Part 3 (1/2)
For a while he remained uncertain even about the person with whom he was communicating. He was in contact with a computer user claiming to be a.s.sange, but was it really him? Sitting at his workstation in the Iraqi desert, how could Manning be sure? It took him four months to acquire that certainty. In his exchanges with a.s.sange, he asked the Australian for details about how he was being followed by US state department officials. He then checked that information against what a.s.sange was quoted as saying in the press, and the two precisely correlated. He also used his own security clearance to check up on the activities of the Northern Europe Diplomatic Security Team, the intelligence body that was most likely to have been doing the surveillance, and found that, too, correlated with a.s.sange's description.
Manning's test with the Reykjavik cable dummy run would have confirmed not only that they could communicate safely, but also a.s.sange's ability to publish what he sent. With mounting confidence, Manning could press ahead with the big stuff.
What precisely were the transactions between the two men? By his own admission to Lamo, Manning ”developed a relations.h.i.+p with a.s.sange ... but I don't know much more than what he tells me, which is very little”. In interviews, Lamo has gone further, claiming that Manning told him he used an encrypted internet conferencing service to communicate directly with a.s.sange, and that though they never met in person a.s.sange actively ”coached” Manning as to what kind of data he should transmit and how. Those claims have only come from Lamo, and have never been substantiated by supporting evidence.
What seems more certain is that some form of secure connection was created chiefly, or perhaps exclusively, for Manning, allowing him to pipe secret doc.u.ments and videos directly to WikiLeaks. In his exchanges with Lamo, Manning described his technique. He would take a file of material, having sc.r.a.ped it out of the military system somehow, and encrypt it using the AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard, with a key size of 256 bits) cipher, considered one of the most secure methods.
He would then send the encrypted material via a secure FTP (file transfer protocol) to a server at a particular internet address. Finally, the encryption pa.s.scode that Manning devised would be sent separately, via Tor, making it very hard for any surveillance authorities to know where the information began its journey.
Matt Blaze, an a.s.sociate professor in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in cryptology, says the system believed to have been constructed by Manning was a pretty straightforward technique for secure transmission. ”From a computer security point of view straightforward ways are usually pretty good. Complex ways are liable to go wrong.”
Kevin Poulsen, the senior editor at Wired Wired who published a partial version of the Lamo web chat and himself a notorious former hacker points out that the pa.s.sage in the conversation in which Manning describes the transmission technique is hypothetical. Manning's response is to a hypothetical question from Lamo: ”how would I transmit something if I had d.a.m.ning data?” But if Manning was indeed describing the way he pa.s.sed doc.u.ments to WikiLeaks then it was very significant. ”It goes way, way beyond the usual WikiLeaks method of uploading material to its website,” Poulsen says. ”If it was the way he transmitted to WikiLeaks then it shows there must have been some degree of contact with WikiLeaks that went beyond the normal procedures.” who published a partial version of the Lamo web chat and himself a notorious former hacker points out that the pa.s.sage in the conversation in which Manning describes the transmission technique is hypothetical. Manning's response is to a hypothetical question from Lamo: ”how would I transmit something if I had d.a.m.ning data?” But if Manning was indeed describing the way he pa.s.sed doc.u.ments to WikiLeaks then it was very significant. ”It goes way, way beyond the usual WikiLeaks method of uploading material to its website,” Poulsen says. ”If it was the way he transmitted to WikiLeaks then it shows there must have been some degree of contact with WikiLeaks that went beyond the normal procedures.”
By 21 May, it can be a.s.sumed that a.s.sange and any of their mutual links in the Boston hacker scene were strictly avoiding all contact with Bradley Manning for his sake as much as theirs. It was unfortunate for them that Manning then started sending messages to Adrian Lamo instead. He made contact with him the day a piece appeared in Wired Wired magazine sympathetically quoting Lamo on his own recent diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, his depressions, and his experience of psychiatric hospitalisation. magazine sympathetically quoting Lamo on his own recent diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome, his depressions, and his experience of psychiatric hospitalisation.
According to Lamo's version, published in Wired Wired, in that first chat, Manning, who was using the pseudonym Brada.s.s87, volunteered enough information to be easily traced. (The logs have been further edited here, for clarity).
”I'm an army intelligence a.n.a.lyst, deployed to eastern Baghdad, pending discharge for 'adjustment disorder' ... I'm sure you're pretty busy. If you had unprecedented access to cla.s.sified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight-plus months, what would you do?”
The next day, he started to blurt out confessions. The statements this tormented 22-year-old made about the biggest leak in US official history some intimate, some desperate, some intelligent and principled have to serve, for now, as the nearest thing we have to Bradley Manning's own testament. They make it clear that he was not a thief, not venal, not mad, and not a traitor. He believed that, somehow, he was doing a good thing.
”Hypothetical question: if you had free rein over cla.s.sified networks for long periods of time, say, 8-9 months, and you saw incredible things, awful things, things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Was.h.i.+ngton DC, what would you do? (or Guantanamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC [Victory Base Complex] for that matter) Things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people, say, a database of half a million events during the Iraq war from 2004 to 2009, with reports, date time groups, lat[itude]-lon[gitude] locations, casualty figures? Or 260,000 state department cables from emba.s.sies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?”
Manning confessed: ”The air gap has been penetrated.” The air gap is computer jargon, in this context, for the way the military internet is kept physically separate, for security reasons, from civilian servers, on which the ordinary commercial internet runs.
Lamo prompted him: ”How so?”
”Let's just say 'someone' I know intimately well has been penetrating US cla.s.sified networks, mining data like the ones described, and been transferring that data from the cla.s.sified networks over the 'air gap' onto a commercial network computer: sorting the data, compressing it, encrypting it, and uploading it to a crazy white-haired Aussie who can't seem to stay in one country very long.”
He went on: ”Crazy white-haired dude = Julian a.s.sange. In other words, I've made a huge mess. (I'm sorry. I'm just emotionally fractured. I'm a total mess. I think I'm in more potential heat than you ever were.)”
Lamo continued to press him: ”How long have you helped WikiLeaks?”
”Since they released the 9/11 pager messages. I immediately recognised that they were from an NSA [National Security Agency] database, and I felt comfortable enough to come forward.”
”So, right after Thanksgiving timeframe of 2009?”
”Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of cla.s.sified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public.”
”What sort of content?”
”Uhm ... crazy, almost criminal, political back-dealings. The non-PR versions of world events and crises. Uhm ... All kinds of stuff, like everything from the buildup to the Iraq war ... to what the actual content of 'aid packages' is. For instance, PR that the US is sending aid to Pakistan includes funding for water/food/ clothing. That much is true, it includes that, but the other 85% of it is for F-16 fighters and munitions to aid in the Afghanistan effort, so the US can call in Pakistanis to do aerial bombing, instead of Americans potentially killing civilians and creating a PR crisis. There's so much. It affects everybody on earth.
”Everywhere there's a US post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madagascar: if it's a country, and it's recognised by the US as a country, it's got dirt on it. It's open diplomacy, world-wide anarchy in CSV format [a simple text format]. It's Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It's beautiful, and horrifying, and it's important that it gets out. I feel for some bizarre reason it might actually change something. I just don't wish to be a part of it, at least not now ... I'm not ready. I wouldn't mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility of having pictures of me plastered all over the world press as a boy as a boy. I've totally lost my mind. I make no sense. The CPU [central processing unit of a computer] is not made for this mother-board ... >sigh< ...=”” i=”” just=”” wanted=”” enough=”” time=”” to=”” figure=”” myself=”” out,=”” to=”” be=”” myself=”” ...=”” and=”” not=”” be=”” running=”” around=”” all=”” the=”” time,=”” trying=”” to=”” meet=”” someone=”” else's=””>
”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 s.e.x 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: Cla.s.sified cable from US Emba.s.sy Reykjavik on Icesave dated 13 Jan 2010. The result of that one was that the Icelandic amba.s.sador to the US was recalled, and fired. That's just one cable.”
”Anything unreleased?”
”I'd have to ask a.s.sange. 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 f.u.c.king 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 relations.h.i.+p with a.s.sange, 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 a.s.sange.”
”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 a.s.sessed 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 d.a.m.ning: 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 pa.s.sword, 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 cla.s.sified 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 a.s.sange 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.”