Is the WikiLeaks arrest a psychological operation?

[girl gone mad]

This Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks/index.html">article in Salon has me thinking that's the most plausible explanation:

(snip)

Reviewing everything that is known ultimately raises more questions than it answers. Below is my perspective on what happened here. But there is one fact to keep in mind at the outset. In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a classified report (ironically leaked to and published by WikiLeaks) which -- as the NYT put it -- placed WikiLeaks on "the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States." That Report discussed ways to destroy WikiLeaks' reputation and efficacy, and emphasized creating the impression that leaking to it is unsafe:

In other words, exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide "manhunt" for its Editor-in-Chief. Even though WikiLeaks did absolutely nothing (either in this case or ever) to compromise the identity of its source, isn't it easy to see how these screeching media reports -- WikiLeaks source arrested; worldwide manhunt for WikiLeaks; major national security threat -- would cause a prospective leaker to WikiLeaks to think twice, at least: exactly as the Pentagon Report sought to achieve? And that Pentagon Report was from 2008, before the Apache Video was released; imagine how intensified is the Pentagon's desire to destroy WikiLeaks now. Combine that with what both the NYT and Newsweek recently realized is the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, and one can't overstate the caution that's merited here before assuming one knows what happened.

(snip)

Lamo, however, told me that Manning found him not from the Wired article -- which Manning never mentioned reading -- but from searching the word "WikiLeaks" on Twitter, which led him to a tweet Lamo had written that included the word "WikiLeaks." Even if Manning had really found Lamo through a Twitter search for "WikiLeaks," Lamo could not explain why Manning focused on him, rather than the thousands of other people who have also mentioned the word "WikiLeaks" on Twitter, including countless people who have done so by expressing support for WikiLeaks.

Although none of the Wired articles ever mention this, the first Lamo-Manning communications were not actually via chat. Instead, Lamo told me that Manning first sent him a series of encrypted emails which Lamo was unable to decrypt because Manning "encrypted it to an outdated PGP key of mine" . After receiving this first set of emails, Lamo says he replied -- despite not knowing who these emails were from or what they were about -- by inviting the emailer to chat with him on AOL IM, and provided his screen name to do so. Lamo says that Manning thereafter sent him additional emails encrypted to his current PGP key, but that Lamo never bothered to decrypt them. Instead, Lamo claims he turned over all those Manning emails to the FBI without ever reading a single one of them. Thus, the actual initial communications between Manning and Lamo -- what preceded and led to their chat -- are completely unknown. Lamo refuses to release the emails or chats other than the small chat snippets published by Wired.

Using the chat logs between Lamo and Manning -- which Lamo provided to Poulsen -- the Wired writers speculated that the Army Private trusted Lamo because he "sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker." Poulsen and Zetter write that Manning confessed to being the leaker of the Apache attack video "very quickly in the exchange," and then proceeded to boast that, in addition, "he leaked a quarter-million classified embassy cables" to WikiLeaks. Very shortly after the first chat, Lamo notified federal agents of what Manning told him, proceeded to speak to Manning for the next several days while consulting with federal agents, and then learned that Manning was detained in Iraq.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks/index.html">more. . .

[Scuba]

1. Hiding our crimes....

...doesn't help the US. When the US does wrong - and I'm not condemning anyone here based on a 'to be released' tape that I haven't heard - shining a light on the crime and prosecuting the offender is the best course of action, in every case.

Ford shouldn't have pardoned Nixon.

Obama should prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, et al., for their MANY crimes

Any serviceman or woman who commits a crime should be punished. Any commander who tolerates criminal actions by his/her troops should be punished. That said, putting our servicemen and women in harms way for an unjust war is a crime too. Many a crime has been committed by servicemen who were just too damned scared to act rationally.

Any contractor who commits fraud or other illegal activities should be punished.


Otherwise, we're just encouraging more abuse.

Finally, whistleblowers should be protected, not prosecuted. Exposing a crime committed by the US does NOT put the US in danger. Quite the opposite.