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IT Publisher WIRED withholds full transcripts of Bradley Manning and Lamo Chat Logs
by Matthew Fleischer via Kismo - Mediabistro - FishbowlLA Monday, Dec 27 2010, 6:46pm
international / mass media / other press

So much for Wired's INTEGRITY!

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald has a long and fascinating piece attacking Wired’s Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen for withholding lengthy transcripts of a conversation between WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning and the man who turned Manning in, Adrian Lamo.

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….

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.

Greenwald says the unreleased transcripts are especially important because for the past six months Lamo has been discussing them in the media–without news organizations–other than Wired–having any ability to fact check whether or not what he’s saying is true.

Anyway, there’s plenty more to check out that can’t be easily reduced to a graph or two. Worth reading the piece in its entirety.

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