Adrian Lamo on Bradley Manning: 'I knew my actions might cost him his life'

[alp227]

(Interview in Jan. 4, 2013 edition of The Guardian by Ed Pilkington)

Ed Pilkington: Let's start with the reason we're having this IM chat: Bradley Manning. We heard Manning himself recently describe his treatment during the nine months he was held in Quantico marine base on suspicion of having leaked hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents and videos to WikiLeaks. Have you been following the proceedings, and if so how closely?

Adrian Lamo: My only exposure to the proceedings right now is the things that people ask me whether I've heard. That sometimes disturbs folks' sense of perspective, as though it's wrong of me to have more to my life than Bradley Manning. It's not because I take it lightly, but because I take it as seriously as I do. Making the choice to interdict a man's freedom knowing it could mean his life, is something that's easy to judge but can only really be understood by living it. You either fold it into your character, come to terms and go on with your life, or you get stuck in that moment forever. For a while I thought I would be. I took it badly. But I came to terms and continued my life some time ago. It has, after all, been two years.

EP: We heard harrowing testimony from Manning. Locked in his 8x6ft cell for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day, stripped naked at night, made to stand to attention at morning call in the nude. And on and on … I appreciate that you might not want your life to be stuck on Manning, but hearing such details must have an impact on you. Did you expect him to face such harsh treatment when, as you put it, you chose to interdict his freedom by passing his details to the FBI?

AL: As a clarification, I co-operated with the Department of Defense in this matter, not the FBI. This is the army's prosecution, and while there's some overlap, the FBI is looking at another spectrum of issues. To speak to your question, I don't have first-hand knowledge of his conditions while detained. But a lot of choices by a lot of people went into taking this case where it is today. It's clear the circumstances would be very different if it weren't for my involvement, but you can only label something a proximate cause within so many degrees of separation of what it's putatively causal of.

full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/03/adrian-lamo-bradley-manning-q-and-a

[RomneyLies]

1. Adrian Lamo is a true hero. n/t

[alp227]

3. why

[RomneyLies]

4. He did his duty and revealed a huge security risk and potential traitor. n/t

[railsback]

6. Exactly, man

I don't know why so many here fail to see what Manning COULD have done if not caught.

[sendero]

9. I can only hope..

.... that you are soon arrested and thrown in jail for what you "could" have done.

[Canuckistanian]

11. A traitor? Why?

Someone who exposes war crimes is not a traitor.

Other than embarrassing those in absolute power, what did Manning do, exactly?

Be specific.

[RomneyLies]

12. Someon who dumps thousands of classified documents on the open internet

with no clue whatsoever of the contents of those documents is a straight up traitor.

End of discussion.

[raouldukelives]

18. Didn't you get the memo? Exposing war crimes is very unprogessive. nt

[Luminous Animal]

10. Lamo is a low down dirty operative.

The defense department has been after Wikileaks since 2007 when they released BUSH'S IRAQ WAR http://mirror.wikileaks.info/wiki/US_Military_Equipment_in_Afghanistan/ military costs (and more specifically, the implication that we were using chemical weapons in Iraq). They found their patsy with Manning and I have little doubt they set him up. They give a soldier who has disciplinary issues, mental health issues, and hangs out in the hacker community access to low level classified info and then Lamo "conveniently" has prolonged and multiple chats with him leading him on to try to implicate Assange and Wikileaks as not merely a conduit for information but active facilitators.

They assume that he was so mentally fragile that they can isolate him for a year, strip him of his clothing, humiliate him, wake him up repeatedly during the night, keep a florescent light shining on him day & night, and deprive him of regular daylight for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day, and bar him from exercising with the end goal of implicating Wikileaks and Assange in a conspiracy.

Unfortunately for the defense department, Manning has proved far more resilient and sane than they counted on and he had they global community and the UN on his side.

[RomneyLies]

13. He's a hero

Manning is a traitor.

End of discussion as far as I'm concerned.

[sabrina 1]

19. Adrian Lamo is a liar and a former criminal himself who got off easy by

destroying the trust of another human being. He cared nothing about this country, about the War Crimes committed by the Bush War Criminals revealed in the leaks.

He is everything this country did not need at a time when War Crimes were rampant, and he chose to defend and protect the criminals while turning in a real American hero.

He is generally despised all over the world so it's no wonder he doesn't want to talk about what he did.

[RomneyLies]

22. Ah, nearly a verbatim quote of the anti-Lamo Wikileaks propaganda

Why am I not surprised.

[sabrina 1]

24. Do you know anything about this creep or are you just anti-Wikileaks

and other independent media, real news outlets?

To be honest I am surprised at the anti-Wikileaks minority on this forum. I never realized that people on the left were so supportive of the Big, Crooked Banks that brought down the world's economies.

Wikileaks, a multiple, award winning Global News Organization were responsible for the initial exposure of Iceland's Corrupt Banking system. A country that actually acted on the information, arrested the crooked bankers along with their crooked politicians who enabled them and as a result are the only country to have rebounded from the disaster these criminals created all over the world.

The rule of law works. Too bad we don't respect it in this country we might be on the rebound also.


Lamo is a liar and a crook. The reason you see that all over the place, is because it is true. He is among the most despised people in the world, so it's no surprise at all that he has been hiding from reporters asking questions about his own life and his reasons for what he did. He helped protect war criminals and crooked banksters and will go down in history when this chapter is written, as one of the bad guys.

[RomneyLies]

25. Wikileaks is nothing more than the outlet for Julian Assange's egotistical musings. n/t

[sabrina 1]

26. Don't know much about Wikileaks either apparently.

Wikileaks is what a good news organization should be. But truth telling is threatening to the corrupt which is why the big banks went after Wikileaks so furiously. Too bad it didn't work. The world respects Wikileaks and thanks to them and other independent media, the people know what caused the destruction of the world's economy, and they also know that their politicians have been complicit in covering up for them.

The opinions of a few people on the internet will never diminish the historical importance of the emergence of News Organisations like Wikileaks finally considering the takeover of the MSM by Big Corporations.

[larkrake]

2. A true crud, coward

[railsback]

5. All I can say is that its a good thing Manning was caught

That punk's action could have been far more serious.

[AZ Progressive]

8. Yes, how dare anyone reveal the truth about our government's actions

The government has the right to keep its actions secret, especially when Democrats are in control.

[railsback]

14. LoL. Give me a freakin' break.

Manning had NO patriotic drive to reveal government secrets for the good of the country. Read those transcripts. Manning was only looking for attention, and could have handed over those files to ANYONE willing to show him sympathy.

[sibelian]

17. Eh?

Are we talking about the same guy?

[sabrina 1]

20. Yes, how dare anyone reveal War Crimes committed by the Bush Administration.

Manning is a hero, Lamo is a coward and a liar.

[railsback]

23. Apparently, Teabagging knows no political boundaries

Face value reactionary arguments, completely void of any depth.

[msanthrope]

7. I knew who Frank Wills was. Mr. Lamo's most interesting quote?

AL: Not long after the files were released, the Taliban announced that they were combing poorly redacted contact logs for the names of Afghani nationals who were assisting security forces in postwar Afghanistan. Even if that were the sole data point, I'd remain convinced that months of warning is a hell of an important thing to give someone before the date of their potential execution.

WikiLeaks has a history of hand-waving away the consequences of their disclosures. When documents they released were linked to violence in Kenya, Julian Assange said, apparently to the Observer, that "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," going on to compare those numbers to the statistics of other deaths in Kenya – to paint death as a normal part of Kenyan existence, as it were.

Assange went on to say "… we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen", and that if anyone were conclusively killed because of WikiLeaks, they could take comfort knowing: "Well, we will review our procedures" upon proof of their death. I have a different vision of good, one where high ideals don't excuse any crime or atrocity because someone meant well.

[railsback]

16. That sounds pretty cold blooded.

What bothers me most about WikiLeaks is that one guy, Assange, is making these calls about what to release. He could be a psychopathic killer for all we know, releasing names and locations of people who will eventually get murdered as he sits back and watches the show.

[struggle4progress]

15. "... There was no way to be both kind to Bradley and mindful of the potential for harm

to people I had never known and would never know which the situation posed ..."

[closeupready]

21. He's a douchebag in my personal opinion. And I don't care what he thinks.

or how he justifies himself. I would want nothing to do with him, now or ever.

Manning was wrong. So was this guy.