The Real Truth About Adrian Lamo
The Real Truth About Adrian Lamo
The riveting Bradley Manning affair has been flawlessly covered by Glenn Greenwald-but Greenwald appears to have missed the most glaring point regarding the man known as Adrian Lamo. Namely, his real identity. (To play along, here’s the background in three easy sentences: Bradley Manning, an Army analyst, was charged this month with distributing classified data to Wikileaks, including video that showed the killing of civilians in Baghdad and, allegedly, a bombing that killed “scores of children” in Afghanistan. Manning allegedly told this to journalist Adrian Lamo, who promptly handed over his IM chat logs with Manning to the feds, believing that “lives were in danger.” Meanwhile, Wikileaks honcho Julian Assange is currently, conveniently, not in the U.S.) Anyway! Lamo!
Lamo’s bizarre, incoherent response to Greenwald appears on cryptome.org , which has become a kind of Weekly World News for Wikileaks-related commentary.
Here is a photograph of “Lamo”:
Did he really expect this transparent disguise to pass unobserved? One person, and one alone, could have come up with the delusionally grandiose public claims we’ve seen so far from “Adrian Lamo”:
The uncanny resemblance goes far beyond the physical. “Lamo” complained in his cryptome.org response that Greenwald didn’t publish his ridiculous outburst in Salon, alongside Greenwald’s own piece, in quite unmistakable tones. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of pronouncements made by “Lamo” and the figure who is quite obviously behind the nom de guerre: Mandark, of the “Dexter’s Laboratory” TV series.
Lamo: It was a clever attempt to turn the tables-to put my reputation on trial before the public.
Mandark: Yes, Dexter, I can read your thoughts, and I am smarter than you.
Lamo: But Greenwald seemed to have no qualms about hurling vehemence [sic] at me-in a following Twitter post, Greenwald expressed his “blinding contempt”-and as we see here, his contempt appears to have been blinding indeed.
Mandark: Excellent! My sneaky ways have put me in the lead! I’d give myself a pat on the back, but I’m driving, so I’ll have to do it later!
Lamo: Let’s clear this up now, friends and neighbors. I am not now, nor have I ever been, in the thrall or employ of the federal government, be it as a confidential informant, a special agent, or a janitor.
Mandark: What do I have to do to be cool?
Lamo: I invite readers to listen to the audio of the interview and use Google to research me. Draw your own conclusions. Don’t let them be drawn for you by a man who was discussing how he’d judged a man well before he ever spoke to him, and wasn’t about to let facts get in the way of a good hatchet piece. Think for yourselves. Watch my documentary, Hackers Wanted.
Mandark: All hail Mandark, the genius! All hail Mandark, the genius! Sing a song of Mandark, the greatest genius this world has ever known!
Interesting? Yes. Conclusive? You be the judge.
P.S. If only we were in Sweden. If we were, it might be possible to prosecute “Lamo”-who told Glenn Greenwald that he represented himself as a journalist to Bradley Manning-for failing to protect his source. Because in Sweden, they have got an unpronounceable thing that we are in desperate need of here: offentlighetsprincipen.
Sweden is considered the first country in the world to have enacted modern freedom of information legislation with its Press Freedom Act of 1766.
The act served as the genesis of that what is commonly referred to today as “offentlighetsprincipen” (‘The Principle of Public Access’) which stipulates that “every Swedish citizen has the right to access public documents”, according to the current constitution.
As Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, explained to NPR’s “On the Media” last February,
The Swedish Press Freedom Act is very progressive. In many other countries, the angle journalists have taken is: we want to be protected from being forced into court. But the angle taken in the Swedish Press Freedom Act is that it’s the source who deserves the right to communicate to the public, and the public who deserves the right to know. And the journalist is an intermediary in this process. So the journalist must be protected, but the journalist also has a responsibility to protect. And if that responsibility is broken, the source can ask that a criminal prosecution occur.
And now I am going to go to Ikea, buy wineglasses and eat meatballs in frustrated admiration of this enlightened policy.
Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and