Wired’s Poulsen ‘concealed’ WikiLeaks evidence
p2pnet view P2P | Politics:- “Yesterday, speaking the morning after his release on bail of £240,000 as he fights the extradition request from Sweden for alleged sexual offences, Mr Assange insisted: ‘I had never heard of the name Bradley Manning before it was published in the press. WikiLeaks technology [was] designed from the very beginning to make sure that we never know the identities or names of people submitting us material. That is, in the end, the only way that sources can be guaranteed that they remain anonymous.’
“But Adrian Lamo (right), a former hacker who had been in contact with Private Manning and eventually turned him in to the government, has told the FBI that Mr Assange had given the young soldier an encrypted internet conferencing service as he was downloading government files and a dedicated server for uploading them to WikiLeaks.
“Mr Lamo claims that Private Manning had ‘bragged’ about this to him. In one email, now in the possession of the Justice Department, the soldier allegedly wrote: ‘i cant believe what im confessing to you?im a source, not quite a volunteer, I mean, im a high profile source? and I’ve developed a relationship with assange’.”
‘ … one of America’s best-known cyber-criminals … ‘
Pictured next to Lamo is Kevin Poulsen who “had a notorious career in the 1980s as a hacker whose handle was Dark Dante”, says the Wikipedia, going on:
“He worked for SRI International by day, and hacked at night. During this time, Poulsen taught himself lock picking, and engaged in a brash spree of high-tech stunts that would ultimately make him one of America’s best-known cyber-criminals. Among other things, Poulsen reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance that then ran a virtual escort agency.”
He’s now a “senior editor” at Wired.
The pic was borrowed from a Salon article by Glen Greenwald, who’s been closely following the Julian Assange/Bradley Manning saga.
Now “For more than six months … 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”, says Greenwald in his story, going on >>>
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.
Greenwald continues in Salon >>>
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 [sic]. 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. [Our paragraph breaks]
Greenwald writes at length and in detail, and with passion, about Poulsen’s “concealment of this evidence”.
At the end, “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”, he says, stating:
“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.”
On his Twitter page, “Heard there’s a measured, mature critique I should respond to”, said Poulsen yesterday.
“Will look for it tomorrow when I’m back from vacation.”
Stay tuned.
Independent – Assange begins mansion arrest, but his ‘source’ feels the heat, December 18, 2010
Salon – The worsening journalistic disgrace at Wired, December 27, 2010
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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December 29th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
As long as people continue to just accept what they’re being told as true, no matter how much substantiation is missing from it all, we’re going to remain besieged with those who publish complete horseshit, while calling it “news”, and calling themselves “journalists”.
Another example of why people really need to wake the fuck up.
December 29th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Look at the two of them… like lovers in paradise.