We just received this from a source requesting anonymity. It purports to be a more complete transcript of a portion of Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning’s conversation with Adrian Lamo, the hacker who reported Manning to authorities. Released in part by Wired News, and excerpted in part in a Washington Post story, the remainder was said to contain information of potential national security import. However, we don’t see material of that nature in the portion of the transcript we were sent here, and neither can our lawyers.
Update: We have removed a few words regarding specifics of personal issues not directly related to the whistleblowing/national security concerns at hand.
Some of the sections which, as far as I can tell, haven’t been published in “raw” form are in bold.
There’s a reference here to “confession” on Manning’s part. Glenn Greenwald wrote in his Salon piece published yesterday:
Lamo told me (though it doesn’t appear in the chat logs published by Wired) that he told Manning early on that he was a journalist and thus could offer him confidentiality for everything they discussed under California’s shield law. Lamo also said he told Manning that he was an ordained minister and could treat Manning’s talk as a confession, which would then compel Lamo under the law to keep their discussions confidential (early on in their chats, Manning said: “I can’t believe what I’m confessing to you”). In sum, Lamo explicitly led Manning to believe he could trust him and that their discussions would be confidential — perhaps legally required to be kept confidential — only to then report everything Manning said to the Government.
Transcript of the alleged log between Lamo and Manning
as sent to Wikileaks by Lamo. The transcript is clearly only a small
portion and has presumably been edited.
(12:15:11 PM) bradass87: hypothetical question: if you had free reign over
classified networks for long periods of time… say, 8-9 months… and you
saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public
domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC…
what would you do?
(12:16:38 PM) bradass87: or Guantanamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC for that
matter…
(12:17:47 PM) bradass87: things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion
people
(12:21:24 PM) bradass87: say… a database of half a million events during
the iraq war… from 2004 to 2009… with reports, date time groups,
lat-lon locations, casualty figures… ? or 260,000 state department
cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how
the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal
perspective?
(12:22:49 PM) bradass87: the air-gap has been penetrated… =L
(12:23:19 PM) Adrian: how so?
(12:26:09 PM) Adrian: yt?
(12:26:09 PM) bradass87: lets just say *someone* i know intimately well,
has been penetrating US classified networks, mining data like the ones
described… and been transferring that data from the classified networks
over the “air gap” onto a commercial network computer… sorting the data,
compressing it, encrypting it, and uploading it to a crazy white haired
aussie who can’t seem to stay in one country very long =L
(12:27:13 PM) bradass87: im here
(12:27:24 PM) Adrian: Depends. What are the particulars?
(12:28:19 PM) bradass87: theres substantial lag i think
(12:29:52 PM) Adrian: I don’t understand.
(12:30:13 PM) bradass87: what was the last message you recieved?
(12:30:47 PM) Adrian: (12:28:19 PM) bradass87: theres substantial lag i think
(12:30:56 PM) bradass87: before that
(12:31:09 PM) Adrian:
(12:26:09 PM) bradass87: lets just say *someone* i know intimately well,
has been penetrating US classified networks, mining data like the ones
described… and been transferring that data from the classified networks
over the “air gap” onto a commercial network computer… sorting the data,
compressing it, encrypting it, and uploading it to a crazy white haired
aussie who can’t seem to stay in one country very long =L
(12:27:13 PM) bradass87: im here
(12:27:24 PM) Adrian: Depends. What are the particulars?
(12:31:43 PM) bradass87: crazy white haired dude = Julian Assange
(12:33:05 PM) bradass87: in other words… ive made a huge mess :'(
(12:35:17 PM) bradass87: im sorry… im just emotionally fractured
(12:39:12 PM) bradass87: im a total mess
(12:41:54 PM) bradass87: i think im in more potential heat than you ever were
(12:41:54 PM) Adrian : I have more messages than resources
allocatable to action them. Please be very patient.
(12:45:59 PM) Adrian: not mandatorily
(12:46:08 PM) Adrian: there are always outs
(12:46:17 PM) Adrian: how long have you helped WIkileaks?
(12:49:09 PM) bradass87: since they released the 9/11 “pager messages”
(12:49:38 PM) bradass87: i immediately recognized that they were from an
NSA database, and i felt comfortable enough to come forward
(12:50:20 PM) bradass87: so… right after thanksgiving timeframe of 2009
(12:52:33 PM) bradass87: Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats
around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one
morning, and finds an entire repository of classified foreign policy is
available, in searchable format to the public… =L
(12:53:41 PM) bradass87: s/Hilary/Hillary
(12:54:47 PM) Adrian: What sort of content?
(12:56:36 PM) Adrian: brb cigarette
(12:56:43 PM) Adrian: keep typing
(12:59:41 PM) bradass87: uhm… crazy, almost criminal political
backdealings… the non-PR-versions of world events and crises… uhm…
all kinds of stuff like everything from the buildup to the Iraq War during
Powell, to what the actual content of “aid packages” is: for instance, PR
that the US is sending aid to pakistan includes funding for
water/food/clothing… that much is true, it includes that, but the other
85% of it is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan
effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing instead of
americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis
(1:00:57 PM) bradass87: theres so much… it affects everybody on earth…
everywhere there’s a US post… there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be
revealed… Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madascar, if its a
country, and its recognized by the US as a country, its got dirt on it
(1:01:27 PM) bradass87: i need one myself
(1:10:38 PM) bradass87: its open diplomacy… world-wide anarchy in CSV
format… its Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth…
its beautiful, and horrifying…
(1:10:38 PM) Adrian : I have more messages than resources
allocatable to action them. Please be very patient.
(1:11:54 PM) bradass87: and… its important that it gets out… i feel,
for some bizarre reason
(1:12:02 PM) bradass87: it might actually change something
(1:13:10 PM) bradass87: i just… dont wish to be a part of it… at least
not now… im not ready… i wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of
my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of
having pictures of me… plastered all over the world press… […]
(1:14:11 PM) bradass87: i’ve totally lost my mind… i make no sense…
the CPU is not made for this motherboard…
(1:30:32 PM) bradass87: >sigh(1:31:40 PM) bradass87: i just wanted enough time to figure myself out…
to be myself… and be running around all the time, trying to meet someone
else’s expectations
(1:32:01 PM) bradass87: *and not be
(1:33:03 PM) bradass87: im just kind of drifting now…
(1:34:11 PM) bradass87: waiting to redeploy to the US, be discharged… […]
(1:34:45 PM) bradass87: all while witnessing the world freak out as its
most intimate secrets are revealed
(1:35:06 PM) bradass87: its such an awkward place to be in, emotionally
and psychologically
(1:35:06 PM) Adrian : I have more messages than resources
allocatable to action them. Please be very patient.
(1:39:03 PM) bradass87: i cant believe what im confessing to you :'(
(1:40:20 PM) bradass87: ive been so isolated so long… i just wanted to
be nice, and live a normal life… but events kept forcing me to figure
out ways to survive… smart enough to know whats going on, but helpless
to do anything… no-one took any notice of me
(1:40:43 PM) bradass87: :'(
(1:43:51 PM) Adrian: back
(1:43:59 PM) bradass87: im self medicating like crazy when im not toiling
in the supply office (my new location, since im being discharged, im not
offically intel anymore)
(1:44:11 PM) bradass87: you missed a lot…
(1:45:00 PM) Adrian: what kind of scandal?
(1:45:16 PM) bradass87: hundreds of them
(1:45:40 PM) Adrian: like what? I’m genuinely curious about details.
(1:46:01 PM) bradass87: i dont know… theres so many… i dont have the
original material anymore
(1:46:18 PM) bradass87: uhmm… the Holy See and its position on the
Vatican sex scandals
(1:46:26 PM) Adrian: play it by ear
(1:46:29 PM) bradass87: the broiling one in Germany
(1:47:36 PM) bradass87: im sorry, there’s so many… its impossible for
any one human to read all quarter-million… and not feel overwhelmed…
and possibly desensitized
(1:48:20 PM) bradass87: the scope is so broad… and yet the depth so rich
(1:48:50 PM) Adrian: give me some bona fides … yanno? any specifics.
(1:49:40 PM) bradass87: this one was a test: Classified cable from US
Embassy Reykjavik on Icesave dated 13 Jan 2010
(1:50:30 PM) bradass87: the result of that one was that the icelandic
ambassador to the US was recalled, and fired
(1:51:02 PM) bradass87: thats just one cable…
(1:51:14 PM) Adrian: Anything unreleased?
(1:51:25 PM) bradass87: i’d have to ask assange
(1:51:53 PM) bradass87: i zerofilled the original
(1:51:54 PM) Adrian: why do you answer to him?
(1:52:29 PM) bradass87: i dont… i just want the material out there… i
dont want to be a part of it
(1:52:54 PM) Adrian: i’ve been considering helping wikileaks with opsec
(1:53:13 PM) bradass87: they have decent opsec… im obviously violating it
(1:53:34 PM) bradass87: im a wreck
(1:53:47 PM) bradass87: im a total fucking wreck right now