US Intell planned to destroy Wikileaks

[Peter Presland]

Re my last post. The comments section of the link in Assanges (alleged) email is worthy of study too - even if the email itself does turn out to be part and parcel of a COINTELPRO scam. This exerpt is striking:

defendwikileaks • #16 • 8:34 PM Sunday, Jun 13, 2010 • Reply How sad it is to see the climate in the United States today -- the majority is still lock-step in line with the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about so many decades ago. I want to make the following points:
1) First and foremost, there needs to be more discussion about the potentially enormous ethics violations that seem to have been committed at Wired Magazine. Everyone knows Kevin Poulsen & Adrian Lamo are friends. It is obvious they worked their target, Bradley Manning, for days -- in co-operation with the FBI and US Army CID. This hearkens back to COINTELPRO tactics. How likely is it that Lamo worked entirely on his own with no involvement from Poulsen, who only found out about it all after-the-fact, in time to "break the story" for Wired? There is no disclosure provided in the original article and it is written as if Poulsen wasn't involved at all. Could it really be that, in pursuit of breaking a big story, Wired magazine staff helped set up a situation where the FBI/USACID got to use proxy interrogators, who misled a suspect into believing that he was only answering questions from someone he could trust, instead of federal/military law enforcement, without any Constitutional protections in place? This needs to be more critically examined.
2) Would Lamo have snitched out Daniel Ellsberg in 1970, hypothetically speaking? Based on the justifications he's publicly offered to date, it seems so. This isn't something to be admired. The US War Machine rolls on exactly because of mass media complicity, the lack of information about US militarism around the world and the witch-hunt persecution of everyone from the Dixie Chicks to Valerie Plame to Cindy Sheehan to the millions of Americans who protested this war BEFORE it began and were subjected to scrutiny, harassment and intimidation by law enforcement (an under-reported story). In the 70s, the persecution of Daniel Ellsberg only caused support for him to increase. Somehow, it seems like the same will not be true for Bradley Manning unless thoughtful & concerned citizens do something about it.
3) We don't know for sure but Lamo claims that PFC Manning finally decided to be a whistleblower when he was ordered to process the arrest of Iraqi civilians who did nothing more than publish an academic paper about corruption in the Iraqi Provisional Government. He leaked the Collateral Murder video which was so shocking to so many because of how little the US public understands about the US war machine. And, he allegedly leaked diplomatic reports that demonstrate a pattern of lies and, we can only imagine what else. Possibly the details of US support for Middle East dictatorships, Israeli occupation and settlement expansion, etc. In other words, business as usual -- just like the US supported dictatorships in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Iran and anywhere that corporate interests demanded market access at gunpoint. Leaking this information is the act of a hero. If only US support of Operation Condor in Latin America had been leaked in 1972 instead of years later.
4) Now, instead of publishing important leaks and building on the momentum from the Collateral Murder release, key Wikileaks volunteer Julian Assange is on the run from the retaliatory actions of the US State Department, who have a menu of options made possible by years of "extraordinary rendition" kidnappings. Would we even KNOW if US operatives have gotten hold of Assange? Are we supposed to be proud of this global gestapo that was put in place by the Bush Administration and continued by the Obama presidency? Is Lamo proud to have made it all possible?
5) I must reiterate what others have said here: the assertion that "innocent lives are risked" by the release of what was leaked so far is a falsehood. And, the only reason to even think that PFC Manning was "risking lives" is the unconfirmed innuendo made public by Adrian Lamo, who has every reason in the world to justify the breach of trust he committed by willfully initiating a clandestine interrogation of PFC Manning. Certainly, the Collateral Murder video doesn't put any lives at risk. The analysis by Ellsberg on this is probably the most accurate: these alleged leaks would greatly embarrass the US Government by forcing the media to report on even further evidence that supports allegations made by opponents of US foreign policy. That doesn't RISK lives -- it does the exact opposite.
Daniel Ellsberg is a hero. PFC Manning came to a realization about US foreign policy; it's well-documented that thousands of enlisted soldiers have had the same realization after being on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. The difference is that PFC Manning was willing & able to actually DO something about it, beyond participating in a Winter Soldier event or going to protests. To that extent, PFC Manning is also a hero.
Wired Magazine, Kevin Poulsen and Adrian Lamo should be viewed with skepticism, as they are potentially the proud participants in one of the most scandalous breaches of journalist ethics in recent history. Adrian Lamo is now engaged in a public campaign to discredit PFC Manning as a "dangerous spy" and Poulsen continues to report on the story for Wired.
This is an extremely important case and I urge all citizens to do what they can to support PFC Manning and any other soldier who disobeys orders/regulations to expose war crimes and/or the truth about US foreign policy.
"I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism [...] Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. [...] I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. [...] Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
- Major General Smedley Butler, US Marine Corps, 1933

[Peter Presland]

More from that 'WikiLeaks Insider' sent to and posted on Cryptome and, like the others, plausible:

A send via PGPboard, 15 June 2010:
Inside WIKILEAKS An UPDATE
---------------------------------------------------
What most people don't realise is just how WIKILEAKS internal structure resembles an absolute dictatorship. Forget the invisible nine so called board members composed of technologists and media representatives, they do not exist, and they never have.
Forget about Daniel Schmitt, one of WIKILEAKS public faces, he is of absolutely no consequence and has no influence, editorial or otherwise within WIKILEAKS.
WIKILEAKS is, and always has been the brain child of Julian Assange, a convicted ex hacker, who's original concept was to attach a value to leaked information, and sell it to the highest bidder. From an initial base of approximately eight high value sponsors, and an Internet community ready to buy into Assange's snake oil of protecting the whistleblower by guaranteeing anonymity based upon technological means and legal support if the smelly stuff really hit the fan..!!
WIKILEAKS is essentially a one man band, with a core of unpaid volunteers, who provide all of the grunt work and server space for WIKILEAKS. There is no huge bill for server space. Assange fronts for an organisational infrastructure donated gratis by others. So you may justifiably ask just how much does it cost to run WIKILEAKS?
The basic expenses incurred by WIKILEAKS such as minor running expenses, paying for the server space that is not donated, and communications costs is approximately $55K per year. This figure excludes Assange's so called promotional expenses, which include international travel in business class, hotel accommodation, taxis, clothing, and personal expenses. For FY 2009 and YTD, these are estimated to be in excess of $225,000.
There are no internal accounts at WIKILEAKS accurately detailing expenditure of monies received from donors, and Assange has no visible income streams.
Unfortunately for Assange, his involvement with whistleblower Manning, was originally based upon trying to sell US government leaked information to the Media is not working, and has seriously back-fired. The link between Manning and Assange is strong. So strong in fact, that Assange has been desperately trying to erase all evidence of email trails on WIKILEAKS servers.
Assange's latest ploy is a variation on his usual, "They're out to get me" routine. He is now using the ploy that WIKILEAKS needs a cash infusion to meet the expenses incurred in flying a legal team out to Kuwait to defend Manning. I'm sorry to say that this is an absolute misrepresentation. Assange won't even speak or communicate directly with Manning. WIKILEAKS cannot afford the high level team that would be required to defend Manning. Currently WIKILEAKS have received no pro bono offers.
Again Assange is relying upon the Internet community to stump up the cash, with no clear audit trail of disbursements and expenditure
The philosophy behind WIKILEAKS is good, unfortunately Assange has run out of goodwill from WIKILEAKS original contributors.
ASSANGE IS A LIABILITY TO WIKILEAKS. IF WIKILEAKS IS TO SURVIVE ASSANGE MUST GO. AND GO NOW..!!
Wikileaks Insider

[Magda Hassan]

So, who are the papers that Julian is supposed to have hawked all these documents to? What do they have to say on the matter? Any one from the media asking if they've been approached? I hear nothing.
Why wouldn't any of the MSM run with what Assange is offering on a platter? Even for a few grand. They've paid much more for much less in the past. (Howard Hughes and Hitler 'diaries' for a start)

[Ed Jewett]

WikiLeaks Founder Has Massacre Video

by Philip Shenon

Julian Assange, who the Feds fear may release State Dept. secrets, denies having them—but he’s readying video of a deadly U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan. After several days underground, the founder of the secretive website WikiLeaks has gone public to disclose that he is preparing to release a classified Pentagon video of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan last year that left as many as 140 civilians dead, most of them children and teenagers.
In an email obtained by The Daily Beast that was sent to WikiLeaks supporters in the United States Tuesday, Julian Assange, the website’s Australian-born founder, also defends a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist who is now under arrest in Kuwait on charges that he leaked classified Pentagon combat videos, as well as 260,000 State Department cables, to WikiLeaks.

“Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s [sic] engaging in abusive actions all over the world,” Assange said in an email. “We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true.”

American officials have said they are eager to determine the whereabouts of Assange, who canceled an appearance last Friday in Las Vegas, to discourage him from releasing any more classified information on his website, which is nominally based in Sweden and promotes itself as a global resource for whistleblowers. As recently as two weeks ago, Assange, who first gained global notoriety as a computer hacker, was in his native Australia.
In April, his website posted a copy of a classified Pentagon video of a 2007 American helicopter attack in Baghdad in which a dozen people were killed; that video is also believed to have been leaked by the Army intelligence analyst, Specialist Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland.
While denying again that WikiLeaks has the State Department cables, Assange acknowledges in the email today that he is in custody of the May 2009 video that shows the airstrike on the Afghan village of Garani, believed to be the most lethal combat strike in Afghanistan—in terms of civilian deaths—since the United States invaded the country in 2001. Assange writes that “we are still working on” preparations for release of the video of “the Garani massacre.”
The State Department and Pentagon did not immediately comment on Assange’s email message.
American officials have acknowledged in the past that they are concerned about the release of the Garani video, fearing that it could undermine public support for the American military campaign in Afghanistan both in that country and in the United States. Pentagon officials were outraged by WikiLeaks’ release of the Baghdad video this spring.
State Department officials are especially alarmed by the potential that Assange might post the huge library of classified department memos that Manning is reported to have bragged of providing to WikiLeaks earlier this year. The department has confirmed that it is conducting a forensic examination of Manning’s computer equipment for evidence of what he may have downloaded.
In the email, Assange does not confirm any relationship between the website and Manning, describing him as “one of our alleged sources.”
But he suggests that Manning is being treated unfairly—“detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held” without trial.
“Manning is alleged to have acted according to his conscience and leaked to us the Collateral Murder video and the video of a massacre that took place in Afghanistan last year at Garani,” Assange continues.
“Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s [sic] engaging in abusive actions all over the world. We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true and we do have a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by the United States government.” Assange does not reveal exactly what that other material might be.
American officials are treating Assange’s claim that he does not have the State Department emails with skepticism, suggesting that he is playing word games—that while he may not have exactly 260,000 cables, he has a large number of them.
Assange seems to enjoying taunting the United States government and news organizations with information that is not always accurate. Last Friday, WikiLeaks—which tends to communicate with the outside world through Twitter messages–created a flurry when it disclosed via tweet that Assange was scheduled to appear that afternoon at a journalists’ conference in Las Vegas. The Twitter notice failed to mention that Assange had canceled his appearance several days earlier because of unspecified security concerns.
The arrest of Manning became public last week after Wired magazine disclosed that Manning had been turned in to authorities by another former computer hacker, Adrian Lamo, who had been contacted by Manning for counsel. Much of the evidence against Manning is contained in an Internet chat log that Lamo has already turned over to authorities.
In an interview with The Daily Beast on Monday, Lamo said that he had been interviewed for nearly 12 hours this weekend by investigators from the Defense Department, the State Department, and the FBI, as formal criminal charges are being prepared for Manning. Lamo said he was motivated to turn in Manning out of fear that the classified information he had provided to WikiLeaks could put lives in danger—within the United States government and elsewhere.
Lamo said he is convinced that Manning did have access to highly classified State Department cables, and that Manning’s boast of having stolen 260,000 cables sounds truthful.
In his email, Assange asks supporters for money, citing “an enforced lack of resources” for the website. “Please donate and tell the world you have done so,” he writes. “Encourage all your friends to follow the example you set, after all, courage is contagious.”
Philip Shenon, a former investigative reporter at The New York Times, is the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s...mainpromo1


Related:



• Philip Shenon: Leaker May Face Espionage Charges

• Philip Shenon: Pentagon Manhunt

• Philip Shenon: The State Department’s Worst Nightmare

• Sam Bungey: The Man Behind WikiLeaks

[Ed Jewett]

Wikileaks Soldier Reveals Orders for "360 Rotational Fire" Against Civilians in Iraq

By Ralph Lopez

June 17, 2010 "OpEd" -- Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers seen in the now-famous Wikileaks video in which two American Apache helicopters fire upon a relaxed, unhurried gaggle of men in Baghdad, has stated in an interview with World Socialist Website that he witnessed numerous times the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Iraq after IED attacks. McCord is on of the soldiers seen helping two wounded children after the attack. He has stepped forward with open opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and written a letter of apology for his part in the incident to the mother of the children, who has accepted his apology. The mother's husband was killed in the attack and found with his body shielding that of one of his children.McCord said to reporter Bill Van Auken:

"we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure].He goes, "If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherf*cker on the street." Myself and Josh and a lot of other soldiers were just sitting there looking at each other like, "Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?" And you couldn't just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make your life hell in Iraq. So like with myself, I would shoot up into the roof of a building instead of down on the ground toward civilians. But I've seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them."

The deliberate killing of civilians is a war crime (Nanking 1937, Hankow 1938, German Invasion of Poland 1939.) McCord is one of a growing number of soldiers and support groups who have renounced their actions in Iraq. He said:

"I was the gung-ho soldier. I thought I was going over there to do the greater good. I thought my job over there was to protect the Iraqi people and that this was a job with honor and courage and duty.

I was hit by an IED within two weeks of my being in Iraq. And I didn't understand why people were throwing rocks at us, why I was being shot at and why we're being blown up, when I have it in my head that I was here to help these people."

McCord says the scenes captured in the Wikileaks video are "an every-day occurrence in Iraq."
McCord says that when he found the two children wounded in the van, another soldier began to vomit and ran off. Then he recounts:

"That's when I saw the boy move with what appeared to be a labored breath. So I stated screaming, "The boy's alive." I grabbed him and cradled him in my arms and kept telling him, "Don't die, don't die." He opened his eyes, looked up at me. I told him, "It's OK, I have you." His eyes rolled back into his head, and I kept telling him, "It's OK, I've got you." I ran up to the Bradley and placed him inside. My platoon leader was standing there at the time, and he yelled at me for doing what I did. He told me to "stop worrying about these motherfucking kids and start worrying about pulling security." So after that I went up and pulled security on a rooftop.

McCord says about his mental state afterwards:

"I went to see a staff sergeant who was in my chain of command and told him I needed to see mental health about what was going on in my head. He told me to "quit being a pussy" and to "suck it up and be a soldier." He told me that if I wanted to go to mental health, there would be repercussions, one of them being labeled a "malingerer," which is actually a crime in the US Army."

McCord says the greater story is being overlooked, and that rather than blame individual soldiers, the Army itself should be examined, and its system of training soldiers.

"Instead of people being upset at a few soldiers in a video who were doing what they were trained to do, I think people need to be more upset at the system that trained these soldiers. They are doing exactly what the Army wants them to do."

McCord echoes Major General Smedley D. Butler, the double Medal of Honor winner who resigned his commission and in 1935 became a critic of the nations wars, traveling the country with his book and famous speech "War is a Racket." McCord said in the interview:

"I am not part of any party. Was I hopeful? Yes. Was I surprised that we are still there? No. I'm not surprised at all. There's something else lying underneath there. It's not Republican or Democrat; it's money. There's something else lying underneath it where Republicans and Democrats together want to keep us in Iraq and Afghanistan."

McCord talks about the ongoing effects of war:

"I still live with this every day. When I close my eyes I see what happened that day and many other days like a slide show in my head. The smells come back to me. The cries of the children come back to me. The people driving this big war machine, they don't have to deal with this. They live in their $36 million mansions and sleep well at night."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e25759.htm

[Magda Hassan]

The Strange and Consequential Case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks

By Glenn Greenwald

June 18, 2010 "Salon" -- On June 6, Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he "boasted" in an Internet chat -- with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo -- of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and "hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records." Lamo, who holds himself out as a "journalist" and told Manning he was one, acted instead as government informant, notifying federal authorities of what Manning allegedly told him, and then proceeded to question Manning for days as he met with federal agents, leading to Manning's detention. On June 10, former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, writing in The Daily Beast, gave voice to anonymous "American officials" to announce that "Pentagon investigators" were trying "to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks [Julian Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security." Some news outlets used that report to declare that there was a "Pentagon manhunt" underway for Assange -- as though he's some sort of dangerous fugitive.
From the start, this whole story was quite strange for numerous reasons. In an attempt to obtain greater clarity about what really happened here, I've spent the last week reviewing everything I could related to this case and speaking with several of the key participants (including Lamo, with whom I had a one-hour interview last night that can be heard on the recorder below, and Poulsen, with whom I had a lengthy email exchange, which is published in full here). A definitive understanding of what really happened is virtually impossible to acquire, largely because almost everything that is known comes from a single, extremely untrustworthy source: Lamo himself. Compounding that is the fact that most of what came from Lamo has been filtered through a single journalist -- Poulsen -- who has a long and strange history with Lamo, who continues to possess but not disclose key evidence, and who has been only marginally transparent about what actually happened here (I say that as someone who admires Poulsen's work as Editor of Wired's Threat Level blog).
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 (click image to enlarge):

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.
* * * * *
Adrian Lamo and Kevin Poulsen have a long and strange history together. Both were convicted of felonies relating to computer hacking: Poulsen in 1994 (when he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, ironically because a friend turned government informant on him), and Lamo in 2004 for hacking into The New York Times. When the U.S. Government was investigating Lamo in 2003, they subpoenaed news agencies for any documents reflecting conversations not only with Lamo, but also with Poulsen. That's because Lamo typically sought media publicity after his hacking adventures, and almost always used Poulsen to provide that publicity.
Despite being convicted of serious hacking felonies, Poulsen was allowed by the U.S. Government to become a journalist covering the hacking world for Security Focus News. Back in 2002, Information Week described the strange Lamo-Poulsen relationship this way: "To publicize his work, [Lamo] often tapped ex-hacker-turned-journalist Kevin Poulsen as his go-between: Poulsen contacts the hacked company, alerts it to the break-in, offers Lamo's cooperation, then reports the hack on the SecurityFocus Online Web site, where he's a news editor." When Lamo hacked into the NYT, it was Poulsen who notified the newspaper's executives on Lamo's behalf, and then wrote about it afterward. Poulsen told me that the above picture was taken at a lunch the two of them had together with convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick back in 2001. When I asked Poulsen if he considers Lamo his friend, he would respond only by saying: "He's a subject and a source."
Actually, over the years, Poulsen has served more or less as Lamo's personal media voice. Back in 2000, Poulsen would quote Lamo as an expert source on hacking. That same year, Poulsen -- armed with exclusive, inside information from Lamo -- began writing about Lamo's various hacking adventures. After Lamo's conviction, Poulsen wrote about his post-detention battles with law enforcement and a leaked documentary featuring Lamo. As detailed below, Lamo is notorious in the world of hacking for being a low-level, inconsequential hacker with an insatiable need for self-promotion and media attention, and for the past decade, it has been Poulsen who satisfies that need.
On May 20 -- a month ago -- Poulsen, out of nowhere, despite Lamo's not having been in the news for years, wrote a long, detailed Wired article describing serious mental health problems Lamo was experiencing. The story Poulsen wrote goes as follows: after Lamo's backpack containing pharmaceutical products was stolen sometime in April (Lamo claims they were prescribed anti-depressants), Lamo called the police, who concluded that he was experiencing such acute psychiatric distress that they had him involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for three days. That 72-hour "involuntary psychiatric hold" was then extended by a court for six more days, after which he was released to his parents' home. Lamo claimed he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a somewhat fashionable autism diagnosis which many stars in the computer world have also claimed. In that article, Poulsen also summarized Lamo's extensive hacking history. Lamo told me that, while he was in the mental hospital, he called Poulsen to tell him what happened, and then told Poulsen he could write about it for a Wired article. So starved was Lamo for some media attention that he was willing to encourage Poulsen to write about his claimed psychiatric problems if it meant an article in Wired that mentioned his name.
It was just over two weeks after writing about Lamo's Asperger's, depression and hacking history that Poulsen, along with Kim Zetter, reported that PFC Manning had been detained, after, they said, he had "contacted former hacker Adrian Lamo late last month over instant messenger and e-mail." Lamo told me that Manning first emailed him on May 20 and, according to highly edited chat logs released by Wired, had his first online chat with Manning on May 21; in other words, Manning first contacted Lamo the very day that Poulsen's Wired article on Lamo's involuntary commitment appeared (the Wired article is time-stamped 5:46 p.m. on May 20).
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" [PGP is an encryption program]. 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.
* * * * *
Many of the bizarre aspects of this case, at least as conveyed by Lamo and Wired, are self-evident. Why would a 22-year-old Private in Iraq have unfettered access to 250,000 pages of diplomatic cables so sensitive that they "could do serious damage to national security?" Why would he contact a total stranger, whom he randomly found from a Twitter search, in order to "quickly" confess to acts that he knew could send him to prison for a very long time, perhaps his whole life? And why would he choose to confess over the Internet, in an unsecured, international AOL IM chat, given the obvious ease with which that could be preserved, intercepted or otherwise surveilled? These are the actions of someone either unbelievably reckless or actually eager to be caught.
All that said, this series of events isn't completely implausible. It's possible that a 22-year-old who engaged in these kinds of significant leaks, sitting in isolation in Iraq, would have a desire to unburden himself by confessing to a stranger; the psychological compulsion to confess is not uncommon (see Crime and Punishment), nor is the desire to boast of such acts. It's possible that he would have expected someone with Lamo's hacking and "journalist" background to be sympathetic to what he did and/or to feel compelled as a journalist not to run to the Government and disclose what he learns from a source. Still, the apparent ease with which Manning quickly spilled his guts in such painstaking detail over an Internet chat concerning such serious crimes -- and then proceeded to respond to Lamo's very specific and probing interrogations over days without ever once worrying that he could not trust Lamo -- is strange in the extreme.
If one assumes that this happened as the Wired version claims, what Lamo did here is despicable. He holds himself out as an "award-winning journalist" and told Manning he was one ("I did tell him that I worked as a journalist," Lamo said). Indeed, 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.
Worse, Lamo breached his own confidentiality commitments and turned informant without having the slightest indication that Manning had done anything to harm national security. Indeed, Lamo acknowledged to me that he was incapable of identifying a single fact contained in any documents leaked by Manning that would harm national security. And Manning's capacity to leak in the future was likely non-existent given that he told Lamo right away that he was "pending discharge" for "adjustment disorder," and no longer had access to any documents (Lamo: "Why does your job afford you access?" - Manning: "because i have a workstation . . . *had*").
If one believes what the chat logs claim, Manning certainly thought he was a whistle-blower acting with the noblest of motives, and probably was exactly that. And if he really is the leaker of the Apache helicopter attack video -- a video which sparked very rare and much-needed realization about the visceral truth of what our wars entail -- then he's a national hero similar to Daniel Ellsberg. Indeed, Ellsberg himself said the very same thing about Manning just yesterday on Democracy Now:

The fact is that what Lamo reports Manning is saying has a very familiar and persuasive ring to me. He reports Manning as having said that what he had read and what he was passing on were horrible -- evidence of horrible machinations by the US backdoor dealings throughout the Middle East and, in many cases, as he put it, almost crimes. And let me guess that -- he’s not a lawyer, but I'll guess that what looked to him like crimes are crimes, that he was putting out. We know that he put out, or at least it's very plausible that he put out, the videos that he claimed to Lamo. And that's enough to go on to get them interested in pursuing both him and the other.
And so, what it comes down, to me, is -- and I say throwing caution to the winds here -- is that what I've heard so far of Assange and Manning -- and I haven't met either of them -- is that they are two new heroes of mine.

To see why that's so, just review some of what Manning said about why he chose to leak, as reflected in the edited chat logs published by Wired:

Lamo: what's your endgame plan, then?. . .
Manning: well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] - and god knows what happens now - hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . - i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

Manning described the incident which first made him seriously question the U.S. war in Iraq: when he was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi "insurgents" who had been detained for distributing "insurgent" literature which, when he had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than "a scholarly critique against PM Maliki":

i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…
i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

And he explained why the thought of selling this classified information he was leaking to a foreign power never entered his mind:

Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious- i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?
Lamo: why didn’t you?
Manning: because it's public data
Lamo: i mean, the cables
Manning: it belongs in the public domain -information should be free - it belongs in the public domain - because another state would just take advantage of the information… try and get some edge - if its out in the open… it should be a public good.

That's a whistleblower in the purest form: discovering government secrets of criminal and corrupt acts and then publicizing them to the world not for profit, not to give other nations an edge, but to trigger "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms." That's the person that Adrian Lamo informed on and risked sending to prison for an extremely long time.
Making Lamo's conduct even worse is that it appears he reported Manning for no reason other than a desire for some trivial media attention. Jacob Appelbaum, a well-known hacker of the Tor Project who has known Lamo for years, said that Lamo's "only concern" has always been "getting publicity for Adrian." Indeed, Lamo's modus operandi as a hacker was primitive hacking aimed at high-profile companies that he'd then use Poulsen to publicize. As Appelbaum put it: "if this situation really fell into Adrian's lap, his first and only thought would have been: how can I turn this to my advantage? He basically destroyed a 22-year-old's life in order to get his name mentioned on the Wired.com blog." [There are efforts underway to help secure very competent legal counsel for Manning, including a legal defense fund for him; assuming the facts are what the current narrative suggests, I intend to post more about that shortly].
None of Lamo's claims that he turned informant out of some grave concern for "national security" and "the lives of his fellow citizens" make any sense. Indeed, Lamo several months ago contributed $30 to WikiLeaks, which he's use to tout his support for whistle-blowing, and told me has has long considered himself on "the far left." Yet in the public statements he's made about what he did to Manning, he's incoherently invoked a slew of trite, right-wing justifications, denouncing Manning as a "traitor" and a "spy," while darkly insinuating that Manning provided classified information to a so-called "foreign national," meaning WikiLeaks' Assange. Lamo told me that any embarrassment to the U.S. Government could cause a loss of American lives, and that he believes anyone who breaks the law with leaks should be prosecuted. Yet he also claims to support WikiLeaks, which is run by that very same "foreign national" and which exists to enable illegal leaks.
Then there's the fact that, just in the last two weeks, Lamo's statements have been filled with countless contradictions of the type that suggests deliberate lying. Lamo told me, for instance, that Manning first contacted him with a series of emails, but told Yahoo! News that "Manning contacted him via AOL Instant Messenger 'out of the blue' on May 21." Lamo told Yahoo! "that he spelled out very clearly in his chats with Manning that he wasn't ... acting as a journalist," that it "was clear to Manning that he had taken his journalist hat off for the purposes of their conversation," and that "Manning refused" a confidentiality offer, but last night he said to me that he told Manning their conversations would have journalist-source confidentiality and that Manning never refused or rejected that. Just listen to the interview Lamo gave to me and make your own judgment about his veracity.
* * * * *
And what about Wired's role in all of this? Both WikiLeaks as well as various Internet commentators have suggested that Poulsen violated journalistic ethical rules by being complicit with Lamo in informing on Manning. I don't see any evidence for that. This is what Poulsen told me when I asked him about whether he participated in Lamo's informing on Manning:

Adrian reached out to me in late May to tell me a story about how he'd been contacted by an Army intelligence analyst who'd admitted to leaking 260,000 State Department diplomatic cables to a "foreign national." Adrian told me he had already reported the matter to the government, and was meeting the Army and FBI in person to pass on chat logs. He declined to provide independently verifiable details, or identify the intelligence analyst by name, because he said he considered the matter sensitive.
Several days passed before he was willing to give me the chat logs under embargo. I got them on May 27. That's when I learned Manning's name and the full details of his claims to Adrian. . . . If you're asking if I informed on Manning or anyone else, the answer is no, and the question is insulting.

At the time when Lamo was conspiring with federal agents to induce Manning into making incriminating statements, Poulsen, by his own account, was aware that this was taking place, but there's no indication he participated in any way with Lamo. What is true, though, is that Lamo gave Wired the full, unedited version of his chat logs with Manning, but Wired published only extremely edited samplings of it. This is what Poulsen told me when I asked if Lamo gave him all of the chat logs:

He did, but I don't think we'll be publishing more any time soon. The remainder is either Manning discussing personal matters that aren't clearly related to his arrest, or apparently sensitive government information that I'm not throwing up without vetting first.

This part of Wired's conduct deserves a lot more attention. First, in his interview with me, Lamo claimed that all sorts of things took place in the discussion between him and Manning that are (a) extremely relevant to what happened, (b) have nothing to do with Manning's personal issues or sensitive national security secrets, and yet © are nowhere to be found in the chat logs published by Wired. That means either that Lamo is lying about what was said or Wired is concealing highly relevant aspects of their discussions. Included among that is Manning's explanation about how he found Lamo and why he contacted him, Manning's alleged claim that his "intention was to cripple the United States' foreign relations for the foreseeable future," and discussions they had about the capacity in which they were speaking.
Second, one can't help but note the irony that two hackers-turned-journalists -- Poulsen and Lamo -- are now the self-anointed guardians of America's national security, the former concealing secrets he learned as a journalist on vague national security grounds and the latter turning informant by invoking the most extreme, right-wing platitudes about "traitors" and "spies" and decrees that his actions were necessary to "save American lives."
Third, Wired should either publish all of the chat logs, or be far more diligent about withholding only those parts which truly pertain only to Manning's private and personal matters and/or which would reveal national security secrets. Or they should have a respected third party review the parts they have concealed to determine if there is any justification for that. At least if one believes Lamo's claims, there are clearly relevant parts of those chats which Wired continues to conceal.
Given Poulsen's mutually beneficial and multi-layered relationship with Lamo, they have far more than a standard journalist-source relationship. None of Poulsen's articles about the highly controversial Lamo is ever even remotely critical of him, in any sense of the word. From the start, there were countless bizarre aspects to Lamo's story which Poulsen never examined or explored, at least not when writing about any of this. I see no reason to doubt Poulsen's integrity or good faith. Still, in light of the magnitude of this story on several levels and his long relationship with Lamo, Kevin Poulsen should not be single-handedly deciding what the public is and isn't permitted to know about the Lamo-Manning interaction.
* * * * *
The reason this story matters so much -- aside from the fact that it may be the case that a truly heroic, 22-year-old whistle-blower is facing an extremely lengthy prison term -- is the unique and incomparably valuable function WikiLeaks is fulfilling. Even before the Apache helicopter leak, I wrote at length about why they are so vital, and won't repeat all of that here. Suffice to say, there are very few entities, if there are any, which pose as much of a threat to the ability of governmental and corporate elites to shroud their corrupt conduct behind an extreme wall of secrecy.
What makes WikiLeaks particularly threatening to the most powerful factions is that they cannot control it. Even when whistle-blowers in the past have leaked serious corruption and criminal conduct to perfectly good journalists at the nation's largest corporate media outlets, government officials could control how the information was disclosed. When the NYT learned in 2004 that the Bush administration was illegally eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, George Bush summoned the paper's Publisher and Executive Editor to the Oval Office, demanded that the story not be published, and the paper complied by sitting on it for a full year until after Bush was safely re-elected. When The Washington Post's Dana Priest learned that the CIA was maintaining a network of secret prisons -- black sites -- she honored the request of "senior U.S. officials" not to identify the countries where those prisons were located so as to not disrupt the U.S.'s ability to continue to use those countries for such projects.
Both WikiLeaks and Manning have stated that The Washington Post's David Finkel, when writing his book on Iraq two years ago, had possession of the Apache helicopter video but never released it to the public (Manning: "Washington Post sat on the video … David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here"). As Columbia Journalism Review reported, both the Post and Finkel were quite coy and evasive in addressing that claim, pointedly insisting that "the Post" had never possessed that video while refusing to say whether Finkel did. The same thing happened when, on the same day, I called Finkel to ask him about WikiLeaks' claim that they possessed but never released that video. He very curtly told me, using careful legalistic language, that "the Post never had the video," but before I could ask whether Finkel himself did, he abruptly told me he couldn't talk anymore and had nothing else to say, and then hung up on me. My inquiries to the Post were met with a pro forma response that "The Washington Post did not have the video, nor did we sit on anything," but these Journalistic Crusaders for Transparency refused to answer my question as to whether Finkel himself did.
By stark contrast, WikiLeaks isn't interested in helping governments, militaries and corporations keep secrets. They're interested in the opposite: forcing transparency on institutions which conduct the vast, vast bulk of their substantive conduct in the dark. They're not susceptible to pressure from political and corporate officials; rather, they want to hold them accountable. That's what makes WikiLeaks so uniquely threatening to elite institutions, and anyone who doubts that should simply read the 2008 Pentagon Report discussing ways to destroy it, or review the Obama administration's unprecedented and rapidly escalating war on whistle-blowers generally.
Any rational person would have to acknowledge that government secrecy in rare cases is justifiable and that it's possible for leaks of legitimate secrets to result in serious harm. I'm not aware of a single instance where any leak from WikiLeaks has done so, but it's certainly possible that, at some point, it might. But right now, the scales are tipped so far in the other direction -- toward excessive, all-consuming secrecy -- that the far greater danger comes from allowing that to fester and grow even more. It's not even a close call. Any efforts to subvert that secrecy cult are commendable in the extreme, and nobody is doing that as effectively as WikiLeaks (and their value is not confined to leaking, as they just inspired a serious effort to turn Iceland into a worldwide haven for investigative journalism and anonymous whistle-blowers).
This Manning detention -- whether it was by design or just exploited opportunistically -- is being used to depict WikiLeaks as a serious national security threat and associations with it as dangerous and subversive. Just in the last week alone, several people have expressed to me fears that supporting or otherwise enabling WikiLeaks could subject them to liability or worse. There's no reason to believe that's true, but given the powers the U.S. Government claims -- lawless detentions, renditions, assassinations even of American citizens -- that's the climate of intimidation that has been created. This latest incident is clearly being used to impede WikiLeaks' vital function of checking powerful factions and imposing transparency, and for that reason alone, this is an extremely serious case that merits substantial scrutiny, along with genuine skepticism to understand what happened.
* * * * *
My one-hour discussion with Lamo last night can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorders below. It is in two segments (the first roughly 40 minutes, the second roughly 20) because Lamo requested at one point that we go off the record, which we did for 1 minute or so to discuss the parts of Manning's chat that Lamo claims are too personal to publish (Lamo spoke only in generalities about that and I learned nothing specific). The only other part that is edited out is the first two minutes or so of the discussion, before the interview begins, where Lamo for some reason insists that I respond to a Tweet of his before we begin, which I then did.

[Magda Hassan]

Click on the above link to listen to the podcast of the interview of Greenwald and Lamo

Part 1:

Part 2:


UPDATE: Four relevant items from today: (1) The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reports on Julian Assange's fear of being arrested by U.S. authorities, as well as what appears to be the imminent release by WikiLeaks of a video showing a horrendous U.S. air strike in Afghanistan that killed far more civilians than the U.S. military acknowledged; (2) After interviewing Poulsen, Columbia Journalism Review publishes a timeline reporting that, shortly before Lamo's scheduled May 27 meeting with FBI agents about Manning, Poulsen traveled on that date to Sacramento and "spent a few hours with Lamo"; (3) Judging by this June 10 article, The Washington Post obtained at least some of the Lamo-Manning chats, and quoted parts which Wired has not published -- proving that Wired is withholding more than just "personal issues" and national security secrets; and (4) Gawker's Adrian Chen has an excellent post demanding that Wired provide far more transparency regarding the parts of the Lamo-Manning chats they continue to conceal.

[Magda Hassan]

On June 6th, Wired.com published a report that military intelligence analyst Bradley Manning had been arrested for allegedly leaking the famous 2007 Apache helicopter attack video to Wikileaks. Now Wikileaks and others are questioning Wired's involvement in the story. The post on Wired's Threat Level blog was a great scoop and a thrilling read: It detailed how 22 year-old intelligence specialist Bradley Manning contacted a former hacker named Adrian Lamo via IM—"he sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker"—to confess that he was the one who leaked the Apache video and a quarter million sensitive State Department cables to whistleblowing website Wikileaks. After chatting with Manning for a few days, Lamo turned him in. He told Wired: ""I wouldn't have done this if lives weren't in danger."
But Lamo's claim to be motivated by concerns for national security appears to be undermined by a long history of desperate attention-seeking, as detailed today by Salon's Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald writes that "Lamo is notorious in the world of hacking for being a low-level, inconsequential hacker with an insatiable need for self-promotion and media attention". And apparently, Lamo's need for attention has been fulfilled for years by Wired Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen—one of the two authors of the Manning post. Poulsen, himself a former hacker, has written a slew of fawning articles on Lamo's hacking exploits, essentially becoming Lamo's de facto PR guy, according to Greenwald.
Here's how it worked in the Manning case: Manning first contacted Lamo by IM on May 21st. On May 24th, Lamo called Poulsen to let him know about the potential story, but witheld details. Lamo began working with the feds to nab Manning. On May 26th, Manning was arrested. The day after Lamo learned of Manning's arrest, he told the whole story to Poulsen, who drove miles to pick up a zip drive with the chat logs, according to the CJR. Poulsen wrote the post and published June 6th.
We see here how Lamo functions essentially as an informal stringer for Poulsen. Lamo told the BBC that he had even told Manning he was a journalist. That Lamo then turned on his source is a pretty blatant violation of journalistic ethics, but never mind; Poulsen gets his story and Lamo gets his name in the papers.
In typical hyperbolic fashion, Wikileaks has been Tweeting allegations that this means Wired was in collusion with Lamo and, thus, the US government. Really, what's going on doesn't differ much from any source-journalist relationship.
But Wired's role is indeed colored by Poulsen's strong relationship with Lamo—and the fact that Lamo turned Manning into the authorities. When hackers come to the media with, say, evidence of a massive iPad security flaw, they usually demand some sort of anonymity. Manning didn't have this option, since, technically he wasn't speaking with a journalist. But the fact that Lamo presumably intended from the beginning to dish to Poulsen complicates things.
The exact role of Wired in this—and the extent to which Lamo misled Manning to think he was a journalist—could presumably be answered by looking at the full chat logs Lamo gave Poulsen. But Poulsen told Greenwald that Wired didn't release the full transcript because it detailed "personal matters" or sensitive government information. Bullshit. Poulsen and Lamo have been working as an informal hacker-journalist unit for years. It's time to get some Wikileaks-style transparency on how it all works.
Send an email to Adrian Chen, the author of this post, at adrian@gawker.com.

http://gawker.com/5567362/wired-wikileak...st-complex

[Helen Reyes]

wikileak tweets point to an article hinting that new powers recently bestowed on pharaoh soetoro--the internet on/off switch--are really so he can kill wikileaks if need be.

in related news, iana says the internet will die in 435 days if nothing is done because DNS will be overloaded by new domains.

a convergence of interests?

pharaoh god-king soetoro is harried by leaks on all sides. instead of a plumbers' team a la Nixon, he thinks SWAT teams will save the day for God and Egypt. he is very mistaken.

i expect movement very soon after this kind of build-up of disinformation.

btw this is taking on the weird dimensions of a philip k. dick novel, with the combined forces of global natsec trying to track down and neutralise a lone truther. come to think of it, The Zap Gun by PKD did have a "private" intelligence agency working for the highest bidder, as I recall. Wiki says it has some off-the-wall stuff about New Orleans as well. I better reread it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zap_Gun

[Ed Jewett]

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange breaks cover but will avoid America

US desperate to ask hacker what he knows of classified messages about Iraq and Afghanistan wars

• Ian Traynor in Brussels
  
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 June 2010 20.14 BST
  

The elusive founder of WikiLeaks, who is at the centre of a potential US national security sensation, has surfaced from almost a month in hiding to tell the Guardian he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert.
Julian Assange, a renowned Australian hacker who founded the electronic whistleblowers' platform WikiLeaks, vanished when a young US intelligence analyst in Baghdad was arrested.
The analyst, Bradley Manning, had bragged he had sent 260,000 incendiary US state department cables on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.
The prospect of the cache of classified intelligence on the US conduct of the two wars being put online is a nightmare for Washington. The sensitivity of the information has generated media reports that Assange is the target of a US manhunt.
"[US] public statements have all been reasonable. But some statements made in private are a bit more questionable," Assange told the Guardian in Brussels. "Politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe … but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the US during this period."
Assange appeared in public in Brussels for the first time in almost a month to speak at a seminar on freedom of information at the European parliament.
He said: "We need support and protection. We have that. More is always helpful. But we believe that the situation is stable and under control. There's no need to be worried. There's a need always to be on the alert."
Manning is being held incommunicado by the US military in Kuwait after "confessing" to a Californian hacker on a chatline, declaring he wanted "people to see the truth".
He said he had collected 260,000 top secret US cables in Baghdad and sent them to WikiLeaks, whose server operates out of Sweden. Adrian Lamo, the California hacker he spoke to, handed the transcripts of the exchanges to the FBI.
Manning was promptly arrested in Baghdad at the end of last month and transferred to a US military detention unit in Kuwait. He has been held for more than three weeks without charge.
Assange said WikiLeaks had hired three US criminal lawyers to defend Manning but that they had been granted no access to him. Manning has instead been assigned US military counsel.
While WikiLeaks declined to confirm receipt of the material from Manning, it has already released a film of a US Apache helicopter attack on civilians in Baghdad.
It has also posted a confidential state department cable on negotiations in Reykjavik over Iceland's financial collapse and is preparing to disclose much more material, including film of a US attack that left scores of civilians dead in Afghanistan.
The material is believed to derive from Manning, although WikiLeaks does not reveal its sources and its operations are designed to mask the source of the files it receives.
Prominent US whistleblowers and lawyers have advised Assange to stay out of the US and to be ultra-careful about his travel and public appearances. "Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of [Assange] for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified state department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security," US web paper the Daily Beast reported 10 days ago.
"We'd like to know where he is – we'd like his co-operation in this," a US official was quoted as saying.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers – a top secret study about the Vietnam war – in 1973, spoke to the Daily Beast.
He said: "I would think that [Assange] is in some danger. Granted, I would think that his notoriety now would provide him some degree of protection."
Assange said: "Some fear for my life. I'm not one of them. We have to avoid some countries, avoid travel, until we know where the political arrow is pointing."
He added that WikiLeaks had been trying, "unsuccessfully so far", to contact Manning in Kuwait.
"Clearly, a young man is detained in very difficult circumstances with the allegation he is the whistleblower. We must do our best to obtain freedom for him."
Regarding his own predicament, Assange said the US state department had signalled it was not seeking any WikiLeaks people because the Pentagon's criminal investigations command had assumed the lead role in the case.
Apart from preparing much more material for release, WikiLeaks is planning to publicise a secret US military video of one of its deadliest air strikes in Afghanistan in which scores of children are believed to have been killed in May last year.
The Afghan government said about 140 civilians were killed in Garani, including 92 children. The US military initially said that up to 95 died, of whom about 65 were insurgents.
US officials have since wavered on that claim. A subsequent investigation admitted mistakes were made.
In April WikiLeaks released the Baghdad video, prompting considerable criticism of the Pentagon.
The film was edited and produced in Iceland where Assange spends a lot of his time and which last week prepared the most radical and liberal freedom of information legislation anywhere in the world.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Iceland MP and anti-war activist who led the drive for the new laws, co-produced the WikiLeaks version of the Baghdad video.
"I worked on it 18 hours a day through the Easter holidays," she said.
Jonsdottir, a close associate of Assange, said the WikiLeaks founder "went into hiding when the story of Manning's arrest was published".