IT Publisher WIRED withholds full transcripts of Bradley Manning and Lamo Chat Logs - International Mass Media

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!

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.

© 2010 WebMediaBrands Inc

By his own admission, Wired Magazine Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen is withholding a large majority of chat logs that could prove WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange did or did not conspire with the US soldier accused of leaking a cache of diplomatic cables.

In his Monday column, Salon's Glenn Greenwald called Poulsen's actions "one of the worst journalistic disgraces of the year."

In June, Poulsen published what he said was about 25 percent of the conversations between Pfc. Bradley Manning and ex-hacker Adrian Lamo.

According to Lamo, Manning confided in him after providing WikiLeaks with more than 260,000 State Department cables. It was Lamo that eventually turned in Manning to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In an interview with The New York Times, Lamo claimed that Manning told him Assange had personally provided him with a dedicated server for uploading the documents. But those claims are not backed up by the portions of the chat logs published by Wired.

"Whether Manning actually said these things to Lamo could be verified in one minute by 'journalist' Kevin Poulsen," Greenwald noted. "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."

"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," he wrote.

To complicate matters, Lamo admitted in a July interview with the Times that he had no direct evidence that anyone from WikiLeaks had assisted him.

"Asked if Private Manning had ever told him of any WikiLeaks assistance, Mr. Lamo replied, 'Not explicitly, no,' the Times's Elisabeth Bumiller wrote.

"There is one person who could immediately confirm whether Lamo's claims are true: Kevin Poulsen of Wired," Greenwald observed. "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," he wrote.

The US Department of Justice has said it was investigating whether it could charge Assange with espionage or conspiracy, but no formal charges have yet been issued.

Poulsen had not responded to a request for comment at time of this story's publication. Wired's Evan Hansen tweeted Monday that Poulsen was on vacation and would respond Tuesday to Greenwald's criticism.

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