters have spent a productive holiday season putting together data banks of information relevant to the Wikileaks-Bradley Manning- Adrian Lamo story. It feels like “Plame II, Electric Boogaloo,” because not since Scooter Libby has a story been so full of holes, contradictions and completely implausible events. And the journalism involved (if [...]

The only evidence to emerge so far against Bradley Manning comes from Adrian Lamo, a hacker who was in a mental institution three weeks before he says Manning contacted him. Charlie Savage reports in the New York Times that Lamo has miraculously “remembered” new evidence from his chat logs that connects Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. But 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 based on the recollections of someone who was in a mental institution two weeks before all this happened.”