Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 127

John Burns' "ministering angels" and "liberators"

In this week's New Yorker, Peter Maass -- who was in Iraq covering the war at the time -- examines the iconic, manufactured toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square, an event the American media relentlessly exploited in April, 2003, to propagandize citizens into believing that Iraqis were gleeful over the U.S. invasion and that the war was a smashing success.  Acknowledging that the episode demonstrated that American troops had taken over the center of Baghdad, Maas nonetheless explains that "everything else the toppling was said to represent during repeated replays on television -- victory for America, the end of the war, joy throughout Iraq -- was a disservice to the truth."

Working jointly with ProPublica on this investigation, Maass describes the hidden, indispensable role the U.S. military played in that event -- which has long been known -- though he convincingly argues that the primary culprit in this propaganda effort was the Americans media.  That is who did more than anyone to wildly distort this event.  As usual, the Watchdog Press not only happily ingests and trumpets pro-government propaganda, but does so even more enthusiastically and uncritically than government spokespeople themselves.

The reason there's so little government censorship of the press in America is because it's totally unnecessary; why would the government even want to censor a media this compliant and subservient?  Recall the derision heaped upon the media even by Bush's own former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, for being "too deferential" to administration propaganda.  As soon as an entity emerges that provides genuinely adversarial coverage of the U.S. Government -- such as WikiLeaks, whistleblowers, or isolated articles exposing its malfeasance -- the repressive measures come fast and furious.  But in general, it's no more necessary for the U.S. Government to censor the American media than it would be for Barack Obama to try to silence Robert Gibbs.

In describing the military-subservient mentality that dominated how most American establishment reporters covered the Saddam-statue incident, Maass includes these highly revealing anecdotes, including one about The New York Times' lead war correspondent, John Burns:

The media have been criticized for accepting the Bush Administration's claims, in the run-up to the invasion, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The W.M.D. myth, and the media's embrace of it, encouraged public support for war. The media also failed at Firdos Square, but in this case it was the media, rather than the government, that created the victory myth.

One of the first TV reporters to broadcast from Firdos was David Chater, a correspondent for Sky News, the British satellite channel whose feed from Baghdad was carried by Fox News. (Both channels are owned by News Corp.) Before the marines arrived, Chater had believed, as many journalists did, that his life was at risk from American shells, Iraqi thugs, and looting mobs.

"That's an amazing sight, isn't it?" Chater said as the tanks rolled in. "A great relief, a great sight for all the journalists here. . . . The Americans waving to us now -- fantastic, fantastic to see they're here at last." Moments later, outside the Palestine, Chater smiled broadly and told one marine, "Bloody good to see you." Noticing an American flag in another marine's hands, Chater cheerily said, "Get that flag going!"

Another correspondent, John Burns, of the Times, had similar feelings. Representing the most prominent American publication, Burns had a particularly hard time with the security thugs who had menaced many journalists at the Palestine. His gratitude toward the marines was explicit. "They were my liberators, too," he later wrote. "They seemed like ministering angels to me."

The happy relief felt by some journalists on the ground was compounded by editors and anchors back home. Primed for triumph, they were ready to latch onto a symbol of what they believed would be a joyous finale to the war.

It's not surprising that war journalists who feel endangered would be grateful to the U.S. military for protecting them.  Indeed, that's the whole premise of the embed program:  having American journalists dependent upon U.S. forces for everything -- from their safety to their sustenance -- will render them grateful and will cause them to identify not as independent journalists but as members (and dependents) of the invading force.  However understandable that might be, seeing the invading American army as "ministering angels" and "my liberators, too" cannot but shape and distort one's "reporting" on the war.  

Maass details that deliberately propagandistic pro-war "reporting" around this event infected every precinct of The Liberal Media.  As but one example, NPR's Baghdad reporter Anne Garrels expressly told her editors that they were getting the statue story wrong, but she recounted how NPR "editors requested . . . that she emphasize the celebratory angle."  The article described numerous examples of editors similarly distorting the statue-toppling coverage, as well as TV journalists gushing falsehood-based awe which -- even seven years later -- makes one cringe with embarrassment and disgust.  For instance, CNN's Bill Hemmer intoned:  "You think about seminal moments in a nation's history . . . indelible moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that's what we're seeing right now"; Wolf Blitzer described the toppling as "the image that sums up the day and, in many ways, the war itself"; Brit Hume on Fox News said: "This transcends anything I've ever seen. . . . This speaks volumes, and with power that no words can really match."  And on and on and on.

But, though Maass doesn't say so, it was Burns' dutiful pro-U.S. agitprop in The New York Times on behalf of the war fought by America's "ministering angles" -- "his liberators, too" -- that played a major role in shaping how this story was ultimately perceived.  On April 20, Burns wrote:

In the late afternoon of Wednesday, April 9, Marine Corps tanks entered eastern Baghdad from the south and took control of the district by the river that encompasses the Palestine and Sheraton hotels. Within three hours, after attempts by Iraqi men with sledgehammers and ropes had failed, the marines brought up an M-80 recovery tank with a long boom to assist in hauling down a 30-foot cast-iron statue of Mr. Hussein in Firdos Square, behind the hotels.

If any one moment marked the end of Mr. Hussein's rule, it was the sight of the statue's legs cracking, its torso tumbling, and the severed head and body being pelted with garbage and shoes -- the ultimate Arab insult -- by the hundreds of Iraqis who had gathered to celebrate their freedom.

To be in the square at that moment was to know, beyond doubt, that Iraqis in their millions hated Mr. Hussein, that the truth about Iraq was the diametric opposite of all that he and his acolytes had maintained, and that all else that was said about him in the years that went before was the product of relentless terror.

"Good, good, Bush!" the crowds chanted. "Down, down, Saddam!" Men and women wept, and reached out to shake the hands of the marines, or simply touch their uniforms. "Thank you, mister!" they cried, again and again. Hours later, the crowds still milled about the fallen idol, spitting and mocking. 

That is the most revered and most decorated war reporter in America's Liberal Media.

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen today has an uncharacteristically insightful column arguing that reverence for the U.S. military is sustained by the fact that most Americans have  no experience serving in it and thus idealize its actions and those who lead it.  That's certainly true, but it's journalists -- especially the ones who cover the Pentagon and its wars -- who succumb to that worship dynamic far more than any other class of people.  In October,  John Parker -- the former military reporter and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military Reporting -- mocked Pentagon reporters for uncritically spouting the military's line about WikiLeaks (he singled out NPR's Tom Gjelten) and explained the key dynamic as follows:

The career trend of too many Pentagon journalists typically arrives at the same vanishing point: Over time they are co-opted by a combination of awe -- interacting so closely with the most powerfully romanticized force of violence in the history of humanity -- and the admirable and seductive allure of the sharp, amazingly focused demeanor of highly trained military minds. Top military officers have their s*** together and it's personally humbling for reporters who've never served to witness that kind of impeccable competence. These unspoken factors, not to mention the inner pull of reporters' innate patriotism, have lured otherwise smart journalists to abandon -- justifiably in their minds -- their professional obligation to treat all sources equally and skeptically.

Too many military reporters in the online/broadcast field have simply given up their watchdog role for the illusion of being a part of power.

This dynamic infects most establishment journalism:  political reporters come to revere the most successful political operatives (and thus worship in Jay Rosen's "Church of the Savvy"), economic reporters come to admire the most powerful financial officials, etc.  But for so many reasons, including the ones Parker describes, this psychological capture -- blindly gushing over the subjects one covers -- is most severe when it comes to reporting on military leaders.  

Recall how Burns -- when attacking Michael Hastings on The Hugh Hewitt Show for the crime of making Gen. Stanley McChystal look bad -- boasted, as though he himself is a combatant, of the "long, informal periods traveling on helicopters over hostile territory with the generals chatting over their headset, bunking down for the night side by side on a piece of rough-hewn concrete" and how this "builds up a kind of trust" that should shape what the public learns and does not learn about these officials.  Or recall the embarrassingly glowing paean to McChrystal Burns penned upon the General's firing, or the even more gushing McChrystal profile published by his fellow NYT reporters upon his hiring.  Or Lara Logan's snide, lapdog-like defense of The General ("Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has").  When it comes to how they speak and think of the military officials they cover, they sound like giddy teenage fan club Presidents rather than critical, independent reporters.  Could anyone imagine David Halberstam describing American generals in Vietnam as "ministering angles" and "his liberators, too"?

Maass has written a very good article, but the one bothersome aspect of retrospectives like this one is that some perceive that the failings they describe are confined to a discrete historical event or matters of the past.  It's vital when discussing the American media's failings during the Iraq War to remember that -- aside from Judy Miller -- most of them believe they and their industry did nothing wrong (Richard Wolffe:  "the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general"; David Gregory:  "there are a lot of critics who think that . . . we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role"; Charlie Gibson:  rejecting criticisms of the American media on the ground that "there was a lot of skepticism raised" by journalists about Bush's case for war; see also: Brian Williams righteously defending the honor of the retired Generals in the Bush Pentagon's propaganda program).

They haven't changed in the slightest since the Saddam statue incident because they don't think they did anything wrong, don't believe there are any lessons to learn.   Maas' article isn't about what the American media did.  It's about what the American media is.

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Quite related to all of this:  The New York Times' Stanley Fish reviews a new book to be released shortly by a variety of law professors -- including Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum -- arguing that more legal restraints on the Internet are needed to prevent and punish misinformation enabled by online anonymity.  Right:  unlike for our establishment media outlets, which are Beacons of Informed, Accountable and Objective Truth.  Along those lines, Newsweek today has a darkly and unintentionally hilarious article purporting to explain why most American journalists refuse to defend WikiLeaks and the government's assault on its press freedoms.  It contains this line:  "American journalists, unlike many of their foreign counterparts, have a strong commitment to objectivity and nonpartisanship."  The level of self-delusion necessary to produce such a claim is unfathomable.

Leading conservatives openly support a Terrorist group

Imagine if a group of leading American liberals met on foreign soil with -- and expressed vocal support for -- supporters of a terrorist group that had (a) a long history of hateful anti-American rhetoric, (b) an active role in both the takeover of a U.S. embassy and Saddam Hussein's brutal 1991 repression of Iraqi Shiites, (c) extensive financial and military support from Saddam, (d) multiple acts of violence aimed at civilians, and (e) years of being designated a "Terrorist organization" by the U.S. under Presidents of both parties, a designation which is ongoing? The ensuing uproar and orgies of denunciation would be deafening.

But on December 23, a group of leading conservatives -- including Rudy Giuliani and former Bush officials Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge, and Fran Townsend -- did exactly that. In Paris, of all places, they appeared at a forum organized by supporters of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) -- a group declared by the U.S. since 1997 to be "terrorist organization" -- and expressed wholesale support for that group. Worse -- on foreign soil -- they vehemently criticized their own country's opposition to these Terrorists and specifically "demanded that Obama instead take the [] group off the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations and incorporate it into efforts to overturn the mullah-led government in Tehran." In other words, they are calling on the U.S. to embrace this Saddam-supported, U.S.-hating Terrorist group and recruit them to help overthrow the government of Iran. To a foreign audience, Mukasey denounced his own country's opposition to these Terrorists as "nothing less than an embarrassment."

Using common definitions, there is good reason for the MEK to be deemed by the U.S. Government to be a Terrorist group. In 2007, the Bush administration declared that "MEK leadership and members across the world maintain the capacity and will to commit terrorist acts in Europe, the Middle East, the United State, Canada, and beyond," and added that the group exhibits "cult-like characteristics." The Council on Foreign Relations has detailed that the MEK has been involved in numerous violent actions over the years, including many directed at Americans, such as "the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries" and "the killings of U.S.military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran in the 1970s." This is whom these Guiliani, Ridge, Townsend and other conservatives are cheering.

Applying the orthodoxies of American political discourse, how can these Terrorist-supporting actions by prominent American conservatives not generate intense controversy? For one thing, their appearance in France to slam their own country's foreign policy blatantly violates the long-standing and rigorously enforced taboo against criticizing the U.S. Government while on dreaded foreign soil (the NYT previously noted that "nothing sets conservative opinion-mongers on edge like a speech made by a Democrat on foreign soil"). Worse, their conduct undoubtedly constitutes the crime of "aiding and abetting Terrorism" as interpreted by the Justice Department -- an interpretation recently upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision last year in Holder v. Humanitarian Law. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole represented the Humanitarian Law plaintiffs in their unsuccessful challenge to the DOJ's interpretation of the "material support" statute, and he argues today in The New York Times that as a result of that ruling, it is a felony in the U.S. "to engage in public advocacy to challenge a group's 'terrorist' designation or even to encourage peaceful avenues for redress of grievances."

Like Cole, I believe the advocacy and actions of these Bush officials in support of this Terrorist group should be deemed constitutionally protected free expression. But under American law and the view of the DOJ, it isn't. There are people sitting in prison right now with extremely long prison terms for so-called "material support for terrorism" who did little different than what these right-wing advocates just did. What justifies allowing these Bush officials to materially support a Terrorist group with impunity?

Then there's CNN. How can they possibly continue to employ someone -- Fran Townsend -- who so openly supports a Terrorist group? Less than six months ago, that network abruptly fired its long-time producer, Octavia Nasr, for doing nothing more than expressing well wishes upon the death of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of the Shiite world's most beloved religious figures. Her sentiments were echoed by the British Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, who wrote a piece entitled "The Passing of a Decent Man," and by the journal Foreign Policy, which hailed him as "a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity." But because Fadlallh had connections to Hezbollah -- a group designated as a Terrorist organization by the U.S. -- and was an opponent of Israel, neocon and other right-wing organs demonized Nasr and CNN quickly accommodated them by ending her career.

Granted, Nasr was a news producer and Townsend is at CNN to provide commentary, but is it even remotely conceivable to imagine CNN employing someone who openly advocated for Hamas or Hezbollah, who met with their supporters on foreign soil and bashed the U.S. for classifying them as a Terrorist organization and otherwise acting against them or, more radically still, to demand that the U.S. embrace these groups as allies? To ask the question is to answer it. So why is Fran Townsend permitted to keep her CNN job even as she openly meets with supporters of a Terrorist group with a long history of violence and anti-American hatred?

There is simply no limit on the manipulation and exploitation of the term "terrorism" by America's political class. Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell support endless policies that slaughter civilians for political ends, yet with a straight face accuse Julian Assange -- who has done nothing like that -- of being a "terrorist." GOP Rep. Peter King is launching a McCarthyite Congressional hearing to investigate radicalism and Terrorism sympathies among American Muslim while ignoring his own long history of enthusiastic support for Catholic Terrorists in Northern Ireland; as Marcy Wheeler says: "Peter King would still be in prison if the US had treated his material support for terrorism as it now does." And WikiLeaks this morning published a diplomatic cable from the U.S. summarizing the long-discussed meeting on July 25, 1990, at which U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, talked to Saddam -- a month before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait -- about the history of extensive American support for his regime, the desire of the U.S. for friendly relations with Saddam, and her statement that the U.S. does not care about Saddam's border disputes with Kuwait (Glaspie recorded that she told Saddam: "then, as now, we took no positions on these Arab affairs"). Months later, the U.S. attacked Iraq and cited a slew of human rights abuses and support for Terrorism that took place when the U.S. was arming and supporting Saddam and during the time they had removed Iraq from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in order to provide that support.

The reason there isn't more uproar over these Bush officials' overt foreign-soil advocacy on behalf of a Terrorist group is because they want to use that group's Terrorism to advance U.S. aims. Using Terrorism on behalf of American interests is always permissible, because the actual definition of a Terrorist -- the one that our political and media class universally embrace -- is nothing more than this: "someone who impedes or defies U.S. will with any degree of efficacy." Even though the actions of these Bush officials violate every alleged piety about bashing one's own country on foreign soil and may very well constitute a felony under U.S. law, they will be shielded from criticisms because they want to use the Terrorist group to overthrow a government that refuses to bow to American dictates. Embracing Terrorist groups is perfectly acceptable when used for that end. That's why Fran Townsend will never suffer the fate of Octavia Nasr, and why her fellow Bush officials will never be deemed Terrorist supporters by the DOJ or establishment media outlets, even though what they've done makes them, by definition, exactly that.

Wired's refusal to release or comment on the Manning chat logs

Last night, Wired posted a two-part response to my criticisms of its conduct in reporting on the arrest of PFC Bradley Manning and the key role played in that arrest by Adrian Lamo.  I wrote about this topic twice -- first back in June and then again last Sunday.  The first part of Wired's response was from Wired.com Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen, and the second is from its Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen.  Both predictably hurl all sorts of invective at me as a means of distracting attention from the central issue, the only issue that matters:  their refusal to release or even comment on what is the central evidence in what is easily one of the most consequential political stories of this year, at least. 

That's how these disputes often work by design:  the party whose conduct is in question (here, Wired) attacks the critic in order to create the impression that it's all just some sort of screeching personality feud devoid of substance.  That, in turn, causes some bystanders to cheer for whichever side they already like and boo the side they already dislike, as though it's some sort of entertaining wrestling match, while everyone else dismisses it all as some sort of trivial Internet catfight not worth sorting out.  That, ironically, is what WikiLeaks critics (and The New York Times' John Burns) did with the release of the Iraq War documents showing all sorts of atrocities in which the U.S. was complicit:  they tried to put the focus on the personality quirks of Julian Assange to distract attention away from the horrifying substance of those disclosures.  That, manifestly, is the same tactic Wired is using here:  trying to put the focus on me to obscure their own ongoing conduct in concealing the key evidence shining light on these events.

In a separate post, I fully address every accusation Hansen and Poulsen make about me as well as the alleged inaccuracies in what I wrote.  But I'm going to do everything possible here to ensure that the focus remains on what matters:  the way in which Wired, with no justification, continues to conceal this evidence and, worse, refuses even to comment on its content, thus blinding journalists and others trying to find out what really happened here, while enabling gross distortions of the truth by Poulsen's long-time confidant and source, the government informant Adrian Lamo.

The bottom line from Hansen and Poulsen is that they still refuse to release any further chat excerpts or, more inexcusably, to comment at all on -- to verify or deny -- Lamo's public statements about what Manning said to him that do not appear in those excerpts.  They thus continue to conceal from the public 75% of the Manning-Lamo chats.  They refuse to say whether Lamo's numerous serious accusations about what Manning told him are actually found anywhere in the chat logs.  Nor will they provide the evidence to resolve the glaring inconsistencies in Lamo's many public tales about the critical issues:  how he came to speak to Manning, what Lamo did to induce these disclosures, and what Manning said about his relationship to WikiLeaks and his own actions.  Every insult Wired spouts about me could be 100% true and none of it changes the core fact:  Wired is hiding the key evidence about what took place here, thus allowing Lamo to spout all sorts of serious claims without any check and thus drive much of the reporting about WikiLeaks.

To defend this concealment, Hansen claims that they "have already published substantial excerpts from the logs."  But the parts they are concealing are far more substantial:  75% by their own account, and critically, the person who played a key role in hand-picking which parts to publish and which parts to conceal is the person whom BBC News accurately describes as "Mr Lamo's long-term associate Kevin Poulsen."  Poulsen claims he "either excerpted, quoted or reported on everything of consequence Manning had to say about his leaking," but that begs the key question:  is everything -- or anything -- that Lamo has been claiming about Manning's statements found in the chat logs or not?  Why won't Wired answer that question?  Below, I set forth what Lamo has claimed that is not in the chat logs and why it is so vital to know if it's there.

Hansen's defense principally relies on a total strawman:  that I'm calling for the full, unedited release of the chat logs.  Hansen insists that Wired cannot do this because of privacy concerns for Manning.  He titles his response "The Case for Privacy," and claims "that the logs include sensitive personal information with no bearing on Wikileaks." 

But neither I nor anyone else I've read has called on Wired to indiscriminately dump the chat logs without any redactions or regard for Manning's privacy.  Back in June -- once Poulsen's claims that they were withholding only private information and national security secrets was proven false by The Washington Post's subsequent publication of chat excerpts that fell into neither category -- this is what I called on Wired to do:

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.

Then, on Sunday, I noted several important events that transpired since I wrote that June article: most prominently the fact that Wired's source, Lamo, had spent six months making all sorts of public claims about what Manning told him that are nowhere in the chat excerpts published by Wired.  Moreover, the disclosures by WikiLeaks gut Poulsen's excuse that Wired's concealments are necessary to protect national security secrets (an excuse Hansen did not even raise).  As a result of those developments, this is what I wrote on Sunday that Wired should do:

What they ought to do, at the absolute minimum, is post the portions of the chat logs about which Lamo had made public statements or make clear that they do not exist. . . . Poulsen could also provide Lamo -- who claims he is no longer in possession of them -- with a copy of the chat logs (which Lamo gave him) so that journalists quoting Lamo about Manning's statements could see the actual evidence rather than relying on Lamo's claims.

For anyone who wants to defend Wired here, I'd really like to know:  what possible excuse is there for their refusal to do this?  Even if you trust Poulsen -- despite his very close and long relationship to Lamo -- to conceal some parts of the chats on privacy grounds, what justification is there for Wired's refusal to state that either (a) Lamo's claims about what Manning told him are supported by the chat logs (and then publish those portions), or (b) Lamo's claims are not found in the chat logs, thus proving that Lamo is either lying or has an unreliable recollection?  While Adrian Lamo runs around spouting all sorts of serious accusations about what Manning supposedly told him that are not found in Wired's excerpts -- claims which end up in the world's largest news outlets -- and while he issues one contradictory claim after the next about these events, how can anyone claiming to be a journalist not inform the public about whether those stories are true?  For Wired defenders: what justifies that obfuscatory behavior, that refusal to say whether Lamo's claims are true or false based on the chat logs?

Hansen says that they have no "obligation to chase down every story on Manning, correct any errors, and refute any reporting that we disagree with."  Nobody said they did.  But Lamo is hardly some arms-length source they once used for a story.  Wired repeatedly boasts of its breaking stories in the Manning case; Lamo's long, close relationship with Poulsen is the only reason they were able to do so.  When Lamo was involuntarily hospitalized in May, the person he called was Kevin Poulsen.  They've been closely interacting in various capacities for more than a decade.  When Lamo makes accusations about what Manning told him on the front page of The New York Times and in other leading media outlets, any actual journalist in a position to do so would either present the evidence that those claims are true or make clear that it is false.  And certainly when a Wired journalist in possession of those chats is asked in response to Lamo's claims whether the chat logs confirm or negate what he said, anyone minimally interested in the truth would answer, if not write about it.

That's the crux of the issue.  For Wired to confirm that Lamo's public statements are false would be to impugn the integrity of Poulsen's friend and his close and valued source.  They allow Lamo to run around making all kinds of false claims about what transpired between him and Manning even as they sit on the evidence that proves those claims are false.  And they refuse to reconcile Lamo's numerous contradictory statements by showing the public the evidence they have that would resolve them.  That falsehood-enabling behavior is the precise opposite of what a journalist ought to be doing.

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I have no doubt Wired will find some supporters for this "conceal-the-facts" position.  Journalism in the United States has become at least as much about preserving secrets as it is uncovering them.  Reporters routinely grant anonymity to government officials to spout all sorts of falsehoods -- from the gossipy to the consequential -- while shielding those officials from accountability.  Numerous media stars for years knew the key facts of the Libby case but withheld them even as they purported to "report" to the story.  The New York Times sat on the NSA story for a year -- until Bush was safely re-elected -- because the President told them not to publish it.  The revered Tim Russert admitted that he considers all conversations with government officials "presumptively confidential" -- even in the absence of an off-the-record agreement -- and only discloses what they authorize him to disclose.

That's what so much "journalism" now is:  a means of shielding secrets from the public -- usually to protect friends and the agendas of "sources" to ensure further access.  Ironically, it is that very mentality -- the Cult of Secrecy that American journalism has become -- that gave rise to the need for WikiLeaks in the first place.  We're a society in which media and political elites keep secrets compulsively with one another -- doing that is one of the hallmarks of membership in those circles -- and there are thus plenty of people trained to believe that Good, Responsible People keep substantive secrets from the public.  It's the same mentality that has spawned the hostile reaction to WikiLeaks:  people are happy -- grateful even -- when institutions keep substantive information from them.  Hence:  I want the Government to act in the dark and keep me ignorant about most of what it does; similarly: Wired is acting responsibly by refusing to tell us whether Adrian Lamo's claims about Manning are true or false or to resolve the multiple contradictions he's publicly affirmed.

That's not what I think journalism is.  There are very serious questions that remain unresolved and unanswered about the entire Bradley Manning incident.  Wired is in possession of key evidence that could shed light on much of it.  But they refuse to disclose it, describe it, or even answer questions about it.  Only someone with a very warped understanding of what journalism is supposed to be would defend that.

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One can see how significant Wired's concealment of this evidence is by simply looking at (1) the numerous claims Lamo has made about what Manning told him in these chats that are not found anywhere in Wired's excerpts, and (2) the multiple contradictions about the key events which Lamo has spouted.

To begin with, consider this passage from a Wired article on June 10, 2010, by Poulsen and Kim Zetter:  "[Manning] said that Julian Assange had offered him a position at Wikileaks.  But he said, 'I'm not interested right now. Too much excess baggage'."  That passage is found nowhere in the Wired chat excerpts.  Is it there?  Did Manning say he was offered a job at WikiLeaks?  If he did, given that Wired itself is writing about it, can we read that excerpt?  What justification is there for withholding it?

Or consider one of the towering mysteries here:  why and how did Manning come to choose Lamo -- supposedly a total stranger, someone who just happened to be working with a vigilante group that informs the Government about Internet crimes -- to contact out of the blue and confess his crimes?  In his June interview with me, Lamo claimed that Manning found him through a Twitter search of the term "WikiLeaks" and found a pro-WikiLeaks tweet from Lamo:

GREENWALD:  One of the things that I find weird and difficult to understand about this whole episode is how he found you and why he decided to find you, so can you just walk me through that first encounter. Like how did he make contact with you and what did he say and how did the whole thing, how did the whole conversation, come about?

LAMO: Absolutely. I understand that he tracked me down as a result of. . . He was searching for "Wikileaks" on Twitter and saw that in the recent leak of my documentary and people had asked, "Hey where should we send money if we download this?" And I initially said, for lack of a better answer, "Send it to the director. He's the one who spent his time on it." And the director said, "No. I don't want to be compensated for that. It's problematic." And I said, "Okay, well send it to Wikileaks because they support similar principles to what are discussed in the documentary. That is to say, curiosity for the sake of curiosity and freedom of information." And it was a result of that that I popped up on his radar.

GREENWALD: I'm sorry, you were having that discussion on your Twitter feed or where?

LAMO: Yes, on Twitter [unintelligible at 03:05].

GREENWALD: And he was, how did he see that?

LAMO: By searching for "Wikileaks," the term.

GREENWALD: And then your account came up basically?

LAMO: That is correct. . . .

GREENWALD: Right. And how do know that that's how he found you?

LAMO: Because that's what he proffered to me when I asked him how he had come across my identity.

GREENWALD: And he told that in the chats that you two were having, the IM chats?

LAMO: That's correct. . . .

That's a critical claim from Lamo: that Manning told him he found Lamo through a random Twitter search for the term "WikiLeaks."  Lamo explicitly told me that Manning narrated this story in the chats.  But nothing like that is in the excerpts Wired published.  Indeed, there is nothing in Wired's excerpts about how Manning found Lamo or why he chose to speak with him.  Is there anything in the chat logs confirming Lamo's claims about how and why Manning contacted him?  For Wired defenders:  What possible justification is there for Wired to refuse to publish that portion or to confirm that it does not exist?  Do you not think that's a very relevant fact to know about this story:  how Manning found Lamo and why he contacted him?

Beyond that story from Lamo, he has also given conflicting claims about how Manning found him, telling CNET (and others) that "he thinks Manning contacted him after reading a Wired article [from May, by Kevin Poulsen] about Lamo being diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, after a stint in the hospital for depression."  He also told The Washingtonian that "Lamo read from what he says were transcripts of the instant-message exchange he had with Manning. The young solider contacted Lamo first after reading a profile about him in Wired magazine."  But he told me expressly that Manning never mentioned that article, saying only that he found him from Twitter ("GREENWALD: Did he ever say that he had read that article? LAMO: No, he never mentioned it").

At least as important is the question of when Manning and Lamo first began communicating, and what was said.  Lamo told multiple news outlets that Manning, without any prior warning or notice, suddenly contacted him on May 21 via AOL chat.  As but one example, Yahoo News on June 9 reported after interviewing Lamo:  "Lamo says Manning contacted him via AOL Instant Messenger 'out of the blue' on May 21."

But Lamo told me a completely different story about how Manning first began communicating with him.  He told me that Manning sent him a series of emails before they ever chatted, and it was as part of that email exchange that Lamo told Manning to contact him on AOL chat:

GREENWALD: And so the first contact he made with you, was that be email or was that some other way?

LAMO: [Sound of rustling papers] First contact was by email.

GREENWALD: And can you tell me generally what he said?

LAMO: I can't unfortunately. It's cryptographically impossible since he encrypted it to an outdated PGP key of mine.

GREENWALD: So were you unable to understand what he said in that first email?

LAMO: Correct. First, second, and third at the very least. I get a lot of random email and the hassle of decrypting it even if I had the key would be enough to push it back about a week or so in my "to read" stack. . . .I ignored it for the first couple of hours and then I received a few subsequent emails and then I finally replied, "Hey I can't read your emails encrypted to a PGP key I no longer have access to. Why don't we chat via AOL IM instead?"

GREENWALD: Right, so you gave him your IM address?

LAMO: Correct.

On this most critical question, Lamo can't even keep his story straight.  First he says that Manning just contacted him by chat "out of the blue."  Then he says that Manning sent him a series of emails and Lamo told him to contact him on chat and gave him his chat name.  He also claims -- incredibly for a self-proclaimed hacker -- that he could not access his own emails because he lost his encryption key and thus has no idea what these emails, containing pre-chat communications between Lamo and Manning, even say.  Yet, even according to what Lamo told me, Wired concealed much of the critical portions where those two began chatting on the first day about how they came into contact; that would shed vital light on what their relationship actually was and how they really found each other.

Then there's the issue of what Lamo told Manning to induce him to describe the leaks in which he was allegedly involved.  About this important question, Lamo tells a long, detailed story about how he promised Manning to keep completely secret their conversations on the ground that Lamo is both a "journalist" and a minister, but that Manning (depending on whom Lamo is talking to) expressly rejected that offer or just failed to accept it.  Here's what Lamo told me about that:

GREENWALD: Did, was there a point early on in the conversation when you told him that you were a reporter?

LAMO: Yes there was, and I offered him the opportunity to be protected by a reporter-source relationship, and that I could potentially work work him into a piece for 2600 or a story, rather a part of a book idea that I've been working on about my relations with the hacker community, that to say specifically the people who have come to me and the various aspects that they've illuminated. And didn't take me up on it.

GREENWALD: Did he reject it?

LAMO: I asked him, "Do you want it to be this way, or do you want it to be this way?" And he didn't respond to either. I also told him that I was an ordained minister and if he wanted it could be a confession but that requires an allocution in the affirmative.

GREENWALD: So early on in the conversation you had discussions with him about the fact that because you were a journalist you could offer him protection, confidentiality protection, as a source?

LAMO: Under the California reporter shield law, not federally but yeah–

GREENWALD: I know, but you talked about that with him?

LAMO: That is correct, and he gave no indication whatsoever that that was something that he was interested in.

Lamo made similar claims to CNN on August 4, 2010:  "Lamo confirmed he told Manning the soldier's online conversations could be protected under the California shield law because it could be seen as a conversation with a journalist."  But he told something much different to Yahoo News on June 9:  "In an interview with Yahoo! News, Lamo says that he spelled out very clearly in his chats with Manning that he wasn't affiliated with WikiLeaks or acting as a journalist," and said that in response to Lamo's offer of confidentiality, "Manning refused." And he told BBC News on June 8 that Lamo and Manning jointly decided that there would be no journalist-source relationship:  "I did tell him that I worked as a journalist. I would have been happy to write about him myself, but we just decided that it would be too unethical."

None of that -- not a word of it -- is in the Wired excerpts.  Is that really how Lamo induced Manning to trust him:  with betrayed promises of journalist-source or minister-penitent confidentiality?  Did this subject even come up?  Is anything Lamo is saying here remotely true?  Wired could make those critical facts known in one minute:  by publishing the excerpts where this happened or confirming that Lamo fabricated the story.  For Wired defenders:  what possible journalistic justification exists for their withholding of that information?

I could spend the rest of the day -- literally -- documenting bizarre facts in this story and contradictory assertions from Lamo about the most serious of matters.  Just by herself, Marcy Wheeler -- who has repeatedly proven herself to be one of the most thorough forensic examiners of raw data in the country -- has raised all kinds of serious questions about when Lamo really began working with federal authorities, unexplained discrepancies in the Wired chat logs, and whether Lamo received actual classified information from Manning beyond the chats.  Beyond that, FDL's large readership has spent the last week compiling virtually every interview, press account and document involving Lamo and has pointed to multiple contradictions and unanswered questions that go to the heart of how Lamo claims to have become an informant who turned in Manning, including strange claims like this from Lamo, in a June 6 interview on CBC Radio:

[Manning] also also mentioned to me a top secret operation that the Army for lack of a better word freaked out over when I mentioned it to them. They would not even say it out loud, they wrote it on paper and showed it to somebody else when discussing it . . . . It was when I initially confirmed through a friend of mine who had experience in military counterintelligence and had him virtually blanche -- or at least I imagined over the telephone -- when I mentioned the operation, that I knew that I had to act."

Yet despite how alarmed they were by how sensitive this information was -- and despite the Obama DOJ's well-documented  harsh crackdown on all leaks -- the FBI and Army Intelligence officials simply let Lamo keep copies of the chat logs and freely hand them out to Wired's Kevin Poulsen in order for Poulsen to publish whatever he wanted without input or influence from those agents?  Very little about what Lamo, Poulsen and Wired claim here makes sense.  The chat logs -- or at least Wired's confirmation about what is in them -- is the only thing that could clear any of this up.

* * * * *

Wired's principal goal in responding to what I wrote was to raise all sorts of questions about my motives.  My motive could not be any clearer or more obvious.  Bradley Manning is being incarcerated in extremely oppressive conditions and charged with crimes that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.  The DOJ is threatening to do the same with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, based largely on statements they want to extract from Manning. 

The chat logs that Wired has but is withholding -- and about which they are refusing to comment -- are newsworthy in the extreme.  They cannot but shed substantial light on what really happened here, on the bizarre series of events and claims for which there is little evidence and much cause for doubt.  I expect government officials to shield the truth from the public and to conceal key evidence and facts.  But those who claim to be journalists should not be aiding in that effort.  Wired is doing exactly that.  

Response to Wired's accusations

As noted above, the principal tactic of Wired.com Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen and Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen in responding to my criticisms is to hurl a variety of accusations at me as a means of distracting attention from the issue that matters.  Between my June article and the one on Sunday, I've now written more than 9,000 words about Wired's role in the Manning/Lamo case.  To accuse me of "a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness," they raise a handful of alleged inaccuracies (a) for which there is ample evidence and (b) which are entirely ancillary to the issues I raised. 

I'm going to address each and every one of their accusations in order (their accusations are indented and my responses follow).  I realize this is lengthy.  But I take the accusations seriously, know that they're false, believe it's incumbent to provide the same accountability and responsiveness I demand of others, and everyone is free to read only those portions which interest them.

Hansen

Tellingly, Greenwald never misses a chance to mention Poulsen's history as a hacker, events that transpired nearly two decades ago and have absolutely no bearing on the current case. This is nothing more than a despicable smear campaign based on the oldest misdirection in the book: Shoot the messenger. 

This is all false.  I've actually mentioned Poulsen's hacker past very rarely, and every time I did, it was in connection with substantive questions raised about his relationships to key players in these events, including Lamo and Mark Rasch.  I don't think Poulsen's credibility is impaired because he was once a hacker or even a felon.  I think it's impaired because he is withholding key evidence and pretending that he and Lamo have nothing more than a standard journalist-source relationship. 

Even Greenwald believes this … sometimes. When The New York Times ran an entirely appropriate and well reported profile of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — discussing his personality and his contentious leadership style — Greenwald railed against the newspaper, terming the reporters "Nixonian henchmen."  

This claim is designed to accuse me of hypocrisy for simultaneously arguing that Assange should not be subjected to scrutiny while demanding full disclosure of the chats.  That accusation is made only by wildly distorting what I wrote in the very piece Hansen cites.  My objection to The New York Times smear job on Assange was that by prominently featuring gossipy, personality issues about him on the very day the Iraq War documents were released, the paper distracted attention from what actually mattered:  what the documents showed about American behavior in the war (the same reason why Nixon wanted dirt about Ellberg's psychiatric state:  to impugn the source of the Pentagon Papers).  In fact, I argued the opposite of what Hansen suggests:  "None of this is to say that WikiLeaks and Assange shouldn't be subject to scrutiny. Anyone playing a significant role in political life should be, including them." 

Moreover, I never argued that Wired should release deeply personal, irrelevant aspects of the chat logs.  I argued that they should be much more diligent about making those assessments given that part of what they withheld was not personat at all and, more important, that they should release the portions about which Lamo has made public claims or confirm they do not exist.

Hansen:

Similarly, when Assange complained that journalists were violating his privacy by reporting the details of rape and molestation allegations against him in Sweden, Greenwald agreed, writing: "Simultaneously advocating government transparency and individual privacy isn't hypocritical or inconsistent; it's a key for basic liberty."

With Manning, Greenwald adopts the polar opposite opinions. "Journalists should be about disclosing facts, not protecting anyone." This dissonance in his views has only grown in the wake of reports that Manning might be offered a plea deal in exchange for testimony against Assange. 

Hansen again wildly distorted what I wrote by taking a Twitter comment and tearing it out of context.  I most certainly never "agreed" that "journalists were violating [Assange's] privacy by reporting the details of rape and molestation allegations against him in Sweden,"  That's a total fabrication.  I don't believe that and never said that.  Hansen made that up.  

Assange was asked in a BBC interview questions such as "how many women have you slept with?"  When Assange refused to answer, many WikiLeaks critics pointed to this as hypocrisy -- oh, see, he doesn't believe in transparency for himself -- and my tweet pointed out the obvious fallacy of that claim:  there is nothing inconsistent about demanding transparency for governments while insisting upon personal privacy.

Moreover, the question Assange refused to answer -- "how many women have you slept with?" -- is relevant to absolutely nothing of public interest, including the rape accusation.  By stark contrast, the information Wired is concealing -- whether Lamo is telling the truth about his various claims -- goes to the heart of one of the most significant political controversies in the world.

Hansen:

Nonetheless, once the Times story — and our explanation — was over a week old, Greenwald sent Poulsen an e-mail inquiring about it, and giving him one day to respond to his questions. He sent that e-mail on Christmas Day.

When we didn't meet the urgent Yuletide deadline he'd imposed on himself to publish a piece about a 10-day-old newspaper article, he wrote in his column that we "ignored the inquiries," adding: "This is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth." 

First, not only did I raise most of these issues six months ago (about which Poulsen says "We took the high ground and ignored Greenwald and Salon"), but I loudly re-raised them on my Twitter feed -- from which Hansen quotes -- on Friday, December 24.  See here ("Read the first 6 paragraphs of this article to see how inexcusable it is for Wired not to release the chat logs it has: http://is.gd/jo29s"), here ("Wired Magazine [and the WashPost] possess key evidence on 1 of the year's most important news stories but have concealed it for months") and here ("Fair enough - I mean @KPoulsen: RT @stevesilberman "Do not underestimate the cultural divide between "Wired magazine" and wired.com.").

Second, after trumpeting my intention to raise these issues the day before, I then emailed Poulsen on Saturday morning -- Christmas -- and told him I intended to write about this the following day.  When I didn't hear back from him all day Saturday, I waited the entire next day (Sunday) and, in the hopes of getting a reply from Poulsen, still didn't write anything.  I only published my piece mid-morning on Monday:  two full days after I first emailed Poulsen.  Once it was published, Poulsen, despite being "on vacation," certainly responded on Twitter very quickly. 

Third, my accusation -- that "this is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth" -- was not based exclusively or even primarily on Poulsen's failure to answer my questions; it was based on his six-month-and-counting withholding of key evidence and his failure to confirm or deny all of the serious claims made by his close associate, Adrian Lamo.

Poulsen

To Greenwald, all this makes Lamo "a low-level, inconsequential hacker." This conclusion is critical to his thesis that Lamo and I have something more than a source-journalist relationship. Greenwald's theory is that Lamo's hacks were not newsworthy.

That Lamo's skills as a hacker are "critical" to any issue I've raised is just absurd.  In speaking to numerous hackers and others in that community, I repeatedly heard the same thing about Lamo:  that his hacking exploits were unsophisticated but designed to achieve the only thing he cares about:  press attention for himself.  That issue is interesting because it suggests what Lamo's motive might have been for turning government informant on Manning -- an opportunity to get his name in the paper -- but it has little or nothing to do with the ethical issues I raised about Wired and Poulsen.

I detailed with multiple links and documentation in my June article exactly what makes this Lamo-Poulsen relationship so strange.  Lamo basically used Poulsen as his personal spokesman for years:  he'd hack, and then have Poulsen announce it.  When Lamo was involuntarily hospitalized, it was Poulsen he called, so that Wired would write about it in the light Lamo wanted.  This is how Information Week described the relationship all the way back in 2002:

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.

Lamo posts smiling, arms-around-each-other pictures with Poulsen on his Facebook page, including one the day before Wired published excerpts of the chat log.  Nadim Kobeissi, Lamo's longtime friend, told me that Lamo has long considered Poulsen his friend.  This is anything but some objective, arms-length journalist-source relationship.

Poulsen:

From that bit of sophistry, Greenwald descends into antics that shouldn't pass muster at any serious news outlet. He bolsters his argument by quoting Jacob Appelbaum as an expert on Lamo. Appelbaum has "known Lamo for years," he writes, and "Lamo's 'only concern' has always been 'getting publicity for Adrian'."

Nowhere in the article does he disclose that Appelbaum -- the only third-party source in the piece -- is a key WikiLeaks activist: a man who'd shared hotel rooms with Julian Assange, and had already spoken publicly on behalf of the organization. Appelbaum's key role in the organization has been a published fact since April.

The quote from Appelbaum about Lamo's desire for publicity is (a) something that at least ten other people told me in that period and (b) completely ancillary to any points I raised about Wired.  I will readily concede that Appelbaum's association with WikiLeaks should have been disclosed.  It wasn't for a simple reason:  I wasn't aware of it.  Poulsen claims that "Appelbaum's key role in the organization has been a published fact since April" but notably links to no news report saying that (only to Appelbaum's Twitter feed).  I was unaware -- and still am -- of any news reports before then identifying him as such.  If there were any, I didn't see them.

I quoted Appelbaum because his quote was most usable, but I could easily have quoted at least ten other people with knowledge of Lamo to make this same point.   Indeed, in a June email he sent me after I wrote that article -- none of which was off the record:  indeed, it was all explicitly on the record at his request -- Wired's own Ryan Singel told me: "Lamo is clearly starved for attention.  Often he gets it by coming up with odd leads. Here he decided to become a rat, and then went on to brag about it."  That quote would have sufficed just as well as the Appelbaum one.  That Lamo is pathologically fixated on self-promotion is an article of faith in the hacker world.

Poulsen:

After that glaring omission, Greenwald mischaracterizes my contacts with the companies Lamo hacked. In writing about Lamo's New York Times hack, Greenwald claims: "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." In truth, I contacted a spokeswoman for the Times, notified her of the intrusion, gave her time to confirm it, and then quoted her in the article. 

This is the type of accusation that proves how weak is Poulsen's claim that my articles were filled with a "litany of errors."  Read what Poulsen claims I wrote.  Then read what he says is the reality.  They're the exact same thing.  That's one his leading examples of my "errors."

Poulsen:

Nearly half of his article is devoted to a characteristically murky conspiracy theory involving a well-known cybercrime attorney and former Justice Department lawyer named Mark Rasch. Rasch is one of three people that Lamo sought for advice while looking to turn in Bradley Manning.

The blockbuster, stop-the-presses, "incontrovertibly true" disclosure with which Greenwald caps his piece? That Rasch once prosecuted me for hacking the phone company.

Based, apparently, on something he read on a website called GovSecInfo.com, Greenwald announces that "Rasch is also the person who prosecuted Kevin Poulsen back in the mid-1990s and put him in prison for more than three years." (I served five, actually, and all but two months of it was in pretrial custody, held without bail.) He then attacks me for failing to report on this supposed link. "Just on journalistic grounds, this nondisclosure is extraordinary," he claims. . . . 

Rasch, who worked for the Justice Department in Washington D.C., left government service in 1991. I had two prosecutors in my phone-hacking case: David Schindler in Los Angeles and Robert Crowe in San Jose, California.

Greenwald, a former law professor, could have learned this in a few seconds on Pacer, the federal court's public records system. It would have set him back 16 cents, and his article would have been half as long.

First, I was never a "law professor" and never claimed to be one.  By Poulsen's reasoning, this grave inaccuracy proves how his response is filled with "a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness."

Second, my statement that Rasch prosecuted Poulsen is based on far more than "something [I] read on a website called GovSecInfo.com."  It is true that Rasch's GovSec biography does say that he "investigated and prosecuted the earliest computer crime cases including those of Kevin Poulsen."  But so do other sources.  From a 2002 article in Information Week:  "Lamo could face felony charges, says Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime Unit, who prosecuted Poulsen and Mitnick."  Rasch's biography for Secure IT Experts similarly states:  "Mark investigated and prosecuted the earliest computer crime cases including those of Kevin Poulsen, Kevin Mitnick and Robert T. Morris."  

Beyond those sources, Rasch was the head of the DOJ's Computer Crimes Unit until 1991:  the year Poulsen was arrested after several years of being a fugitive and one of the Government's most-wanted hackers.  Rasch was probably not the courtroom attorney litigating the case against Poulsen -- it'd be highly unlikely that he would be -- but it's inconceivable that, as head of the Computer Crimes Unit, he wasn't significantly involved in the investigation of and search for Poulsen and his ultimate arrest, which is presumably why these multiple sources contain the claim that Rasch "investigated" and/or "prosecuted Poulsen."

That the same Mark Rasch then proceeded to have numerous interactions over the years with Poulsen -- and then end up as the person who helped direct Lamo to government authorities to inform on Manning -- is absolutely relevant and is something that should be disclosed when Poulsen writes about this case.  If, despite these facts, Rasch actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the investigation of Poulsen, then Poulsen should say so, and if it's true, I'll be the first to rescind this disclosure objection.  But my statements were well-grounded in these sources and facts.

Poulsen:

The "regularly contributes to his magazine" part is apparently a reference to this single 2004 opinion piece [by Rasch] in Wired magazine.

My claim that he was a "regular contributor" to Wired was based on numerous sources, apparently including Rasch himself.  From Rasch's biography on the SCIIP Board of Advisers:  "He writes a monthly column in Symantec's Security Focus online magazine . . .  and is a regular contributor to Wired magazine."  His biography as a guest on The Charlie Rose Show states that he "is a regular contributor to 'Wired' magazine."  His own prepared biography makes the same claim ("a regular contributor to Wired Magazine").  If Rasch has nothing to do with Wired other than the single article, then there is obviously no disclosure issue, but it also means that someone has been making false claims about Rasch's relationship to that magazine.

I could go on -- the daily, off-the-record conversations Greenwald had with Assange while penning at least one of his anti-Wired screeds; or the fact that he failed to disclose in the body of his first article that he was personally trying to secure a new attorney for Manning while writing the piece. 

Poulsen seems to think that it's some sort of secret that I am an active supporter of both WikiLeaks and Manning.  Unlike Poulsen, I don't conceal my relationships to subjects or my views of them.  That I am a fervent supporter of WikiLeaks and Manning is about the most disclosed fact about me.  I've twice encouraged readers to donate money to WikiLeaks, including all the way back in March when few people had heard of the group.  I've also encouraged readers to donate to Manning's defense fund right out in the open on my blog.  I've made repeatedly clear -- by writing it -- that I consider both of their actions heroic.

Poulsen doesn't provide any citation for his grand discovery that I spoke with Assange while writing my piece in June; that's because he presumably knows that because I said it.  I often make clear that I communicate with Assange about WikiLeaks matters (from CNN's introduction of me on Monday night:  "Glenn, I'd like to start with you. I know you have spoken to Julian Assange several times").  I don't know where Poulsen gets the idea that my conversations with him were "off-the-record":  the reason I didn't quote Assange in my piece on Wired is because he had nothing of relevance to say.  Indeed, the only statement of WikiLeaks that I used was its allegation that Poulsen himself acted as government informant -- an accusation I stated in both articles had no evidence to support it.

Honest journalists disclose rather than hide their associations and views.  And that's exactly what I've done from the start with both WikiLeaks and Manning.  

Finally, we have this:

But by now it should be clear why we don't seek Greenwald's advice on a serious matter of journalistic ethics. 

Over the years, Wired has repeatedly -- and always approvingly -- cited to, quoted from, and otherwise used my work.  Its reporters, including Ryan Singel and others, have sent emails with lavish praise.  After my first article about Wired in June, Singel emailed me to defend Poulsen and contest my objections but wrote:  "I've long been a fan of your work and I'll continue to be."  

But now that I've written critically about Wired, I'm suddenly converted into a dishonest, ethics-free, unreliable hack.  That's par for the course.  That's why so few people in this profession are willing to criticize other media outlets.  Journalists react as poorly as anyone to public criticism; it doesn't make you popular to do it; it can terminate career opportunities and relationships; it's certain your credibility will be publicly impugned.  But journalists need scrutiny and accountability as much as anyone -- especially when, as here, they are shaping public perceptions about a vital story while withholding important information -- and I'd vastly prefer to be the one to provide it even if it means that the targets of the criticism don't like it and lash out. 

Ultimately, what determines one's credibility is not the names you get called or the number of people who get angry when you criticize them.  What matters is whether the things you say are well-supported and accurate, to correct them if they're not, and to subject yourself to the same accountability and transparency you demand of others. 

Response to Wired's accusations

As noted above, the principal tactic of Wired.com Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen and Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen in responding to my criticisms is to hurl a variety of accusations at me as a means of distracting attention from the issue that matters.  Between my June article and the one on Sunday, I've now written more than 9,000 words about Wired's role in the Manning/Lamo case.  To accuse me of "a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness," they raise a handful of alleged inaccuracies (a) for which there is ample evidence and (b) which are entirely ancillary to the issues I raised. 

I'm going to address each and every one of their accusations in order (their accusations are indented and my responses follow).  I realize this is lengthy.  But I take the accusations seriously, know that they're false, believe it's incumbent to provide the same accountability and responsiveness I demand of others, and everyone is free to read only those portions which interest them.

Hansen

Tellingly, Greenwald never misses a chance to mention Poulsen's history as a hacker, events that transpired nearly two decades ago and have absolutely no bearing on the current case. This is nothing more than a despicable smear campaign based on the oldest misdirection in the book: Shoot the messenger. 

This is all false.  I've actually mentioned Poulsen's hacker past very rarely, and every time I did, it was in connection with substantive questions raised about his relationships to key players in these events, including Lamo and Mark Rasch.  I don't think Poulsen's credibility is impaired because he was once a hacker or even a felon.  I think it's impaired because he is withholding key evidence and pretending that he and Lamo have nothing more than a standard journalist-source relationship. 

Even Greenwald believes this … sometimes. When The New York Times ran an entirely appropriate and well reported profile of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — discussing his personality and his contentious leadership style — Greenwald railed against the newspaper, terming the reporters "Nixonian henchmen."  

This claim is designed to accuse me of hypocrisy for simultaneously arguing that Assange should not be subjected to scrutiny while demanding full disclosure of the chats.  That accusation is made only by wildly distorting what I wrote in the very piece Hansen cites.  My objection to The New York Times smear job on Assange was that by prominently featuring gossipy, personality issues about him on the very day the Iraq War documents were released, the paper distracted attention from what actually mattered:  what the documents showed about American behavior in the war (the same reason why Nixon wanted dirt about Ellberg's psychiatric state:  to impugn the source of the Pentagon Papers).  In fact, I argued the opposite of what Hansen suggests:  "None of this is to say that WikiLeaks and Assange shouldn't be subject to scrutiny. Anyone playing a significant role in political life should be, including them." 

Moreover, I never argued that Wired should release deeply personal, irrelevant aspects of the chat logs.  I argued that they should be much more diligent about making those assessments given that part of what they withheld was not personat at all and, more important, that they should release the portions about which Lamo has made public claims or confirm they do not exist.

Hansen:

Similarly, when Assange complained that journalists were violating his privacy by reporting the details of rape and molestation allegations against him in Sweden, Greenwald agreed, writing: "Simultaneously advocating government transparency and individual privacy isn't hypocritical or inconsistent; it's a key for basic liberty."

With Manning, Greenwald adopts the polar opposite opinions. "Journalists should be about disclosing facts, not protecting anyone." This dissonance in his views has only grown in the wake of reports that Manning might be offered a plea deal in exchange for testimony against Assange. 

Hansen again wildly distorted what I wrote by taking a Twitter comment and tearing it out of context.  I most certainly never "agreed" that "journalists were violating [Assange's] privacy by reporting the details of rape and molestation allegations against him in Sweden,"  That's a total fabrication.  I don't believe that and never said that.  Hansen made that up.  

Assange was asked in a BBC interview questions such as "how many women have you slept with?"  When Assange refused to answer, many WikiLeaks critics pointed to this as hypocrisy -- oh, see, he doesn't believe in transparency for himself -- and my tweet pointed out the obvious fallacy of that claim:  there is nothing inconsistent about demanding transparency for government while insisting upon personal privacy.

Moreover, the question Assange refused to answer -- "how many women have you slept with?" -- is relevant to absolutely nothing of public interest, including the rape accusation.  By stark contrast, the information Wired is concealing -- whether Lamo is telling the truth about his various claims -- goes to the heart of one of the most significant political controversies in the world.

Hansen:

Nonetheless, once the Times story — and our explanation — was over a week old, Greenwald sent Poulsen an e-mail inquiring about it, and giving him one day to respond to his questions. He sent that e-mail on Christmas Day.

When we didn't meet the urgent Yuletide deadline he'd imposed on himself to publish a piece about a 10-day-old newspaper article, he wrote in his column that we "ignored the inquiries," adding: "This is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth." 

First, not only did I raise most of these issues six months ago (about which Poulsen says "We took the high ground and ignored Greenwald and Salon"), but I loudly re-raised them on my Twitter feed -- from which Hansen quotes -- on Friday, December 24.  See here ("Read the first 6 paragraphs of this article to see how inexcusable it is for Wired not to release the chat logs it has: http://is.gd/jo29s"), here ("Wired Magazine [and the WashPost] possess key evidence on 1 of the year's most important news stories but have concealed it for months") and here ("Fair enough - I mean @KPoulsen: RT @stevesilberman "Do not underestimate the cultural divide between "Wired magazine" and wired.com.").

Second, after trumpeting my intention to raise these issues the day before, I then emailed Poulsen on Saturday morning -- Christmas -- and told him I intended to write about this the following day.  When I didn't hear back from him all day Saturday, I waited the entire next day (Sunday) and, in the hopes of getting a reply from Poulsen, still didn't write anything.  I only published my piece mid-morning on Monday:  two full days after I first emailed Poulsen.  Once it was published, Poulsen, despite being "on vacation," certainly responded on Twitter very quickly. 

Third, my accusation -- that "this is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth" -- was not based exclusively or even primarily on Poulsen's failure to answer my questions; it was based on his six-month-and-counting withholding of key evidence and his failure to confirm or deny all of the serious claims made by his close associate, Adrian Lamo.

Poulsen

To Greenwald, all this makes Lamo "a low-level, inconsequential hacker." This conclusion is critical to his thesis that Lamo and I have something more than a source-journalist relationship. Greenwald's theory is that Lamo's hacks were not newsworthy.

That Lamo's skills as a hacker are "critical" to any issue I've raised is just absurd.  In speaking to numerous hackers and others in that community, I repeatedly heard the same thing about Lamo:  that his hacking exploits were unsophisticated but designed to achieve the only thing he cares about:  press attention for himself.  That issue is interesting because it suggests what Lamo's motive might have been for turning government informant on Manning -- an opportunity to get his name in the paper -- but it has little or nothing to do with the ethical issues I raised about Wired and Poulsen.

I detailed with multiple links and documentation in my June article exactly what makes this Lamo-Poulsen relationship so strange.  Lamo basically used Poulsen as his personal spokesman for years:  he'd hack, and then have Poulsen announce it.  When Lamo was involuntarily hospitalized, it was Poulsen he called, so that Wired would write about in the light Lamo wanted.  This is how Information Week described the relationship all the way back in 2002:

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.

Lamo posts smiling, arms-around-each-other pictures with Poulsen on his Facebook page, including one the day before Wired published excerpts of the chat log.  Nadim Kobeissi, Lamo's longtime friend, told me that Lamo has long considered Poulsen his friend.  This is anything but some objective, arms-length journalist-source relationship.

Poulsen:

From that bit of sophistry, Greenwald descends into antics that shouldn't pass muster at any serious news outlet. He bolsters his argument by quoting Jacob Appelbaum as an expert on Lamo. Appelbaum has "known Lamo for years," he writes, and "Lamo's 'only concern' has always been 'getting publicity for Adrian'."

Nowhere in the article does he disclose that Appelbaum -- the only third-party source in the piece -- is a key WikiLeaks activist: a man who'd shared hotel rooms with Julian Assange, and had already spoken publicly on behalf of the organization. Appelbaum's key role in the organization has been a published fact since April.

The quote from Appelbaum about Lamo's desire for publicity is (a) something that at least ten other people told me in that period and (b) completely ancillary to any points I raised about Wired.  I will readily concede that Appelbaum's association with WikiLeaks should have been disclosed.  It wasn't for a simple reason:  I wasn't aware of it.  Poulsen claims that "Appelbaum's key role in the organization has been a published fact since April" but notably links to no news report saying that (only to Appelbaum's Twitter feed).  I was unaware -- and still am -- of any news reports before then identifying him as such.  If there were any, I didn't see them.

I quoted Appelbaum because his quote was most usable, but I could easily have quoted at least ten other people with knowledge of Lamo to make this same point.   Indeed, in a June email he sent me after I wrote that article -- none of which was off the record:  indeed, it was all explicitly on the record at his request -- Wired's own Ryan Singel told me: "Lamo is clearly starved for attention.  Often he gets it by coming up with odd leads. Here he decided to become a rat, and then went on to brag about it."  That quote would have sufficed just as well as the Appelbaum one.  That Lamo is pathologically fixated on self-promotion is an article of faith in the hacker world.

Poulsen:

After that glaring omission, Greenwald mischaracterizes my contacts with the companies Lamo hacked. In writing about Lamo's New York Times hack, Greenwald claims: "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." In truth, I contacted a spokeswoman for the Times, notified her of the intrusion, gave her time to confirm it, and then quoted her in the article. 

This is the type of accusation that proves how weak is Poulsen's claim that my articles were filled with a "litany of errors."  Read what Poulsen claims I wrote.  Then read what he says is the reality.  They're the exact same thing.  That's one his leading examples of my "errors."

Poulsen:

Nearly half of his article is devoted to a characteristically murky conspiracy theory involving a well-known cybercrime attorney and former Justice Department lawyer named Mark Rasch. Rasch is one of three people that Lamo sought for advice while looking to turn in Bradley Manning.

The blockbuster, stop-the-presses, "incontrovertibly true" disclosure with which Greenwald caps his piece? That Rasch once prosecuted me for hacking the phone company.

Based, apparently, on something he read on a website called GovSecInfo.com, Greenwald announces that "Rasch is also the person who prosecuted Kevin Poulsen back in the mid-1990s and put him in prison for more than three years." (I served five, actually, and all but two months of it was in pretrial custody, held without bail.) He then attacks me for failing to report on this supposed link. "Just on journalistic grounds, this nondisclosure is extraordinary," he claims. . . . 

Rasch, who worked for the Justice Department in Washington D.C., left government service in 1991. I had two prosecutors in my phone-hacking case: David Schindler in Los Angeles and Robert Crowe in San Jose, California.

Greenwald, a former law professor, could have learned this in a few seconds on Pacer, the federal court's public records system. It would have set him back 16 cents, and his article would have been half as long.

First, I was never a "law professor" and never claimed to be one.  By Poulsen's reasoning, this grave inaccuracy proves how his response is filled with "a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness."

Second, my statement that Rasch prosecuted Poulsen is based on far more than "something [I] read on a website called GovSecInfo.com."  It is true that Rasch's GovSec biography does say that he "investigated and prosecuted the earliest computer crime cases including those of Kevin Poulsen."  But so do other sources.  From a 2002 article in Information Week:  "Lamo could face felony charges, says Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime Unit, who prosecuted Poulsen and Mitnick."  Rasch's biography for Secure IT Experts similarly states:  "Mark investigated and prosecuted the earliest computer crime cases including those of Kevin Poulsen, Kevin Mitnick and Robert T. Morris."  

Beyond those sources, Rasch was the head of the DOJ's Computer Crimes Unit until 1991:  the year Poulsen was arrested after several years of being a fugitive and one of the Government's most-wanted hackers.  Rasch was probably not the courtroom attorney litigating the case against Poulsen -- it'd be highly unlikely that he would be -- but it's inconceivable that, as head of the Computer Crimes Unit, he wasn't significantly involved in the investigation of and search for Poulsen and his ultimate arrest, which is presumably why these multiple sources contain the claim that Rasch "investigated" and/or "prosecuted Poulsen."

That the same Mark Rasch then proceeded to have numerous interactions over the years with Poulsen -- and then end up as the person who helped direct Lamo to government authorities to inform on Manning -- is absolutely relevant and is something that should be disclosed when Poulsen writes about this case.  If, despite these facts, Rasch actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the investigation of Poulsen, then Poulsen should say so, and if it's true, I'll be the first to rescind this disclosure objection.  But my statements were well-grounded in these sources and facts.

Poulsen:

The "regularly contributes to his magazine" part is apparently a reference to this single 2004 opinion piece [by Rasch] in Wired magazine.

My claim that he was a "regular contributor" to Wired was based on numerous sources, apparently including Rasch himself.  From Rasch's biography on the SCIIP Board of Advisers:  "He writes a monthly column in Symantec's Security Focus online magazine . . .  and is a regular contributor to Wired magazine."  His biography as a guest on The Charlie Rose Show states that he "is a regular contributor to 'Wired' magazine."  His own prepared biography makes the same claim ("a regular contributor to Wired Magazine").  If Rasch has nothing to do with Wired other than the single article, then there is obviously no disclosure issue, but it also means that someone has been making false claims about Rasch's relationship to that magazine.

I could go on -- the daily, off-the-record conversations Greenwald had with Assange while penning at least one of his anti-Wired screeds; or the fact that he failed to disclose in the body of his first article that he was personally trying to secure a new attorney for Manning while writing the piece. 

Poulsen seems to think that it's some sort of secret that I am an active supporter of both WikiLeaks and Manning.  Unlike Poulsen, I don't conceal my relationships to subjects or my views of them.  That I am a fervent supporter of WikiLeaks and Manning is about the most disclosed fact about me.  I've twice encouraged readers to donate money to WikiLeaks, including all the way back in March when few people had heard of the group.  I've also encouraged readers to donate to Manning's defense fund right out in the open on my blog.  I've made repeatedly clear -- by writing it -- that I consider both of their actions heroic.

Poulsen doesn't provide any citation for his grand discovery that I spoke with Assange while writing my piece in June; that's because he presumably knows that because I said it.  I often make clear that I communicate with Assange about WikiLeaks matters (from CNN's introduction of me on Monday night:  "Glenn, I'd like to start with you. I know you have spoken to Julian Assange several times").  I don't know where Poulsen gets the idea that my conversations with him were "off-the-record":  the reason I didn't quote Assange in my piece on Wired is because he had nothing of relevance to say.  Indeed, the only statement of WikiLeaks that I used was its allegation that Poulsen himself acted as government informant -- an accusation I stated in both articles had no evidence to support it.

Honest journalists disclose rather than hide their associations and views.  And that's exactly what I've done from the start with both WikiLeaks and Manning.  

Finally, we have this:

But by now it should be clear why we don't seek Greenwald's advice on a serious matter of journalistic ethics. 

Over the years, Wired has repeatedly -- and always approvingly -- cited to, quoted from, and otherwise used my work.  Its reporters, including Ryan Singel and others, have sent emails with lavish praise.  After my first article about Wired in June, Singel emailed me to defend Poulsen and contest my objections but wrote:  "I've long been a fan of your work and I'll continue to be."  

But now that I've written critically about Wired, I'm suddenly converted into a dishonest, ethics-free, unreliable hack.  That's par for the course.  That's why so few people in this profession are willing to criticize other media outlets.  Journalists react as poorly as anyone to public criticism; it doesn't make you popular to do it; it can terminate career opportunities and relationships; it's certain your credibility will be publicly impugned.  But journalists need scrutiny and accountability as much as anyone -- especially when, as here, they are shaping public perceptions about a vital story while withholding important information -- and I'd vastly prefer to be the one to provide it even it means that the targets of the criticism don't like it and lash out. 

Ultimately, what determines one's credibility is not the names you get called or the number of people who get angry when you criticize them.  What matters is whether the things you say are well-supported and accurate, to correct them if they're not, and to subject yourself to the same accountability and transparency you demand of others. 

The merger of journalists and government officials

The video of the CNN debate I did last night about WikiLeaks with former Bush Homeland Security Adviser (and CNN contributor) Fran Townsend and CNN anchor Jessica Yellin is posted below.  The way it proceeded was quite instructive to me and I want to make four observations about the discussion:

(1) Over the last month, I've done many television and radio segments about WikiLeaks and what always strikes me is how indistinguishable -- identical -- are the political figures and the journalists.  There's just no difference in how they think, what their values and priorities are, how completely they've ingested and how eagerly they recite the same anti-WikiLeaks, "Assange = Saddam" script.  So absolute is the WikiLeaks-is-Evil bipartisan orthodoxy among the Beltway political and media class (forever cemented by the joint Biden/McConnell decree that Assange is a "high-tech Terrorist,") that you're viewed as being from another planet if you don't spout it.  It's the equivalent of questioning Saddam's WMD stockpile in early 2003.

It's not news that establishment journalists identify with, are merged into, serve as spokespeople for, the political class:  that's what makes them establishment journalists.  But even knowing that, it's just amazing, to me at least, how so many of these "debates" I've done involving one anti-WikiLeaks political figure and one ostensibly "neutral" journalist -- on MSNBC with The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart and former GOP Congresswoman Susan Molinari, on NPR with The New York Times' John Burns and former Clinton State Department official James Rubin, and last night on CNN with Yellin and Townsend -- entail no daylight at all between the "journalists" and the political figures.  They don't even bother any longer with the pretense that they're distinct or play different assigned roles.  I'm not complaining here -- Yellin was perfectly fair and gave me ample time -- but merely observing how inseparable are most American journalists from the political officials they "cover."

(2) From the start of the WikiLeaks controversy, the most striking aspect for me has been that the ones who are leading the crusade against the transparency brought about by WikiLeaks -- the ones most enraged about the leaks and the subversion of government secrecy -- have been . . . America's intrepid Watchdog journalists.  What illustrates how warped our political and media culture is as potently as that?  It just never seems to dawn on them -- even when you explain it -- that the transparency and undermining of the secrecy regime against which they are angrily railing is supposed to be . . . what they do.  

What an amazing feat to train a nation's journalist class to despise above all else those who shine a light on what the most powerful factions do in the dark and to expose their corruption and deceit, and to have journalists -- of all people -- lead the way in calling for the head of anyone who exposes the secrets of the powerful.   Most ruling classes -- from all eras and all cultures -- could only fantasize about having a journalist class that thinks that way, but for most, that fantasy would be too extreme, too implausible, to pursue.  After all, how could you ever get journalists -- of all people -- to loathe those who bring about transparency and disclosure of secrets?  But, with a few noble exceptions, that's exactly the journalist class we have.

There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Jessica Yellin because of that time when she unwittingly (though still bravely) admitted on air that -- when she worked at MSNBC -- NBC's corporate executives constantly pressured the network's journalists to make their reporting more favorable to George Bush and the Iraq War (I say "unwittingly" because she quickly walked back that confession after I and others wrote about it and a controversy ensued).  But, as Yellin herself revealed, that's the government-subservient corporate culture in which these journalists are trained and molded.

(3) It's extraordinary how -- even a full month into the uproar over the diplomatic cable release -- extreme misinformation still pervades these discussions, usually without challenge.  It's understandable that on the first day or in the first week of a controversy, there would be some confusion; but a full month into it, the most basic facts are still being wildly distorted.  Thus, there was Fran Townsend spouting the cannot-be-killed lie that WikiLeaks indiscriminately dumped all the cables.  And I'm absolutely certain that had I not done so, that absolute falsehood would have been unchallenged by Yellin and allowed to be transmitted to CNN viewers as Truth.  The same is true for the casual assertion -- as though it's the clearest, most obvious fact in the world -- that Assange "committed crimes" by publishing classified information or that what he's doing is so obviously different than what investigative journalists routinely do.  These are the unchallenged falsehoods transmitted over and over, day after day, to the American viewing audience.

(4) If one thinks about it, there's something quite surreal about sitting there listening to a CNN anchor and her fellow CNN employee angrily proclaim that Julian Assange is a "terrorist" and a "criminal" when the CNN employee doing that is  . . . . George W. Bush's Homeland Security and Terrorism adviser.  Fran Townsend was a high-level national security official for a President who destroyed another nation with an illegal, lie-fueled military attack that killed well over 100,000 innocent people, created a worldwide torture regime, illegally spied on his own citizens without warrants, and erected a due-process-free gulag where scores of knowingly innocent people were put in cages for years.  Julian Assange never did any of those things, or anything like them.  But it's Assange who is the "terrorist" and the "criminal."  

Do you think Jessica Yellin would ever dare speak as scornfully and derisively about George Bush or his top officials as she does about Assange?  Of course not.  Instead, CNN quickly hires Bush's Homeland Security Adviser who then becomes Yellin's colleague and partner in demonizing Assange as a "terrorist."  Or consider the theme that framed last night's segment:  Assange is profiting off classified information by writing a book!   Aside from the examples I gave, Bob Woodward has become a very rich man by writing book after book filled with classified information about America's wars which his sources were not authorized to give him.  Would Yellin ever in a million years dare lash out at Bob Woodward the way she did Assange (see here as CNN's legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin is completely befuddled in the middle of his anti-WikiLeaks rant when asked by a guest, Clay Shirky, to differentiate what Woodward continuously does from what Assange is doing).

They're all petrified to speak ill of Bob Woodward because he's a revered spokesman of the royal court to which they devote their full loyalty.  Julian Assange, by contrast, is an actual adversary -- not a pretend one -- of that royal court.  And that -- and only that -- is what is driving virtually this entire discourse:

The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired

(updated below)

For more than six months, Wired's Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed -- but refuses to publish -- the key evidence in one of the year's most significant political stories:  the arrest of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks' source. In late May, Adrian Lamo -- at the same time he was working with the FBI as a government informant against Manning -- gave Poulsen what he purported to be the full chat logs between Manning and Lamo in which the Army Private allegedly confessed to having been the source for the various cables, documents and video that WikiLeaks released throughout this year. In interviews with me in June, both Poulsen and Lamo confirmed that Lamo placed no substantive restrictions on Poulsen with regard to the chat logs:  Wired was and remains free to publish the logs in their entirety.

Despite that, on June 10, Wired published what it said was only "about 25 percent" of those logs, excerpts that it hand-picked. For the last six months, Poulsen has not only steadfastly refused to release any further excerpts, but worse, has refused to answer questions about what those logs do and do not contain. This is easily one of the worst journalistic disgraces of the year:  it is just inconceivable that someone who claims to be a "journalist" -- or who wants to be regarded as one -- would actively conceal from the public, for months on end, the key evidence in a political story that has generated headlines around the world. 

In June, I examined the long, strange and multi-layered relationship between Poulsen and Lamo, and in that piece raised the issue of Wired's severe journalistic malfeasance in withholding these chat logs. But this matter needs to be revisited now for three reasons: 

(1) For the last six months, Adrian Lamo has been allowed to run around making increasingly sensationalistic claims about what Manning told him; journalists then prominently print Lamo's assertions, but Poulsen's refusal to release the logs or even verify Lamo's statements prevents anyone from knowing whether Lamo's claims about what Manning said are actually true.

(2) There are new, previously undisclosed facts about the long relationship between Wired/Poulsen and a key figure in Manning's arrest -- facts that Poulsen inexcusably concealed.

(3) Subsequent events gut Poulsen's rationale for concealing the logs and, in some cases, prove that his claims are false.

Much of the new evidence cited here has been found and compiled by Firedoglake in three valuable indices:  the key WikiLeaks-Manning articles, a timeline of the key events and the various excerpts of the Manning/Lamo chat logs published by different parties.

* * * * *

Poulsen's concealment of the chat logs is actively blinding journalists and others who have been attempting to learn what Manning did and did not do. By allowing the world to see only the fraction of the Manning-Lamo chats that he chose to release, Poulsen has created a situation in which his long-time "source," Adrian Lamo, is the only source of information for what Manning supposedly said beyond those published exceprts.  Journalists thus routinely print Lamo's assertions about Manning's statements even though -- as a result of Poulsen's concealment -- they are unable to verify whether Lamo is telling the truth.  Due to Poulsen, Lamo is now the one driving many of the media stories about Manning and WikiLeaks even though Lamo (a) is a convicted felon, (b) was (as Poulsen strangely reported at the time) involuntarily hospitalized for severe psychiatric distress a mere three weeks before his chats with Manning, and (c) cannot keep his story straight about anything from one minute to the next.

To see how odious Poulsen's concealment of this evidence is, consider this December 15 New York Times article by Charlie Savage, which reports that the DOJ is trying to prosecute WikiLeaks based on the theory that Julian Assange "encouraged or even helped" Manning extract the classified information.  Savage extensively quotes Lamo claiming that Manning told him all sorts of things about WikiLeaks and Assange that are not found in the portions of the chat logs published by Wired:

Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.

Adrian Lamo, an ex-hacker in whom Private Manning confided and who eventually turned him in, said Private Manning detailed those interactions in instant-message conversations with him.

He said the special server's purpose was to allow Private Manning's submissions to "be bumped to the top of the queue for review." By Mr. Lamo's account, Private Manning bragged about this "as evidence of his status as the high-profile source for WikiLeaks."

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. . . .

It has been known that investigators were looking for evidence that one or more people in Boston served as an intermediary between Private Manning and WikiLeaks, although there is no public sign that they have found any evidence supporting that theory. . . .

"At some point, [Manning] became satisfied that he was actually talking to Assange and not some unknown third party posing as Assange, and based on that he began sending in smaller amounts of data from his computer," Mr. Lamo said. "Because of the nature of his Internet connection, he wasn't able to send large data files easily. He was using a satellite connection, so he was limited until he did an actual physical drop-off when he was back in the United States in January of this year."

Lamo's claim -- that Manning told him that he physically dropped off a disk with classified information to WikiLeaks' "intermediaries" in Boston -- is nowhere to be found in the chat logs released by Poulsen. And while there are a couple of vague references in the chats to Manning's interactions with Assange, there is also little in the released portions about Assange using an "encrypted Internet conferencing service" to talk to Manning or specially creating a "dedicated server" for Manning to use.  Yet here is Lamo, on the front page of The New York Times, making these incredibly inflammatory accusations about what Manning supposedly told him -- accusations that could implicate both WikiLeaks and numerous individuals in the Boston area, including MIT students who (due at least in part to Lamo's prior accusations) have been the subject of WikiLeaks-related probes by the FBI.

Whether Manning actually said these things to Lamo could be verified in one minute by "journalist" Kevin Poulsen.  He could either say:  (1) yes, the chats contain such statements by Manning, and here are the portions where he said these things, or (2) no, the chats contain no such statements by Manning, which means Lamo is either lying or suffers from a very impaired recollection about what Manning said.  Poulsen could also provide Lamo -- who claims he is no longer in possession of them -- with a copy of the chat logs (which Lamo gave him) so that journalists quoting Lamo about Manning's statements could see the actual evidence rather than relying on Lamo's claims.  Any true "journalist" -- or any person minimally interested in revealing the truth -- would do exactly that in response to Lamo's claims as published by The New York Times.  

But manifestly, those descriptions do not apply to Kevin Poulsen.  It's been almost two weeks since Savage wrote his story in which he prominently pointed out that Wired has the evidence -- but has not released it -- which would confirm whether Lamo is telling the truth about these vital matters, and Poulsen has said nothing.  Moreover, I sent Poulsen an e-mail two days ago -- here -- expressly asking whether or not the chat logs contain what Lamo says they contain about WikiLeaks and Boston-area "intermediaries," and he has ignored the inquiries.  This is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth.

Making Poulsen's behavior even more inexcusable is that, back in July, Lamo admitted to the New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller that he has "no direct evidence" that anyone helped Manning obtain the classified information:

Mr. Lamo acknowledged that he had no direct evidence that Private Manning had help. He said he based his belief on information from people who knew Private Manning, not on his contact with the soldier himself. Asked if Private Manning had ever told him of any WikiLeaks assistance, Mr. Lamo replied, "Not explicitly, no."

But now that Savage is reporting that the DOJ needs to prove that WikiLeaks actively helped Manning, Lamo pops up to make the exact opposite claim: namely, that Manning explicitly told him in these chats that he had help from Assange and from WikiLeaks "intermediaries" in Boston.  Critically, as Marcy Wheeler documented, the government -- in its Charging Document against Manning -- has not accused Manning of transmitting the 260,000 diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks because it likely had no evidence that he did so.  Nor is there any evidence that WikiLeaks conspired in any way with Manning.  All of these critical gaps are now conveniently being filled in for public consumption by Lamo's accusations -- based on assertions about what Manning told him in these chats.

There is one person who could immediately confirm whether Lamo's claims are true:  Kevin Poulsen of Wired.  Yet he steadfastly refuses to do so.  Instead, he is actively concealing the key evidence in this matter -- hiding the truth from the public -- even as that magazine continues to employ him as a senior editor and hold him out as a "journalist."   For anyone who cares at all about what actually happened here, it's imperative that as much pressure as possible be applied to Wired to release those chat logs or, at the very least, to release the portions about which Lamo is making public claims or, in the alternative, confirm that they do not exist.

* * * * *

Poulsen's concealment of the key evidence is rendered all the more bizarre by virtue of previously undisclosed facts about Wired's involvement in Manning's arrest.  From the start, the strangest aspect of this whole story -- as I detailed back in June and won't repeat here -- has been the notion that one day, out of the blue, Manning suddenly contacted a total stranger over the Internet and, using unsecured chat lines, immediately confessed in detail to crimes that would likely send him to prison for decades. 

More strangely still, it wasn't just any total stranger whom Manning contacted, but rather a convicted felon who is notorious in the hacking community for his dishonesty and compulsive self-promotion, and who had just been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital three weeks earlier (notably, Poulsen's May article on Lamo's hospitalization began with this passage:  "Last month Adrian Lamo, a man once hunted by the FBI, did something contrary to his nature. He picked up a payphone outside a Northern California supermarket and called the cops" -- of course, a mere three weeks later, Lamo would "call the cops" again, this time to turn informant against Bradley Manning).  Add to all of that the central involvement of Lamo's long-time confidant, Poulsen, in exclusively reporting on this story and one has a series of events that are wildly improbable (which doesn't mean it didn't happen that way).

But now there are new facts making all of this stranger still, and it all centers around a man named Mark Rasch.  Who is Rasch?  He's several things.  He's the former chief of the DOJ's Computer Crimes Unit in the 1990s.  He's a "regular contributor" to Wired.  He's also the the creepy and secretive vigilante group that claims to gather Internet communications and hand them over to the U.S. government.  Rasch is also the person who prosecuted Kevin Poulsen back in the mid-1990s and put him in prison for more than three years.  As detailed below, Rasch also has a long and varied history with both Poulsen and, to a lesser extent, Lamo.  And -- most significantly of all -- Rasch is the person who put Lamo in touch with federal law authorities in order to inform on Manning:

A former top U.S. Justice Department prosecutor helped to turn over an alleged Wikileaks source to the FBI and Army intelligence, CNET has learned.

Mark Rasch, previously the head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit who is now in private practice in the Washington, D.C., area, said during a telephone interview that he identified investigators who would want to know that an U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Kuwait may have handed over sensitive documents to the world's most famous document-leaking Web site. . . .

Lamo contacted Chet Uber, a computer security specialist and the founder of a group called Project Vigilant. Uber then contacted Rasch.

"I got a call from Chet saying Adrian has a guy he's been chatting with online who has access to classified cables," Rasch said. "So I found him people in the intelligence community and law enforcement community he could report it to."

Let's consider what this means based just on these facts.  First, for the first several weeks after the story of Manning's arrest, it was Wired that was exclusively reporting on the relevant facts by virtue of Poulsen's close relationship with Lamo.  Yet at no point -- through today -- have Poulsen or Wired ever bothered to disclose that the person who "helped to turn over [Manning] to the FBI and Army intelligence" is (a) the same person who put Poulsen is prison for several years, (b) a regular contributor to Wired and (c) a long-time associate and source for Poulsen.  Just on journalistic grounds, this nondisclosure is extraordinary (Poulsen even wrote a long article about Uber's role in pressuring Lamo to inform to the Government without once mentioning Rasch).  As Poulsen was writing about this Manning story all while working closely with Lamo as he served as FBI informant -- and as Poulsen actively conceals the chat logs -- wouldn't you want to know that the person who played such a key role in Manning's arrest was the same person who prosecuted Poulsen and regularly contributes to his magazine?

Then there's the way that these facts make this already-strange story much stranger still.  It isn't just that Manning -- when deciding to confess to these crimes over the Internet to a total stranger -- just happened to pick a convicted felon (Lamo) who spent little time in prison given the crimes of which he was convicted.   Beyond that, Lamo, at the time Manning contacted him, was working with this group -- Project Vigilant -- whose self-proclaimed mission is to inform federal authorities of crimes taking place over the Internet, and whose general counsel is the former head of the DOJ's Computer Crimes Unit.  If that's really what happened, that's some really, really, really bad luck on Manning's part: to randomly choose someone to whom to confess who was not only once under the thumb of DOJ authorities, but who was working at that very moment with a federal-government-connected group and the DOJ's former top computer crimes prosecutor.  To describe that as improbable is to understate the case (but again, that doesn't mean it didn't happen: improbable events do sometimes occur).

Beyond all of this, Poulsen has a long history with Rasch even beyond the fact that Rasch prosecuted him.  Poulsen's first job when getting out of prison was with Security Focus, the same entity for which Rasch also regularly wrote.  Although it was Poulsen who almost always and exclusively wrote about Lamo's exploits, in 2003, Poulsen was unable to do so because he had been subpoenaed by the DOJ in connection with Lamo's prosecution, and it was thus Rasch who took up the slack to write about Lamo for Security Focus.  Moreover, Rasch has been a long-time source for Poulsen going back to 1999 and 2001, including when Poulsen was writing about Lamo, and was also Poulsen's source repeatedly for articles he wrote at Wired.  Rasch has also been a regular source for Wired's Kim Zetter, who was Poulsen's co-author on the Manning articles (on November 29, an ABC News story on Manning featured Rasch as an "expert" analyzing the accusations without any disclosure of the key role he played in Manning's arrest).

Back in June, WikiLeaks -- citing this comment at BoingBoing -- suggested that Poulsen was not merely a reporter writing about Lamo's informing on Manning, but was an active participant in helping that to happen and was even himself a government informant.  Poulsen vehemently denied that both to me (without my even asking) and in an interview he gave to The Columbia Journalism Review.  Part of the problem here was Poulsen's own doing: when he first broke the story about Manning's arrest, he not only failed to disclose the fact that he had been speaking to and meeting with Lamo before Manning's arrest (while Lamo cooperated with the government), but actively misled readers about that fact by including this sentence in his first article: "'I wouldn't have done this if lives weren't in danger,' says Lamo, who discussed the details with Wired.com following Manning's arrest." In fact, Poulsen had extensively spoken with and even met with Lamo before Manning's arrest.

As I wrote back in June and as is still true, there's no evidence to support that specific "informant" accusation against Poulsen.  Poulsen has done good journalism in the past in exposing government wrongdoing (while at Wired, he also worked to locate various sex criminals online who were then prosecuted by a local computer crimes unit).  

But what is incontrovertibly true is that a Wired contributer -- who just so happens also to be Poulsen's prosecutor and long-time source -- played a key role in putting Lamo in contact with government authorities in order to inform on Manning.  Poulsen never mentioned any of that, and -- even once Rasch's role was publicly reported -- never once disclosed his multi-faceted relationship to Rasch in all the times he's written about Manning and WikiLeaks.  What's also true is that while many convicted hackers had very rigid restrictions placed on them when leaving prison (Kevin Mitnick, for instance, was originally barred from using the Internet entirely), Poulsen not only quickly began writing online as a journalist about the hacker world, but did so at the very same publication -- Security Focus -- that also repeatedly published articles by his prosecutor, Mark Rasch.

What makes all of this particularly critical is that we still have no real idea how and under what circumstances Manning and Lamo actually began speaking.  Lamo repeatedly claimed -- and Poulsen and others repeatedly "reported" -- that those two began speaking when Manning contacted Lamo in a chat.  But Lamo told me something much different in the interview I conducted with him in June: that before chatting with him, Manning had sent Lamo several encrypted e-mails which -- Lamo claims -- he was never able to read before turning over to the FBI because he was unable to find his encryption key.  Between Lamo's alleged inability to describe these initial e-mails and Poulsen's ongoing refusal to publish the chat logs, the evidence of how Manning and Lamo came to speak and what was said is being actively hidden (and Marcy Wheeler raises several compelling reasons why it seems Lamo was cooperating with government authorities as he spoke to Manning before the time he and Poulsen claim that cooperation began).

* * * * *

When I first wrote back in June about Wired's concealment of these chat logs, the excuses Poulsen gave were quickly proved to be false.  Poulsen told me that the only portions of the chats that Wired was concealing were "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." But after that, The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima quoted from the chat logs and included several parts that (a) Wired had withheld but (b) were not about personal matters or national security secrets; see this analysis here of what was disclosed by the Post, Wired and others.  (Nakashima and the Post refuse even to say whether they possess all the chat logs.  When I asked Nakashima several months ago, she referred my inquiry to a corporate spokeswoman, who then told me:  "We don't discuss the details of our newsgathering." But I focus here on Poulsen because of his central role in these events, his long-standing relationships with the key parties, and the fact that -- unlike the Post, which obviously has nothing to do with journalism -- I actually expect better of Wired). 

But even if one back then found Poulsen's rationale persuasive for concealing 75 percent of the chat logs, circumstances have clearly changed.  For one, WikiLeaks has now published hundreds of thousands of documents, including almost 2,000 diplomatic cables; thus, at least some of the "sensitive government information" in the chats over which Poulsen was acting as self-anointed Guardian has now presumably been publicly disclosed.  More important, Lamo has spent months making all kinds of public claims about what Manning supposedly told him as part of these chats -- claims that are not found in the chat excerpts released by Wired.  Those subsequent public statements by Lamo create an obligation for Poulsen either to release the portions of the chats that Lamo is describing or confirm that they do not exist (and thus reveal that his close, long-time "source," Lamo, is lying or significantly misremembering).

Whether by design or effect, Kevin Poulsen and Wired have played a critical role in concealing the truth from the public about the Manning arrest.  In doing so, they have actively shielded Poulsen's longtime associate, Adrian Lamo -- as well as government investigators -- from having their claims about Manning's statements scrutinized, and have enabled Lamo to drive much of the reporting of this story by spouting whatever he wants about Manning's statements without any check.  This has long ago left the realm of mere journalistic failure and stands as one of the most egregious examples of active truth-hiding by a "journalist" I've ever seen.

 

UPDATE:  Evan Hansen, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired.com, says on Twitter that Poulsen is "on vacation" but that Wired will post a response to this article tomorrow.  What they ought to do, at the absolute minimum, is post the portions of the chat logs about which Lamo had made public statements or make clear that they do not exist.  And here's Poulsen's response on Twitter, posted just now:

Finally, here's yet another photograph -- taken after this well-noted one with Kevin Mitnick (and posted to Lamo's Facebook page on June 9, 2010, one day before Wired published the chat logs) -- of Pouslen together with his "source," the government informant Adrian Lamo:

What WikiLeaks revealed to the world in 2010

Throughout this year I've devoted substantial attention to WikiLeaks, particularly in the last four weeks as calls for its destruction intensified.  To understand why I've done so, and to see what motivates the increasing devotion of the U.S. Government and those influenced by it to destroying that organization, it's well worth reviewing exactly what WikiLeaks exposed to the world just in the last year:  the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world's most powerful factions.

As revealing as the disclosures themselves are, the reactions to them have been equally revealing.  The vast bulk of the outrage has been devoted not to the crimes that have been exposed but rather to those who exposed them:  WikiLeaks and (allegedly) Bradley Manning.  A consensus quickly emerged in the political and media class that they are Evil Villains who must be severely punished, while those responsible for the acts they revealed are guilty of nothing.  That reaction has not been weakened at all even by the Pentagon's own admission that, in stark contrast to its own actions, there is no evidence -- zero -- that any of WikiLeaks' actions has caused even a single death.  Meanwhile, the American establishment media -- even in the face of all these revelations -- continues to insist on the contradictory, Orwellian platitudes that (a) there is Nothing New™ in anything disclosed by WikiLeaks and (b) WikiLeaks has done Grave Harm to American National Security™ through its disclosures.

It's unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and criminality, rather than those who perpetrate them.  Every political leader would love for that self-serving piety to take hold.  But what's startling is how many citizens and, especially, "journalists" now vehemently believe that as well.  In light of what WikiLeaks has revealed to the world about numerous governments, just fathom the authoritarian mindset that would lead a citizen -- and especially a "journalist" -- to react with anger that these things have been revealed; to insist that these facts should have been kept concealed and it'd be better if we didn't know; and, most of all, to demand that those who made us aware of it all be punished (the True Criminals) while those who did these things (The Good Authorities) be shielded:

Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2010:

Daily Mail, April 7, 2010:

The Guardian, October 22, 2010:

The Guardian, October 22, 2010:

Foreign Policy, November 29, 2010:

Mother Jones, December 1, 2010:

El Pais, November 30, 2010:

TRANSLATION: U.S. maneuvered to stop High Court cases:   American embassy issued threats over the cases of 'Guantanamo', 'Couso' and 'CIA flights' - Politicians and Spanish prosecutors collaborated on the strategy

Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer, responding to the cables from Spain, December 1, 2010:

ACLU, November 20, 2010:

Der Spiegel, December 9, 2010:

Ellen Knickmeyer, ex-Washington Post Baghdad Bureau Chief, The Daily Beast, October 25, 2010:

 

Sydney Morning Herald, November 29, 2010:

Salon, December 9, 2010:

BBC, December 17, 2010:

BBC, December 22, 2010:

Reuters, December, 1, 2010:

MSNBC, December 11, 2010:

The Guatemala Times, November 28, 2010:

CBS News, November 29, 2010:

The Guardian, November 30, 2010:

Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post, July 27, 2010:

The Guardian, July 25, 2010:

Those are just some of the truths that led WikiLeaks -- and whoever the leaker(s) is -- to sacrifice their own interests in order to disclose these secrets to the world.

U.N. to investigate treatment of Bradley Manning

(updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)

Both The Guardian and the Associated Press are reporting that the U.N.'s top official in charge of torture is now formally investigating the conditions under which the U.S. is detaining accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning.  Last week, I described the inhumane terms of his detention at a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, including being held 23 out of 24 hours a day in solitary confinement for seven straight months and counting as well as other punitive measures (such as strict prohibitions on any exercise inside his cell and the petty denial of pillows and sheets).  Manning's lawyer, former U.S. Army Major and Iraq War veteran David Coombs, thereafter publicly confirmed those facts, and then announced two days ago that efforts to persuade brig officials to allow more human conditions have failed, meaning it is likely that Manning will languish under these repressive restraints for many more months to come, at least.

In addition to confirming the facts I reported, Maj. Coombs added several disturbing new ones, including the paltry, isolated terms of Manning's one-hour-a-day so-called "exercise" time (he's "taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk," "normally just walks figure eights in the room," "if he indicates that he no long feels like walking, he is immediately returned to his cell"); the bizarre requirement that, despite not being on suicide watch, Manning respond to guards all day, every day, by saying "yes" every 5 minutes (even though guards cannot and "do not engage in conversation with" him); and various sleep-disruptive measures (he is barred from sleeping at any time from 5:00 am - 8:00 pm, and, during the night, "if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him").

Although prolonged solitary confinement can unquestionably constitute torture (the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande made the definitive, undeniable case for that last year in The New Yorker), I wasn't prepared to state based on what I could confirm that the treatment of Manning met the legal definition of torture (though it is clearly inhumane and certain to produce long-term psychological damage).  That was because Manning wasn't subjected to the full-on sensory deprivation used at America's SuperMax prisons (his lawyer said "he can occasionally hear other inmates talk," though he cannot now) and did get the minimally required one hour a day of "exercise."  But others have made the argument persuasively that this is torture.  

Ralph Lopez chided me for my equivocation on that question, assembling ample evidence to support his view that the treatment amounts to torture.  Digby made a strong case that "locking up someone who has not presented any kind of threat to other prisoners and who has not been convicted of a crime for months on end in solitary confinement under tight restrictions is torture."  The psychologist and torture specialist Jeffrey Kaye made the same argument.  The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote:  "I don't really see any argument for keeping Manning in these conditions, except a punitive one."  And in the wake of my report, there have been several reports of the damage to Manning that is now apparent, including in The Guardian ("Bradley Manning's health deteriorating in jail, supporters say"), The Independent (Manning "in weak health and wracked with anxiety"), The Daily Beast ("The conditions under which Bradley Manning is being held would traumatize anyone"), and from his lawyer ("who says the extended isolation -- now more than seven months of solitary confinement -- is weighing on his client's psyche . . . . His treatment is harsh, punitive and taking its toll, says Coombs").

The U.S. is one of the world's most prolific practitioners of prolonged solitary confinement: unsurprising given that it enjoys the distinction of being the world's largest Prison State and the Western world's most merciless one.  As NPR noted in 2006, there are roughly 25,000 prisoners in the U.S. kept in those conditions.  But the vast, vast majority of them -- unlike Manning -- have actually been convicted of crimes.  It is very rare (though, when it comes to Muslims accused of Terrorism, by no means unheard of) for these conditions to be imposed on people who have yet to be convicted of anything and never posed any threat to prison security.  Prolonged solitary confinement is inhumane, horrendous and gratuitous even when applied to those convicted of heinous crimes, but the fact that it's being done to Manning here in order to "persuade" him to offer incriminating statements against WikiLeaks and Julian Asange makes it particularly repellent.

As is true for so much of what it does, the U.S. Government routinely condemns similar acts -- the use of prolonged solitary confinement in its most extreme forms and lengthy pretrial detention -- when used by other countries.  See, for instance, the 2009 State Department Human Rights Report on Indonesia ("Officials held unruly detainees in solitary confinement for up to six days on a rice-and-water diet"); Iran ("Common methods of torture and abuse in prisons included prolonged solitary confinement with extreme sensory deprivation . . .Prison conditions were poor. Many prisoners were held in solitary confinement . . . Authorities routinely held political prisoners in solitary confinement for extended periods . . . All four [arrested bloggers] claimed authorities physically and psychologically abused them in detention, including subjecting them to prolonged periods of solitary confinement in a secret detention center without access to legal counsel or family"); Israel ("Israeli human rights organizations reported that Israeli interrogators . . .  kept prisoners in harsh conditions, including solitary confinement for long periods"); Iraq ("Individuals claimed to have been subjected to psychological and physical abuse, including . . . solitary confinement in Ashraf to discourage defections"); Yemen ("Sleep deprivation and solitary confinement were other forms of abuse reported in PSO prisons"); Central African Republic ("As of December, there were 308 inmates in Ngaragba Prison, most of whom are pretrial detainees. Several detainees had been held for seven months without appearing before a judge"); Burundi ("Human rights problems also included . . . prolonged pretrial detention").

What's been most striking to me since I wrote that Manning article has been how the debate over detainee abuse has "evolved" -- and not evolved -- from the Bush years.  Back then, Bush defenders were completely incapable of separating their opinions of the detainees from the question of whether the treatment was abusive and inhumane (these are Terrorists, so who cares what is done to them?).  That has been the primary response to those defending the government's treatment of Manning as well (he's a Traitor!!) -- except now, of course, it's found among many progressives:  note how identical is the response from this front page writer of the liberal blog Crooks & Liars ("the meme o the day seems to be on Manning's so-called torture, to which I say 'boo hoo'") to that of The Weekly Standard ("Don't Cry for Bradley Manning") and RedState ("Give Bradley Manning His Pillow and Blankie Back").  This convergence is a perfect microcosm for how much our political discourse over such matters has transformed since January 20, 2009.  At The Atlantic, Coates asked:  

I think the worse part, is that very few people care what kind of conditions the incarcerated endure. We have essentially accepted prison-rape. The New Yorker piece asks is solitary confinement torture? I'd ask, even if it is torture, whether we even care?

Three years ago, many people who are conspicuously silent now loudly and continuously claimed they did care.  Indeed, prolonged solitary confinement was one of the worst aspects of detention at Guantanamo, as many civil rights groups highlighted, but the type of glib and dismissive responses to such concerns back then ("'It's kind of like having their own apartment,' Camp 6 Guard, Guantánamo Bay Naval Station") is quite similar to what I've heard from people across the political spectrum in response to my Manning article.

As was true for the debates over War on Terror detainees, one's views of Manning are totally irrelevant to the issue here (that's aside from the fact that he's been convicted of nothing; is not, contrary to many claims, charged with espionage or treason; and what he's alleged to have done has resulted in no deaths).  The only relevant issue is whether -- after reading Gawande's New Yorker article -- you believe that prolonged, 23-hour-a-day pre-trial solitary confinement is acceptable and humane treatment.  It may or may not fall short of actual torture -- it's good that the U.N. will now formally investigate that question -- but either way, it's designed to degrade both Manning's psyche and resistance to incriminating WikiLeaks and is highly likely to achieve both.

* * * * *

Several related items:

(1) In early November, I reported that as part of the government's campaign to harass and intimidate anyone remotely connected to WikiLeaks or Manning, Homeland Security agents -- without any warrant or shred of judicial authority -- seized the laptop, cameras and memory sticks of 23-year-old MIT researcher David House when he returned to the U.S. from a vacation in Mexico.  House's crime appears to have been that he visited Manning several times at the Quantico brig.  Even after seven weeks, DHS refused to return his stolen goods, so the ACLU of Massachusetts demanded early this week on House's behalf that they be returned immediately, and the following day, they were sent back to him.  But Jacob Appelbaum -- the programmer who had his laptop and cellphones seized at the border without a warrant back in July -- still has not had his possessions returned to him by the government.  This outrageous practice -- seizing and storing the electronic communications of American citizens with no charges or even any warrants -- is not confined to WikiLeaks; many legitimate American critics of the government are subjected to this repeatedly when they re-enter the country, and I intend to write much more about this shortly.

(2)  Julian Assange was interviewed yesterday on MSNBC by Cenk Uygur, and his response to Joe Biden's "high-tech terrorist" accusation -- including a discussion of the definition of "terrorism" and to whom it does and does not apply -- is well worth hearing:

 (3) A comprehensive and helpful time-line of events relating to Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks has been assembled by FDL here.

 

UPDATE:  After his last visit to Manning over the weekend, David House has written a comprehensive report of his discussions with Manning, particularly Mannings' statements about the conditions of his detention, many of which directly contradict claims by brig officials.

 

UPDATE II:  Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First compiles evidence and interviews experts to document that the treatment of Manning is "not customary."

Earlier today on BBC's Newshour, I debated Manning's detention with former Reagan Pentagon official Jed Babbin, who was also one of the key members of the Bush Pentagon's domestic propaganda program.  He, needless to say, vehemently defended Manning's treatment; the debate was quite acrimonious; and I'll post it as soon as it's available. 

For those in Canada:  I'll be on the CBC tonight, on Mark Kelley's Connect, at 8:00 p.m, discussing Manning.

 

UPDATE III:  Here is the BBC debate about Manning I did earlier today with Babbin.

 

UPDATE IV:  Substituting for Dylan Ratigan today on MSNBC, The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart conducted a very good interview with David House about the conditions of Manning's detention -- highly recommended: 

 

UPDATE V:  The CBC interview I did last night on Manning is here; it's the first segment of the show.

 

UPDATE VI:  The inhumane nature of Manning's detention is now generating media attention -- as it should; here is the front page of msnbc.com this morning, with a link to this article:

The NYT spills key military secrets on its front page

(updated below - Update II)

In The New York Times today, Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins expose very sensitive classified government secrets -- and not just routine secrets, but high-level, imminent planning for American covert military action in a foreign country:

Senior American military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan's tribal areas, a risky strategy reflecting the growing frustration with Pakistan's efforts to root out militants there.

The proposal, described by American officials in Washington and Afghanistan, would escalate military activities inside Pakistan, where the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash.

The plan has not yet been approved, but military and political leaders say a renewed sense of urgency has taken hold, as the deadline approaches for the Obama administration to begin withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan.

America's clandestine war in Pakistan has for the most part been carried out by armed drones operated by the C.I.A. . . . But interviews in recent weeks revealed that on at least one occasion, the Afghans went on the offensive and destroyed a militant weapons cache.

The decision to expand American military activity in Pakistan, which would almost certainly have to be approved by President Obama himself, would amount to the opening of a new front in the nine-year-old war, which has grown increasingly unpopular among Americans. . . . [O]ne senior American officer said, "We've never been as close as we are now to getting the go-ahead to go across."

The officials who described the proposal and the intelligence operations declined to be identified by name discussing classified information.

Often in debates over the legitimacy of publishing classified information, the one example typically cited as the classic case of where publication of secrets is wrong is "imminent troop movements."  Even many defenders of leaks will concede it is wrong for newspapers to divulge such information.  That "troop-movement" example serves the same role as the "screaming-fire-in-a-crowded-theater" example does in free speech debates:  it's the example everyone is supposed to concede illustrates the limits on the liberty in question.   While the ground operations in Pakistan revealed by the NYT today don't quite reach that level -- since there is not yet final presidential authorization for it -- these revelations by the NYT come quite close to that:  "an expanded campaign of Special Operations ground raids across the border into Pakistan's tribal areas."

Indeed, the NYT reporters several times acknowledge that public awareness of these operations could trigger serious harm ("inside Pakistan, [] the movement of American forces has been largely prohibited because of fears of provoking a backlash").  Note, too, that Mazzetti and Filkins did not acquire these government secrets by just passively sitting around and having them delivered out of the blue.  To the contrary:  they interviewed multiple officials both in Washington and in Afghanistan, offered several of them anonymity to induce them to reveal secrets, and even provoked officials to provide detailed accounts of past secret actions in Pakistan, including CIA-directed attacks by Afghans inside that country.  Indeed, Mazzetti told me this morning:  "We've been working on this for a little while. . . . It's been slow going.  The release of the AfPak review gave a timeliness to the story, but this has been in the works for several weeks."

In my view, the NYT article represents exactly the kind of secret information journalists ought to be revealing; it's a pure expression of why the First Amendment guarantees a free press.  There are few things more damaging to basic democratic values than having the government conduct or escalate a secret war beyond public debate or even awareness.  By exposing these classified plans, Mazzetti and Filkins did exactly what good journalists ought to do:  inform the public about important actions taken or being considered by their government which the government is attempting to conceal.

Moreover, the Obama administration has a history of deceiving the public about secret wars.  Recently revealed WikiLeaks cables demonstrated that it was the U.S. -- not Yemen -- which launched a December, 2009 air strike in that country which killed dozens of civilians; that was a covert war action about which the U.S. State Department actively misled the public, and was exposed only by WikiLeaks cables.  Worse, it was The Nation's Jeremy Scahill who first reported back in 2009 that the CIA was directing ground operations in Pakistan using both Special Forces and Blackwater operatives:  only to be smeared by the Obama State Department which deceitfully dismissed his report as "entirely false," only for recently released WikiLeaks cables to confirm that what Scahill reported was exactly true.  These kinds of leaks are the only way for the public to learn about the secret wars the Obama administration is conducting and actively hiding from the public.

The question that emerges from all of this is obvious, but also critical for those who believe Wikileaks and Julian Assange should be prosecuted for the classified information they have published:  should the NYT editors and reporters who just spilled America's secrets to the world be criminally prosecuted as well?  After all, WikiLeaks has only exposed past conduct, and never -- like the NYT just did -- published imminent covert military plans.  Moreover, WikiLeaks has never published "top secret" material, unlike what the NYT has done many times in the past (the NSA program, the SWIFT banking program) and what they quite possibly did here as well.  Mazzetti this morning said in response to my question about that:  "not sure on the classification, although I think all of the special operations activity is usually given Top Secret designation."

Does Dianne Feinstein believe that Mazzetti, Filkins and their editors should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act?  Do Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell believe these two reporters are "high-tech terrorists?"  Is Eric Holder going to boast about the aggressive actions his DOJ is taking to criminally investigate the NYT for these disclosures?  

After all, which WikiLeaks disclosure has ever helped the Taliban and Al Qaeda as much as announcing that the U.S. intends escalated ground operations in Pakistan?  How can the acts of WikiLeaks and the NYT possibly be distinguished?  Last week, Rachel Maddow was on David Letterman's show, laughed when Letterman denounced Assange as "creepy," and -- while expressing concerns both that the U.S. Government over-classifies and doesn't safeguard its secrets with sufficient care -- disparaged WikiLeaks this way: 

I think he is a hero in his own mind, which makes me pretty suspicious. ... We should not have freelancers from other countries making a decision about what gets declassified by our government. Our government should be better about it, but I don't want random Australians deciding for me. [audience laughs and cheers appreciatively].

Is that really a cogent distinction?  It's dangerous or even possibly a serious crime when one of those menacing foreigners (a "random Australian") or "freelancers" exposes U.S. government deceit and corruption, but it's acceptable and legal when true Americans or a large American media corporation (such as NBC News) does it?   I'm quite certain there are no such distinctions in the law.  Beyond that, non-"freelance" American news organizations haven't exactly covered themselves with glory when making such judgments; ask Judy Miller and Michael Gordon about that, or Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch, Wen Ho Lee, Steven Hatfill and so many more.  What determines whether something is a crime is the actions of the person -- not their nationality or how large of a corporation employs them.

Also, for those of you supportive of the prosecution and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning:  should the government do everything possible to discover the identity of the military and government officials who spoke with Mazzetti and Filkins about these plans?  The Obama DOJ recently revitalized an abandoned Bush-era subpoena issued to James Risen to force him (ultimately upon pain of imprisonment) to reveal his source for a story he wrote; should the Obama DOJ do the same here to Mazzetti and Filkins?  And if they do discover their sources, should those officials be arrested and prosecuted for espionage, and held in 23-hour-per-day solitary confinement for months and months while awaiting their trial?  

On some perverse level, I at least respect the intellectual consistency of those like Joe Lieberman, Rep. Pete King, and multiple Bush officials and followers who not only demand that WikiLeaks and Assange be prosecuted, but also that newspapers who do the same thing also be similarly punished.  That view is odious and dangerous, but it's the only intellectually coherent position.  By contrast, those who are cheering while the Obama DOJ tries to imprison Assange -- without also demanding that Mazzetti and Filkins occupy a cell next to him (and that their high-level sources be found and punished the way Manning is) -- are advocating quite incoherent and unprincipled positions and should ask themselves why that is.

* * * * *

I was on Globo News in Brazil last night discussing the threats to press freedom posed by the Obama administration's attacks on WikiLeaks; the program is in Portuguese, but those who speak Spanish (in addition, obviously, to Portuguese) should be able to understand it.   In the last few days, I also did interviews with Michelangelo Signorile and Scott Horton regarding WikiLeaks, Manning and related issues which can be heard at those links.

 

UPDATE:  In Salon today, Michael Lind advances a vapid and ill-supported argument.  He argues generally that the U.S. is becoming a "banana republic" because the rule of law is no longer applied to favored factions which commit crimes:  so far, so good, as that is the topic of my forthcoming book.  But then to show how fair-minded he is, he argues that both the Left and Right are guilty of this, and one of his prime examples of the Left's guilt in this regard is this:  

Most of the American left has made a hero of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. For Assange's admirers, the embarrassment that his publication of stolen government and corporate documents produces for government policymakers, bankers or corporate executives whom they dislike more than compensates for the theft of classified or private information on a grand scale. The idea that the law in its majesty is supposed to protect the bad as well as the good apparently is rejected by those who celebrate information vandalism, as long as its victims are the State Department or big banks.

There's just one little fact missing from Lind's argument:  the identification of any laws which WikiLeaks and Assange supposedly broke.  The claim on the Left -- at least that I've heard -- is not that Assange broke the law but shouldn't be convicted because he is achieving good things.  The claim is that what he did isn't against the law at all, and that there's no way to distinguish what he did from what investigative journalists do on a daily basis.  If Lind wants to disparage the Left as renouncing the rule of law by defending WikiLeaks despite the "crimes" it's committing, he ought to at least pretend to identify what these crimes are ("information vandalism" is not a crime, nor is publishing classified information).  He doesn't, and can't, identify any because there are none.  Ironically, Lind is guilty of exactly that which he is condemning:  namely, deciding what is and is not a crime based on his likes and dislikes ("information vandalism!") rather than what the law actually says.

 

UPDATE II:  Why aren't Visa, MasterCard, Paypal, their web hosting company and various banks terminating their relationships with The New York Times, the way they all did with WikiLeaks:  not only for the NYT's publication of many of the same diplomatic and war cables published by WikiLeaks, but also for this much more serious leak today in which WikiLeaks was completely uninvolved? (h/t Lobe Log)