WikiLeaks (12 page)

“I’m just kind of drifting now, waiting to redeploy to the US, be discharged and figure out how on earth I’m going to transition – all while witnessing the world freak out, as its most intimate secrets are revealed. It’s such an awkward place to be in, emotionally and psychologically.

“I can’t believe what I’m confessing to you … I’ve been so isolated so long. I just wanted to be nice, and live a normal life but events kept forcing me to figure out ways to survive. Smart enough to know what’s going on, but helpless to do anything … No one took any notice of me … I’m self-medicating like crazy, when I’m not toiling in the supply office (my new location, since I’m being discharged, I’m not offically intel anymore).”

“What kind of scandal?”

“Hundreds of them.”

“Like what? I’m genuinely curious about details.”

“I don’t know. There’s so many. I don’t have the original material any more … uhmm … the Holy See and its position on the Vatican sex scandals.”

“Play it by ear.”

“The broiling one in Germany … I’m sorry, there’s so many. It’s impossible for any one human to read all quarter-million and
not feel overwhelmed, and possibly desensitised. The scope is so broad, and yet the depth so rich.”

“Give me some bona fides … Yanno? Any specifics.”

“This one was a test: Classified cable from US Embassy Reykjavik on Icesave dated 13 Jan 2010. The result of that one was that the Icelandic ambassador to the US was recalled, and fired. That’s just one cable.”

“Anything unreleased?”

“I’d have to ask Assange. I zerofilled [deleted] the original.”

“Why do you answer to him?”

“I don’t. I just want the material out there. I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“I’ve been considering helping WikiLeaks with Opsec [operational security].”

“They have decent Opsec. I’m obviously violating it. I’m a wreck. I’m a total fucking wreck right now.”

The transcript edited by Lamo resumes a little while later, with some more confessions:

“I’m a source, not quite a volunteer. I mean, I’m a high profile source, and I’ve developed a relationship with Assange, but I don’t know much more than what he tells me, which is very little. It took me four months to confirm that the person I was communicating was in fact Assange.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I gathered more info when I questioned him, whenever he was being tailed in Sweden by state department officials. I was trying to figure out who was following him, and why – and he was telling me stories of other times he’s been followed, and they matched up with the ones he’s said publicly.”

“Did that bear out? The surveillance?”

“Based on the description he gave me, I assessed it was the Northern Europe Diplomatic Security Team, trying to figure out
how he got the Reykjavik cable. They also caught wind that he had a video of the Garani airstrike in Afghanistan, which he has, but hasn’t decrypted yet. The production team was actually working on the Baghdad strike, though, which was never really encrypted. He’s got the whole 15-6 [investigation report] for that incident, so it won’t just be video with no context. But it’s not nearly as damning: it was an awful incident, but nothing like the Baghdad one. The investigating officers left the material unprotected, sitting in a directory on a centcom.smil.mil server but they did zip up the files, AES-256, with an excellent password, so afaik [as far as I know] it hasn’t been broken yet … 14+ char[acter]s. I can’t believe what I’m telling you.”

On 23 May, Lamo took the initiative in contacting Manning again. He did not tell the young soldier that he had already turned him in to the US military. Lamo subsequently said he thought it was his patriotic duty: “I wouldn’t have done this, if lives weren’t in danger. He was in a war zone, and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air.” Lamo set out to pump his new friend for yet more details:

“Anything new & exciting?”

“No, was outside in the sun all day, 110 degrees F, doing various details for a visiting band and some college team’s cheerleaders. Ran a barbecue, but no one showed up. Threw a lot of food away. Yes, football cheerleaders, visiting on off-season – a part of Morale Welfare and Recreation (MWR) projects. I’m sunburned, and smell like charcoal, sweat, and sunscreen. That’s about all that’s new.”

“Does Assange use AIM [AOL instant messaging] or other messaging services? I’d like to chat with him one of these days about Opsec. My only credentials beyond intrusion are that the FBI never got my data or found me, before my negotiated surrender, but that’s something. And my data was never recovered.”

“No he does not use AIM.”

“How would I get hold of him?”

“He would come to you … he does use OTR [Off The Record encryption for instant messaging] … but discusses nothing Opsec … He
might
use the ccc.de jabber server [the German Chaos Computer Club confidential messaging service] … but you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Gotcha.”

“I’m going to grab some dinner, ttyl [talk to you later].”

They do resume the talk later, with Lamo asking: “Are you Baptist by any chance?”

“Raised Catholic. Never believed a word of it. I’m godless. I guess I follow humanist values though. Have custom dog-tags that say ‘Humanist’ … I was the only non-religous person in town – more pews than people. I understand them, though, I’m not mean to them. They
really
don’t know. I politely disagree, but they are the ones who get uncomfortable when I make, very politely, good leading points …
New Yorker
is running 10k word article on wl.org on 30 May, btw [by the way].”

The next day, on 25 May, Manning reflected that he felt connected to army specialist Ethan McCord, who was pictured in the Apache video carrying wounded children from a van. Manning added McCord as a friend on Facebook after the video came out. McCord left the US army and denounced the helicopter attack.

“Amazing how the world works – takes six degrees of separation to a whole new level. It’s almost bookworthy in itself, how this played: event occurs in 2007, I watch video in 2009 with no context, do research, forward information to group of FOI [freedom of information] activists, more research occurs, video is released in 2010, those involved come forward to discuss event, I witness those involved coming forward to discuss publicly, even
add them as friends on FB – without them knowing who I am. They touch my life, I touch their life, they touch my life again. Full circle.”

“Are you concerned about CI/CID [counter-intelligence/ criminal investigation division] looking into your Wiki stuff? I was always paranoid.”

“CID has no open investigation. State department will be uberpissed … but I don’t think they’re capable of tracing everything.”

“What about CI?”

“Might be a congressional investigation, and a joint effort to figure out what happened. CI probably took note, but it had no effect on operations. So, it was publicly damaging, but didn’t increase attacks or rhetoric. Joint effort will be purely political, ‘fact finding’ – ‘how can we stop this from happening again’ regarding state dept cables …”

“Why does your job afford you access?”

“Because I had a workstation. I had two computers, one connected to SIPRNet the other to JWICS. They’re government laptops. They’ve been zerofilled because of the pullout. Evidence was destroyed by the system itself.”

“So how would you deploy the cables? If at all … Stored locally, or retrievable?”

“I don’t have a copy any more. They were stored on a centralised server. It was vulnerable as fuck.”

“What’s your endgame plan, then?”

“Well, it was forwarded to WL, and God knows what happens now: hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. If not, then 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. If I knew then what I knew now, kind of thing. Or maybe I’m just young, naive, and stupid.”

Manning elaborated his growing disillusionment with the army and US foreign policy:

“I don’t believe in good guys versus bad guys any more – only see a plethora of states acting in self-interest, with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless. I mean, we’re better in some respects: we’re much more subtle, use a lot more words and legal techniques to legitimise everything. It’s better than disappearing in the middle of the night, but just because something is more subtle, doesn’t make it right. I guess I’m too idealistic.

“I think the thing that got me the most … that made me rethink the world more than anything was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing ‘anti-Iraqi literature’. The Iraqi Federal Police wouldn’t co-operate with US forces, so I was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the ‘bad guys’ were, and how significant this was for the FPs. It turned out they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki [Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-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.

“Everything started slipping after that. I saw things differently. I had always questioned the [way] 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.”

“That could happen in Colombia. Different cultures, dude. Life is cheaper.”

“Oh, I’m quite aware, but I was a part of it, and completely helpless.”

“What would you do if your role w/ WikiLeaks seemed in danger of being blown?”

“Try and figure out how I could get my side of the story out before everything was twisted around to make me look like Nidal Hassan [the US army major charged with multiple murder for Fort Hood shooting]. I don’t think it’s going to happen. I mean, I was never noticed … Also, there’s godawful accountability of IP addresses. The network was upgraded, and patched up so many times … and systems would go down, logs would be lost … and when moved or upgraded, hard drives were zeroed. It’s impossible to trace much on these field networks, and who would honestly expect so much information to be exfiltrated from a field network?”

“I’d be one paranoid boy in your shoes.”

“The video came from a server in our domain! And not a single person noticed …”

“How long between the leak and the publication?”

“Some time in February it was uploaded.”

“Uploaded where? How would I transmit something if I had similarly damning data?

“Uhm … preferably OpenSSL the file with AES-256 … then use SFTP at prearranged drop IP addresses, keeping the key separate … and uploading via a different means … The HTTPS submission should suffice legally, though I’d use Tor on top of it … Long term sources do get preference … Veracity … The material is easy to verify because they know a little bit more about the source than a purely anonymous one, and confirmation publicly from earlier material, would make them more likely to publish, I guess. If two of the largest public relations ‘coups’ have come from a single source, for instance. Purely
submitting
material is more
likely to get overlooked without contacting them by other means, and saying, ‘Hey, check your submissions for
x
.’”

Manning went on to talk about his discovery of the helicopter video:

“I recognised the value of some things. I watched that video cold, for instance. At first glance, it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by a helicopter, no big deal. About two dozen more where that came from, right? But something struck me as odd, with the van thing, and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer’s directory. So I looked into it, eventually tracked down the date, and then the exact GPS co-ord[inates] and I was like, ‘OK, so that’s what happened. Cool … Then I went to the regular internet, and it was still on my mind … So I typed into Google the date, and the location, and then I see this [a
New York Times
report on the death of the Reuters journalists] … I kept that in my mind for weeks, probably a month and a half, before I forwarded it to [WikiLeaks].”

Manning went on to detail the security laxity that made it easy for him, or anyone else, to siphon data from classified networks without raising suspicion.

“Funny thing is, we transferred so much data on unmarked CDs. Everyone did… videos, movies, music, all out in the open. Bringing CDs to and from the networks was/is a common phenomenon. I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’, erase the music, then write a compressed split file. No-one suspected a thing. Kind of sad. I didn’t even have to hide anything … The culture fed opportunities. Hardest part is arguably internet access – uploading any sensitive data over the open internet is a bad idea, since networks are monitored for any insurgent/terrorist/militia/criminal types.”