Shipping in a JP Morgan executive to be White House Chief of Staff isn't a cause of any of this; it's just a nice symbol for what our political culture is, more than ever in the Era of Change.  It's the other side of the revolving door that sent Peter Orszag to his multi-million-dollar a year reward at Citigroup for his 18 months in an administration which lavished that bank will all sorts of gifts.  Getting exercised about Bill Daley's empowerment is like going to the beach and being angry that it's full of sand:  this appointment is the inevitable by-product of the essence of Washington and of the Obama presidency.  It's what they do and who they are.  As Matt Stoller suggested, the most surprising thing about the Daley pick is that he has no Goldman Sachs experience.

But I do find the angry reaction from some progressives to be somewhat perplexing (even though I agree with the substance of their critique and am glad they're voicing it).  On one level -- the most superficial one -- the Daley appointment seems very strange.  Think about this: leading progressive voices -- including MoveOn and, in a very hard-hitting segment last night, Rachel Maddow (video below) -- have vociferously condemned the Daley choice.  By contrast, the most enthusiastic reactions came from JP Morgan Chairman Jamie Dimon (who first suggested Daley), the Chamber of Commerce, the Third Way, and Karl Rove.  Beyond that, Daley was an outspoken opponent -- in public -- of two of Obama's most prominent legislative items:  health care reform and the financial regulation bill's consumer protection agency.  Why, angry progressives seem to be asking, would Obama ignore the views of his so-called "progressive base" while seeking to please those who are his political adversaries?

But it's perfectly rational for Obama to do exactly that.  There's a fundamental distinction between progressives and groups that wield actual power in Washington:  namely, the latter are willing (by definition) to use their resources and energies to punish politicians who do not accommodate their views, while the former unconditionally support the Democratic Party and their leaders no matter what they do.  The groups which Obama cares about pleasing -- Wall Street, corporate interests, conservative Democrats, the establishment media, independent voters -- all have one thing in common:  they will support only those politicians who advance their agenda, but will vigorously oppose those who do not.  Similarly, the GOP began caring about the Tea Party only once that movement proved it will bring down GOP incumbents even if it means losing a few elections to Democrats.

That is exactly what progressives will never do.  They do the opposite; they proudly announce:  we'll probably be angry a lot, and we'll be over here doing a lot complaining, but don't worry:  no matter what, when you need us to stay in power (or to acquire it), we're going to be there to give you our full and cheering support.  That is the message conveyed over and over again by progressives, no more so than when much of the House Progressive Caucus vowed that they would never, ever support a health care bill that had no robust public option, only to turn around at the end and abandon that vow by dutifully voting for Obama's public-option-free health care bill.  That's just a microcosm of what happens in the more general sense:  progressives constantly object when their values and priorities are trampled upon, only to make clear that they will not only vote for, but work hard on behalf of and give their money to, the Democratic Party when election time comes around.

I'm not arguing here with that decision.  Progressives who do this will tell you that this unconditional Party support is necessary and justifiable because no matter how bad Democrats are, the GOP is worse.  That's a different debate.  The point here is that -- whether justified or not -- telling politicians that you will do everything possible to work for their re-election no matter how much they scorn you, ignore your political priorities, and trample on your political values is a guaranteed ticket to irrelevance and impotence.  Any self-interested, rational politician -- meaning one motivated by a desire to maintain power rather than by ideology or principle -- will ignore those who behave this way every time and instead care only about those whose support is conditional.  And they're well-advised to do exactly that. 

It is probably the case that a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Democratic base contributed to the Democrats' defeat in the 2010 midterm election.  But what Obama cares about is getting re-elected in 2012, and he knows full well that come March or April of that year -- if not earlier -- most of the progressives who are now continuously complaining about him will be at the front of the line waving their Obama banners, pulling out their checkbooks and whipping into line anyone who is not similarly supportive.  By contrast, corporate institutions and Wall Street tycoons will pour their money into Obama's defeat if he does not show them the proper level of deference and accommodate their policy demands, but will support him (as they did in 2008) if he pleases them.  Resource disparities between those factions are significant, but it's also due in part to their own choices that Wall Street is empowered, and progressives are irrelevant.

If someone wants to lend unconditional support to Obama and the Democrats, there's a cogent (if not persuasive) rationale to justify it.  But what I find baffling is that those who make that choice -- and who make clear that this is their choice -- then express surprise, anger and scorn in situations like the Daley appointment when the White House so blatantly ignores what they want.  Given the posture of progressives, why would the White House possibly do anything other than ignore them (except when they're deliberately attacking them in order to appear more centrist)?  What motive does the White House have for doing anything other than that?  None that I can see.

At all times, Mohamed traveled on an American passport and had valid visas for all the countries he visited.  He has never been arrested nor -- until two weeks ago -- was he ever involved with law enforcement in any way, including the entire time he lived in the U.S.

Approximately two weeks ago (on December 20), Mohamed went to the airport in Kuwait to have his visa renewed, as he had done every three months without incident for the last year.  This time, however, he was told by the visa officer that his name had been marked in the computer, and after waiting five hours, he was taken into a room and interrogated by officials who refused to identify themselves.  They then handcuffed and blindfolded him and drove him to some other locale.  That was the start of a two-week-long, still ongoing nightmare during which he was imprisoned for a week in an unknown location by unknown captors, relentlessly interrogated, and severely beaten and threatened with even worse forms of torture.

Mohamed's story was first reported this morning by Mark Mazzetti in The New York Times, who spoke with Mohamed by telephone, where he is currently being held in a deportation center in Kuwait.  I also spoke with Mohamed this morning, and my 50-minute conversation with him was recorded and can be heard on the recorder below.  Mazzetti did a good job of describing Mohamed's version of events.  He writes that during his 90-minute conversation, "Mr. Mohamed was agitated as he recounted his captivity, tripping over his words and breaking into tears."

That was very much my experience as well.  It may be difficult at times to understand all of what Mohamed recounts because he is emotionally distraught in the extreme, but it's nonetheless very worth listening to what he has to say, at the very least to portions of it.  Mohamed says he was repeatedly beaten with a stick on the bottom of his feet and his palms, hit in the face, and hung from the ceiling.  He also says his captors threatened him with both the arrest of his mother and electric shock, and told him that he should forget his family.

He still does not know why he was detained and beaten, nor does he know what is happening to him now.  Indeed, although Mazzetti writes that he was detained and beaten by Kuwait captors, Mohamed actually has no idea who was responsible, and told me that at least some of the people interrogating him spoke English.  He has been told that he will be deported back to the U.S., but is now on a no-fly list and has no idea when he will be released.  American officials told Mazzetti that "Mr. Mohamed is on a no-fly list and, for now at least, cannot return to the United States."  He's been charged with no crime and presented with no evidence of any wrongdoing.

This event is significant for multiple reasons, many of them obvious.  The questions Mohamed was repeatedly asked -- including two days ago by American embassy officials and FBI agents who visited him in the detention facility -- focused on whether he knew Anwar al-Awlaki, the American cleric in Yemen who has become an obsession of the Obama administration, as well as why he went to Yemen and Somalia.  Kuwait is little more than a subservient American protectorate, and the idea that they would do this to an American citizen without the American government's knowledge, if not its assent and participation, is implausible in the extreme.  That much of the information they sought from Mohamed is of particular interest to the U.S. Government only bolsters that likelihood.

Independent of all that, the U.S. Government has an obligation to protect its own citizens.  Mohamed described to me how both embassy officials and the FBI expressed zero interest in the torture to which he had been subjected during his detention.  The U.S. Government has said nothing about this matter, and refused to comment about Mohamed's treatment to The New York Times. 

All of this underscores the rapidly expanding powers the U.S. Government and law enforcement agents within the country are seizing without a shred of due process.  For the government to put an American citizen on the no-fly list while he's traveling outside the U.S. is tantamount to barring him from entering his own country -- a draconian punishment, involuntary exile, meted out without any due process.  In June, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of several citizens and legal residents who -- like Gulet Mohammed -- have been literally stranded abroad and barred from returning with no hearing, simply by being placed secretly on the no-fly list.  Add to that the growing seizures of the laptops and other electronic equipment of American citizens re-entering the country without any warrants -- or even yesterday's ruling from the California Supreme Court that police officers can search and seize someone's cell phone without a warrant when arresting them -- and (even leaving aside the administration's ongoing due-process-free prison camps and assassination programs) these are pure police state tactics.

The Bush-era torture scandal was as much about its use of torture-administering allies as it was the torture regime which the U.S. itself created.  In the face of these credible allegations -- just listen to this American teenager talk and assess how credible he is -- the Obama administration, at the very least, has the obligation to inform the public about whether this is true, what its role was, if any, and what it's doing to investigate and protest this abuse of its own citizen.

My discussion with Mohamed can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below.  I'm posting it in its entirety without edits, except for the last minute or so where we discussed how we came to speak, information I'm withholding at his request:

 

UPDATE:  Mohamed's family has now secured a lawyer for him, Gadeir Abbas of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who has written a letter to the DOJ raising all the right questions and demanding all the right assistance.  Nobody should have to ask the government to provide this form of assistance to an American citizen under these circumstances.

Working jointly with ProPublica on this investigation, Maass describes the hidden, indispensable role the U.S. military played in that event -- which has long been known -- though he convincingly argues that the primary culprit in this propaganda effort was the Americans media.  That is who did more than anyone to wildly distort this event.  As usual, the Watchdog Press not only happily ingests and trumpets pro-government propaganda, but does so even more enthusiastically and uncritically than government spokespeople themselves.

The reason there's so little government censorship of the press in America is because it's totally unnecessary; why would the government even want to censor a media this compliant and subservient?  Recall the derision heaped upon the media even by Bush's own former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, for being "too deferential" to administration propaganda.  As soon as an entity emerges that provides genuinely adversarial coverage of the U.S. Government -- such as WikiLeaks, whistleblowers, or isolated articles exposing its malfeasance -- the repressive measures come fast and furious.  But in general, it's no more necessary for the U.S. Government to censor the American media than it would be for Barack Obama to try to silence Robert Gibbs.

In describing the military-subservient mentality that dominated how most American establishment reporters covered the Saddam-statue incident, Maass includes these highly revealing anecdotes, including one about The New York Times' lead war correspondent, John Burns:

The media have been criticized for accepting the Bush Administration’s claims, in the run-up to the invasion, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The W.M.D. myth, and the media’s embrace of it, encouraged public support for war. The media also failed at Firdos Square, but in this case it was the media, rather than the government, that created the victory myth.

One of the first TV reporters to broadcast from Firdos was David Chater, a correspondent for Sky News, the British satellite channel whose feed from Baghdad was carried by Fox News. (Both channels are owned by News Corp.) Before the marines arrived, Chater had believed, as many journalists did, that his life was at risk from American shells, Iraqi thugs, and looting mobs.

"That’s an amazing sight, isn’t it?" Chater said as the tanks rolled in. "A great relief, a great sight for all the journalists here. . . . The Americans waving to us now -- fantastic, fantastic to see they’re here at last.” Moments later, outside the Palestine, Chater smiled broadly and told one marine, “Bloody good to see you.” Noticing an American flag in another marine’s hands, Chater cheerily said, "Get that flag going!"

Another correspondent, John Burns, of the Times, had similar feelings. Representing the most prominent American publication, Burns had a particularly hard time with the security thugs who had menaced many journalists at the Palestine. His gratitude toward the marines was explicit. "They were my liberators, too," he later wrote. "They seemed like ministering angels to me."

The happy relief felt by some journalists on the ground was compounded by editors and anchors back home. Primed for triumph, they were ready to latch onto a symbol of what they believed would be a joyous finale to the war.

It's not surprising that war journalists who feel endangered would be grateful to the U.S. military for protecting them.  Indeed, that's the whole premise of the embed program:  having American journalists dependent upon U.S. forces for everything -- from their safety to their sustenance -- will render them grateful and will cause them to identify not as independent journalists but as members (and dependents) of the invading force.  However understandable that might be, seeing the invading American army as "ministering angels" and "my liberators, too" cannot but shape and distort one's "reporting" on the war.  

Maass details that deliberately propagandistic pro-war "reporting" around this event infected every precinct of The Liberal Media.  As but one example, NPR's Baghdad reporter Anne Garrels expressly told her editors that they were getting the statue story wrong, but she recounted how NPR "editors requested . . . that she emphasize the celebratory angle."  The article described numerous examples of editors similarly distorting the statue-toppling coverage, as well as TV journalists gushing falsehood-based awe which -- even seven years later -- makes one cringe with embarrassment and disgust.  For instance, CNN's Bill Hemmer intoned:  "You think about seminal moments in a nation's history . . . indelible moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that’s what we’re seeing right now"; Wolf Blitzer described the toppling as "the image that sums up the day and, in many ways, the war itself"; Brit Hume on Fox News said: "This transcends anything I've ever seen. . . . This speaks volumes, and with power that no words can really match."  And on and on and on.

But, though Maass doesn't say so, it was Burns' dutiful pro-U.S. agitprop in The New York Times on behalf of the war fought by America's "ministering angels" -- "his liberators, too" -- that played a major role in shaping how this story was ultimately perceived.  On April 20, Burns wrote:

In the late afternoon of Wednesday, April 9, Marine Corps tanks entered eastern Baghdad from the south and took control of the district by the river that encompasses the Palestine and Sheraton hotels. Within three hours, after attempts by Iraqi men with sledgehammers and ropes had failed, the marines brought up an M-80 recovery tank with a long boom to assist in hauling down a 30-foot cast-iron statue of Mr. Hussein in Firdos Square, behind the hotels.

If any one moment marked the end of Mr. Hussein's rule, it was the sight of the statue's legs cracking, its torso tumbling, and the severed head and body being pelted with garbage and shoes -- the ultimate Arab insult -- by the hundreds of Iraqis who had gathered to celebrate their freedom.

To be in the square at that moment was to know, beyond doubt, that Iraqis in their millions hated Mr. Hussein, that the truth about Iraq was the diametric opposite of all that he and his acolytes had maintained, and that all else that was said about him in the years that went before was the product of relentless terror.

"Good, good, Bush!" the crowds chanted. "Down, down, Saddam!" Men and women wept, and reached out to shake the hands of the marines, or simply touch their uniforms. "Thank you, mister!" they cried, again and again. Hours later, the crowds still milled about the fallen idol, spitting and mocking. 

That is the most revered and most decorated war reporter in America's Liberal Media.

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen today has an uncharacteristically insightful column arguing that reverence for the U.S. military is sustained by the fact that most Americans have  no experience serving in it and thus idealize its actions and those who lead it.  That's certainly true, but it's journalists -- especially the ones who cover the Pentagon and its wars -- who succumb to that worship dynamic far more than any other class of people.  In October,  John Parker -- the former military reporter and fellow of the University of Maryland Knight Center for Specialized Journalism-Military Reporting -- mocked Pentagon reporters for uncritically spouting the military's line about WikiLeaks (he singled out NPR's Tom Gjelten) and explained the key dynamic as follows:

The career trend of too many Pentagon journalists typically arrives at the same vanishing point: Over time they are co-opted by a combination of awe -- interacting so closely with the most powerfully romanticized force of violence in the history of humanity -- and the admirable and seductive allure of the sharp, amazingly focused demeanor of highly trained military minds. Top military officers have their s*** together and it's personally humbling for reporters who've never served to witness that kind of impeccable competence. These unspoken factors, not to mention the inner pull of reporters' innate patriotism, have lured otherwise smart journalists to abandon -- justifiably in their minds -- their professional obligation to treat all sources equally and skeptically.

Too many military reporters in the online/broadcast field have simply given up their watchdog role for the illusion of being a part of power.

This dynamic infects most establishment journalism:  political reporters come to revere the most successful political operatives (and thus worship in Jay Rosen's "Church of the Savvy"), economic reporters come to admire the most powerful financial officials, etc.  But for so many reasons, including the ones Parker describes, this psychological capture -- blindly gushing over the subjects one covers -- is most severe when it comes to reporting on military leaders.  

Recall how Burns -- when attacking Michael Hastings on The Hugh Hewitt Show for the crime of making Gen. Stanley McChystal look bad -- boasted, as though he himself is a combatant, of the "long, informal periods traveling on helicopters over hostile territory with the generals chatting over their headset, bunking down for the night side by side on a piece of rough-hewn concrete" and how this "builds up a kind of trust" that should shape what the public learns and does not learn about these officials.  Or recall the embarrassingly glowing paean to McChrystal Burns penned upon the General's firing, or the even more gushing McChrystal profile published by his fellow NYT reporters upon his hiring.  Or Lara Logan's snide, lapdog-like defense of The General ("Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has").  When it comes to how they speak and think of the military officials they cover, they sound like giddy teenage fan club Presidents rather than critical, independent reporters.  Could anyone imagine David Halberstam describing American generals in Vietnam as "ministering angels" and "his liberators, too"?

Maass has written a very good article, but the one bothersome aspect of retrospectives like this one is that some perceive that the failings they describe are confined to a discrete historical event or matters of the past.  It's vital when discussing the American media's failings during the Iraq War to remember that -- aside from Judy Miller -- most of them believe they and their industry did nothing wrong (Richard Wolffe:  "the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general"; David Gregory:  "there are a lot of critics who think that . . . we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role"; Charlie Gibson:  rejecting criticisms of the American media on the ground that "there was a lot of skepticism raised" by journalists about Bush's case for war; see also: Brian Williams righteously defending the honor of the retired Generals in the Bush Pentagon's propaganda program).

They haven't changed in the slightest since the Saddam statue incident because they don't think they did anything wrong, don't believe there are any lessons to learn.   Maas' article isn't about what the American media did.  It's about what the American media is.

* * * * *

Quite related to all of this:  The New York Times' Stanley Fish reviews a new book to be released shortly by a variety of law professors -- including Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum -- arguing that more legal restraints on the Internet are needed to prevent and punish misinformation enabled by online anonymity.  Right:  unlike for our establishment media outlets, which are Beacons of Informed, Accountable and Objective Truth.  Along those lines, Newsweek today has a darkly and unintentionally hilarious article purporting to explain why most American journalists refuse to defend WikiLeaks and the government's assault on its press freedoms.  It contains this line:  "American journalists, unlike many of their foreign counterparts, have a strong commitment to objectivity and nonpartisanship."  The level of self-delusion necessary to produce such a claim is unfathomable.

But on December 23, a group of leading conservatives -- including Rudy Giuliani and former Bush officials Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge, and Fran Townsend -- did exactly that. In Paris, of all places, they appeared at a forum organized by supporters of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) -- a group declared by the U.S. since 1997 to be "terrorist organization" -- and expressed wholesale support for that group. Worse -- on foreign soil -- they vehemently criticized their own country's opposition to these Terrorists and specifically "demanded that Obama instead take the [] group off the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations and incorporate it into efforts to overturn the mullah-led government in Tehran." In other words, they are calling on the U.S. to embrace this Saddam-supported, U.S.-hating Terrorist group and recruit them to help overthrow the government of Iran. To a foreign audience, Mukasey denounced his own country's opposition to these Terrorists as "nothing less than an embarrassment."

Using common definitions, there is good reason for the MEK to be deemed by the U.S. Government to be a Terrorist group. In 2007, the Bush administration declared that "MEK leadership and members across the world maintain the capacity and will to commit terrorist acts in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond," and added that the group exhibits "cult-like characteristics." The Council on Foreign Relations has detailed that the MEK has been involved in numerous violent actions over the years, including many directed at Americans, such as "the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries" and "the killings of U.S.military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran in the 1970s." This is whom Guiliani, Ridge, Townsend and other conservatives are cheering.

Applying the orthodoxies of American political discourse, how can these Terrorist-supporting actions by prominent American conservatives not generate intense controversy? For one thing, their appearance in France to slam their own country's foreign policy blatantly violates the long-standing and rigorously enforced taboo against criticizing the U.S. Government while on dreaded foreign soil (the NYT previously noted that "nothing sets conservative opinion-mongers on edge like a speech made by a Democrat on foreign soil"). Worse, their conduct undoubtedly constitutes the crime of "aiding and abetting Terrorism" as interpreted by the Justice Department -- an interpretation recently upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision last year in Holder v. Humanitarian Law. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole represented the Humanitarian Law plaintiffs in their unsuccessful challenge to the DOJ's interpretation of the "material support" statute, and he argues today in The New York Times that as a result of that ruling, it is a felony in the U.S. "to engage in public advocacy to challenge a group's 'terrorist' designation or even to encourage peaceful avenues for redress of grievances."

Like Cole, I believe the advocacy and actions of these Bush officials in support of this Terrorist group should be deemed constitutionally protected free expression. But under American law and the view of the DOJ, it isn't. There are people sitting in prison right now with extremely long prison sentences for so-called "material support for terrorism" who did little different than what these right-wing advocates just did. What justifies allowing these Bush officials to materially support a Terrorist group with impunity?

Then there's CNN. How can they possibly continue to employ someone -- Fran Townsend -- who so openly supports a Terrorist group? Less than six months ago, that network abruptly fired its long-time producer, Octavia Nasr, for doing nothing more than expressing well wishes upon the death of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, one of the Shiite world's most beloved religious figures. Her sentiments were echoed by the British Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, who wrote a piece entitled "The Passing of a Decent Man," and by the journal Foreign Policy, which hailed him as "a voice of moderation and an advocate of unity." But because Fadlallh had connections to Hezbollah -- a group designated as a Terrorist organization by the U.S. -- and was an opponent of Israel, neocon and other right-wing organs demonized Nasr and CNN quickly accommodated them by ending her career.

Granted, Nasr was a news producer and Townsend is at CNN to provide commentary, but is it even remotely conceivable to imagine CNN employing someone who openly advocated for Hamas or Hezbollah, who met with their supporters on foreign soil and bashed the U.S. for classifying them as a Terrorist organization and otherwise acting against them or, more radically still, demanding that the U.S. embrace these groups as allies? To ask the question is to answer it. So why is Fran Townsend permitted to keep her CNN job even as she openly meets with supporters of a Terrorist group with a long history of violence and anti-American hatred?

There is simply no limit on the manipulation and exploitation of the term "terrorism" by America's political class. Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell support endless policies that slaughter civilians for political ends, yet with a straight face accuse Julian Assange -- who has done nothing like that -- of being a "terrorist." GOP Rep. Peter King is launching a McCarthyite Congressional hearing to investigate radicalism and Terrorism sympathies among American Muslim while ignoring his own long history of enthusiastic support for Catholic Terrorists in Northern Ireland; as Marcy Wheeler says: "Peter King would still be in prison if the US had treated his material support for terrorism as it now does."

And WikiLeaks this morning published a diplomatic cable from the U.S. summarizing the long-discussed meeting on July 25, 1990, at which the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, talked to Saddam -- a month before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait -- about the history of extensive American support for his regime, the desire of the U.S. for friendly relations with Saddam, and her statement that the U.S. does not care about Saddam's border disputes with Kuwait (Glaspie recorded that she told Saddam: "then, as now, we took no positions on these Arab affairs"). Months later, the U.S. attacked Iraq and cited a slew of human rights abuses and support for Terrorism that took place when the U.S. was arming and supporting Saddam and during the time they had removed Iraq from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in order to provide that support.

The reason there isn't more uproar over these Bush officials' overt foreign-soil advocacy on behalf of a Terrorist group is because they want to use that group's Terrorism to advance U.S. aims. Using Terrorism on behalf of American interests is always permissible, because the actual definition of a Terrorist -- the one that our political and media class universally embraces -- is nothing more than this: "someone who impedes or defies U.S. will with any degree of efficacy."

Even though the actions of these Bush officials violate every alleged piety about bashing one's own country on foreign soil and may very well constitute a felony under U.S. law, they will be shielded from criticisms because they want to use the Terrorist group to overthrow a government that refuses to bow to American dictates. Embracing Terrorist groups is perfectly acceptable when used for that end. That's why Fran Townsend will never suffer the fate of Octavia Nasr, and why her fellow Bush officials will never be deemed Terrorist supporters by the DOJ or establishment media outlets, even though what they've done makes them, by definition, exactly that.

 

UPDATE: Amazingly, Fran Townsend, on CNN, hailed the Supreme Court's decision in Humanitarian Law -- the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the DOJ's view that one can be guilty of "material support for terrorism" simply by talking to or advocating for a Terrorist group -- and enthusiastically agreed when Wolf Blitzer said, while interviewing her: "If you're thinking about even voicing support for a terrorist group, don't do it because the government can come down hard on you and the Supreme Court said the government has every right to do so." Yet "voicing support for a terrorist group" is exactly what Townsend is now doing -- and it makes her a criminal under the very Supreme Court ruling that she so gleefully praised.

 

UPDATE II:  In 2008, an Iranian-American woman --Zeinab Taleb-Jedi -- was convicted in a federal court of providing "material support for terrorism" based solely on her membership in MEK.  She argued that MEK should not be deemed a Terrorist group and that she has the First Amendment right to belong to it, but the judge rejected both claims.  While she joined the group as opposed to merely advocating for it (the way these conservatives are doing), the Supreme Court in Huminatarian Law made clear that both can be means of providing "material support."  Why should Taleb-Jedi be prosecuted but not Giuliani, Townsend, Ridge and friends?

That's how these disputes often work by design:  the party whose conduct is in question (here, Wired) attacks the critic in order to create the impression that it's all just some sort of screeching personality feud devoid of substance.  That, in turn, causes some bystanders to cheer for whichever side they already like and boo the side they already dislike, as though it's some sort of entertaining wrestling match, while everyone else dismisses it all as some sort of trivial Internet catfight not worth sorting out.  That, ironically, is what WikiLeaks critics (and The New York Times' John Burns) did with the release of the Iraq War documents showing all sorts of atrocities in which the U.S. was complicit:  they tried to put the focus on the personality quirks of Julian Assange to distract attention away from the horrifying substance of those disclosures.  That, manifestly, is the same tactic Wired is using here:  trying to put the focus on me to obscure their own ongoing conduct in concealing the key evidence shining light on these events.

In a separate post, I fully address every accusation Hansen and Poulsen make about me as well as the alleged inaccuracies in what I wrote.  But I'm going to do everything possible here to ensure that the focus remains on what matters:  the way in which Wired, with no justification, continues to conceal this evidence and, worse, refuses even to comment on its content, thus blinding journalists and others trying to find out what really happened here, while enabling gross distortions of the truth by Poulsen's long-time confidant and source, the government informant Adrian Lamo.

The bottom line from Hansen and Poulsen is that they still refuse to release any further chat excerpts or, more inexcusably, to comment at all on -- to verify or deny -- Lamo's public statements about what Manning said to him that do not appear in those excerpts.  They thus continue to conceal from the public 75% of the Manning-Lamo chats.  They refuse to say whether Lamo's numerous serious accusations about what Manning told him are actually found anywhere in the chat logs.  Nor will they provide the evidence to resolve the glaring inconsistencies in Lamo's many public tales about the critical issues:  how he came to speak to Manning, what Lamo did to induce these disclosures, and what Manning said about his relationship to WikiLeaks and his own actions.  Every insult Wired spouts about me could be 100% true and none of it changes the core fact:  Wired is hiding the key evidence about what took place here, thus allowing Lamo to spout all sorts of serious claims without any check and thus drive much of the reporting about WikiLeaks.

To defend this concealment, Hansen claims that they "have already published substantial excerpts from the logs."  But the parts they are concealing are far more substantial:  75% by their own account, and critically, the person who played a key role in hand-picking which parts to publish and which parts to conceal is the person whom BBC News accurately describes as "Mr Lamo's long-term associate Kevin Poulsen."  Poulsen claims he "either excerpted, quoted or reported on everything of consequence Manning had to say about his leaking," but that begs the key question:  is everything -- or anything -- that Lamo has been claiming about Manning's statements found in the chat logs or not?  Why won't Wired answer that question?  Below, I set forth what Lamo has claimed that is not in the chat logs and why it is so vital to know if it's there.

Hansen's defense principally relies on a total strawman:  that I'm calling for the full, unedited release of the chat logs.  Hansen insists that Wired cannot do this because of privacy concerns for Manning.  He titles his response "The Case for Privacy," and claims "that the logs include sensitive personal information with no bearing on Wikileaks." 

But neither I nor anyone else I've read has called on Wired to indiscriminately dump the chat logs without any redactions or regard for Manning's privacy.  Back in June -- once Poulsen's claims that they were withholding only private information and national security secrets was proven false by The Washington Post's subsequent publication of chat excerpts that fell into neither category -- this is what I called on Wired to do:

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.

Then, on Sunday, I noted several important events that transpired since I wrote that June article: most prominently the fact that Wired's source, Lamo, had spent six months making all sorts of public claims about what Manning told him that are nowhere in the chat excerpts published by Wired.  Moreover, the disclosures by WikiLeaks gut Poulsen's excuse that Wired's concealments are necessary to protect national security secrets (an excuse Hansen did not even raise).  As a result of those developments, this is what I wrote on Sunday that Wired should do:

What they ought to do, at the absolute minimum, is post the portions of the chat logs about which Lamo had made public statements or make clear that they do not exist. . . . Poulsen could also provide Lamo -- who claims he is no longer in possession of them -- with a copy of the chat logs (which Lamo gave him) so that journalists quoting Lamo about Manning's statements could see the actual evidence rather than relying on Lamo's claims.

For anyone who wants to defend Wired here, I'd really like to know:  what possible excuse is there for their refusal to do this?  Even if you trust Poulsen -- despite his very close and long relationship to Lamo -- to conceal some parts of the chats on privacy grounds, what justification is there for Wired's refusal to state that either (a) Lamo's claims about what Manning told him are supported by the chat logs (and then publish those portions), or (b) Lamo's claims are not found in the chat logs, thus proving that Lamo is either lying or has an unreliable recollection?  While Adrian Lamo runs around spouting all sorts of serious accusations about what Manning supposedly told him that are not found in Wired's excerpts -- claims which end up in the world's largest news outlets -- and while he issues one contradictory claim after the next about these events, how can anyone claiming to be a journalist not inform the public about whether those stories are true?  For Wired defenders: what justifies that obfuscatory behavior, that refusal to say whether Lamo's claims are true or false based on the chat logs?

Hansen says that they have no "obligation to chase down every story on Manning, correct any errors, and refute any reporting that we disagree with."  Nobody said they did.  But Lamo is hardly some arms-length source they once used for a story.  Wired repeatedly boasts of its breaking stories in the Manning case; Lamo's long, close relationship with Poulsen is the only reason they were able to do so.  When Lamo was involuntarily hospitalized in May, the person he called was Kevin Poulsen.  They've been closely interacting in various capacities for more than a decade.  When Lamo makes accusations about what Manning told him on the front page of The New York Times and in other leading media outlets, any actual journalist in a position to do so would either present the evidence that those claims are true or make clear that it is false.  And certainly when a Wired journalist in possession of those chats is asked in response to Lamo's claims whether the chat logs confirm or negate what he said, anyone minimally interested in the truth would answer, if not write about it.

That's the crux of the issue.  For Wired to confirm that Lamo's public statements are false would be to impugn the integrity of Poulsen's friend and his close and valued source.  They allow Lamo to run around making all kinds of false claims about what transpired between him and Manning even as they sit on the evidence that proves those claims are false.  And they refuse to reconcile Lamo's numerous contradictory statements by showing the public the evidence they have that would resolve them.  That falsehood-enabling behavior is the precise opposite of what a journalist ought to be doing.

* * * * *

I have no doubt Wired will find some supporters for this "conceal-the-facts" position.  Journalism in the United States has become at least as much about preserving secrets as it is uncovering them.  Reporters routinely grant anonymity to government officials to spout all sorts of falsehoods -- from the gossipy to the consequential -- while shielding those officials from accountability.  Numerous media stars for years knew the key facts of the Libby case but withheld them even as they purported to "report" to the story.  The New York Times sat on the NSA story for a year -- until Bush was safely re-elected -- because the President told them not to publish it.  The revered Tim Russert admitted that he considers all conversations with government officials "presumptively confidential" -- even in the absence of an off-the-record agreement -- and only discloses what they authorize him to disclose.

That's what so much "journalism" now is:  a means of shielding secrets from the public -- usually to protect friends and the agendas of "sources" to ensure further access.  Ironically, it is that very mentality -- the Cult of Secrecy that American journalism has become -- that gave rise to the need for WikiLeaks in the first place.  We're a society in which media and political elites keep secrets compulsively with one another -- doing that is one of the hallmarks of membership in those circles -- and there are thus plenty of people trained to believe that Good, Responsible People keep substantive secrets from the public.  It's the same mentality that has spawned the hostile reaction to WikiLeaks:  people are happy -- grateful even -- when institutions keep substantive information from them.  Hence:  I want the Government to act in the dark and keep me ignorant about most of what it does; similarly: Wired is acting responsibly by refusing to tell us whether Adrian Lamo's claims about Manning are true or false or to resolve the multiple contradictions he's publicly affirmed.

That's not what I think journalism is.  There are very serious questions that remain unresolved and unanswered about the entire Bradley Manning incident.  Wired is in possession of key evidence that could shed light on much of it.  But they refuse to disclose it, describe it, or even answer questions about it.  Only someone with a very warped understanding of what journalism is supposed to be would defend that.

* * * * *

One can see how significant Wired's concealment of this evidence is by simply looking at (1) the numerous claims Lamo has made about what Manning told him in these chats that are not found anywhere in Wired's excerpts, and (2) the multiple contradictions about the key events which Lamo has spouted.

To begin with, consider this passage from a Wired article on June 10, 2010, by Poulsen and Kim Zetter:  "[Manning] said that Julian Assange had offered him a position at Wikileaks.  But he said, 'I'm not interested right now. Too much excess baggage'."  That passage is found nowhere in the Wired chat excerpts.  Is it there?  Did Manning say he was offered a job at WikiLeaks?  If he did, given that Wired itself is writing about it, can we read that excerpt?  What justification is there for withholding it?

Or consider one of the towering mysteries here:  why and how did Manning come to choose Lamo -- supposedly a total stranger, someone who just happened to be working with a vigilante group that informs the Government about Internet crimes -- to contact out of the blue and confess his crimes?  In his June interview with me, Lamo claimed that Manning found him through a Twitter search of the term "WikiLeaks" and found a pro-WikiLeaks tweet from Lamo:

GREENWALD:  One of the things that I find weird and difficult to understand about this whole episode is how he found you and why he decided to find you, so can you just walk me through that first encounter. Like how did he make contact with you and what did he say and how did the whole thing, how did the whole conversation, come about?

LAMO: Absolutely. I understand that he tracked me down as a result of. . . He was searching for "Wikileaks" on Twitter and saw that in the recent leak of my documentary and people had asked, "Hey where should we send money if we download this?" And I initially said, for lack of a better answer, “Send it to the director. He’s the one who spent his time on it.” And the director said, “No. I don’t want to be compensated for that. It’s problematic.” And I said, “Okay, well send it to Wikileaks because they support similar principles to what are discussed in the documentary. That is to say, curiosity for the sake of curiosity and freedom of information.” And it was a result of that that I popped up on his radar.

GREENWALD: I’m sorry, you were having that discussion on your Twitter feed or where?

LAMO: Yes, on Twitter [unintelligible at 03:05].

GREENWALD: And he was, how did he see that?

LAMO: By searching for "Wikileaks," the term.

GREENWALD: And then your account came up basically?

LAMO: That is correct. . . .

GREENWALD: Right. And how do know that that's how he found you?

LAMO: Because that's what he proffered to me when I asked him how he had come across my identity.

GREENWALD: And he told that in the chats that you two were having, the IM chats?

LAMO: That's correct. . . .

That's a critical claim from Lamo: that Manning told him he found Lamo through a random Twitter search for the term "WikiLeaks."  Lamo explicitly told me that Manning narrated this story in the chats.  But nothing like that is in the excerpts Wired published.  Indeed, there is nothing in Wired's excerpts about how Manning found Lamo or why he chose to speak with him.  Is there anything in the chat logs confirming Lamo's claims about how and why Manning contacted him?  For Wired defenders:  What possible justification is there for Wired to refuse to publish that portion or to confirm that it does not exist?  Do you not think that's a very relevant fact to know about this story:  how Manning found Lamo and why he contacted him?

Beyond that story from Lamo, he has also given conflicting claims about how Manning found him, telling CNET (and others) that "he thinks Manning contacted him after reading a Wired article [from May, by Kevin Poulsen] about Lamo being diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, after a stint in the hospital for depression."  He also told The Washingtonian that "Lamo read from what he says were transcripts of the instant-message exchange he had with Manning. The young solider contacted Lamo first after reading a profile about him in Wired magazine."  But he told me expressly that Manning never mentioned that article, saying only that he found him from Twitter ("GREENWALD: Did he ever say that he had read that article? LAMO: No, he never mentioned it").

At least as important is the question of when Manning and Lamo first began communicating, and what was said.  Lamo told multiple news outlets that Manning, without any prior warning or notice, suddenly contacted him on May 21 via AOL chat.  As but one example, Yahoo News on June 9 reported after interviewing Lamo:  "Lamo says Manning contacted him via AOL Instant Messenger 'out of the blue' on May 21."

But Lamo told me a completely different story about how Manning first began communicating with him.  He told me that Manning sent him a series of emails before they ever chatted, and it was as part of that email exchange that Lamo told Manning to contact him on AOL chat:

GREENWALD: And so the first contact he made with you, was that be email or was that some other way?

LAMO: [Sound of rustling papers] First contact was by email.

GREENWALD: And can you tell me generally what he said?

LAMO: I can’t unfortunately. It’s cryptographically impossible since he encrypted it to an outdated PGP key of mine.

GREENWALD: So were you unable to understand what he said in that first email?

LAMO: Correct. First, second, and third at the very least. I get a lot of random email and the hassle of decrypting it even if I had the key would be enough to push it back about a week or so in my “to read” stack. . . .I ignored it for the first couple of hours and then I received a few subsequent emails and then I finally replied, “Hey I can’t read your emails encrypted to a PGP key I no longer have access to. Why don’t we chat via AOL IM instead?”

GREENWALD: Right, so you gave him your IM address?

LAMO: Correct.

On this most critical question, Lamo can't even keep his story straight.  First he says that Manning just contacted him by chat "out of the blue."  Then he says that Manning sent him a series of emails and Lamo told him to contact him on chat and gave him his chat name.  He also claims -- incredibly for a self-proclaimed hacker -- that he could not access his own emails because he lost his encryption key and thus has no idea what these emails, containing pre-chat communications between Lamo and Manning, even say.  Yet, even according to what Lamo told me, Wired concealed much of the critical portions where those two began chatting on the first day about how they came into contact; that would shed vital light on what their relationship actually was and how they really found each other.

Then there's the issue of what Lamo told Manning to induce him to describe the leaks in which he was allegedly involved.  About this important question, Lamo tells a long, detailed story about how he promised Manning to keep completely secret their conversations on the ground that Lamo is both a "journalist" and a minister, but that Manning (depending on whom Lamo is talking to) expressly rejected that offer or just failed to accept it.  Here's what Lamo told me about that:

GREENWALD: Did, was there a point early on in the conversation when you told him that you were a reporter?

LAMO: Yes there was, and I offered him the opportunity to be protected by a reporter-source relationship, and that I could potentially work work him into a piece for 2600 or a story, rather a part of a book idea that I’ve been working on about my relations with the hacker community, that to say specifically the people who have come to me and the various aspects that they’ve illuminated. And didn’t take me up on it.

GREENWALD: Did he reject it?

LAMO: I asked him, "Do you want it to be this way, or do you want it to be this way?" And he didn’t respond to either. I also told him that I was an ordained minister and if he wanted it could be a confession but that requires an allocution in the affirmative.

GREENWALD: So early on in the conversation you had discussions with him about the fact that because you were a journalist you could offer him protection, confidentiality protection, as a source?

LAMO: Under the California reporter shield law, not federally but yeah–

GREENWALD: I know, but you talked about that with him?

LAMO: That is correct, and he gave no indication whatsoever that that was something that he was interested in.

Lamo made similar claims to CNN on August 4, 2010:  "Lamo confirmed he told Manning the soldier’s online conversations could be protected under the California shield law because it could be seen as a conversation with a journalist."  But he told something much different to Yahoo News on June 9:  "In an interview with Yahoo! News, Lamo says that he spelled out very clearly in his chats with Manning that he wasn't affiliated with WikiLeaks or acting as a journalist," and said that in response to Lamo's offer of confidentiality, "Manning refused." And he told BBC News on June 8 that Lamo and Manning jointly decided that there would be no journalist-source relationship:  "I did tell him that I worked as a journalist. I would have been happy to write about him myself, but we just decided that it would be too unethical."

None of that -- not a word of it -- is in the Wired excerpts.  Is that really how Lamo induced Manning to trust him:  with betrayed promises of journalist-source or minister-penitent confidentiality?  Did this subject even come up?  Is anything Lamo is saying here remotely true?  Wired could make those critical facts known in one minute:  by publishing the excerpts where this happened or confirming that Lamo fabricated the story.  For Wired defenders:  what possible journalistic justification exists for their withholding of that information?

I could spend the rest of the day -- literally -- documenting bizarre facts in this story and contradictory assertions from Lamo about the most serious of matters.  Just by herself, Marcy Wheeler -- who has repeatedly proven herself to be one of the most thorough forensic examiners of raw data in the country -- has raised all kinds of serious questions about when Lamo really began working with federal authorities, unexplained discrepancies in the Wired chat logs, and whether Lamo received actual classified information from Manning beyond the chats.  Beyond that, FDL's large readership has spent the last week compiling virtually every interview, press account and document involving Lamo and has pointed to multiple contradictions and unanswered questions that go to the heart of how Lamo claims to have become an informant who turned in Manning, including strange claims like this from Lamo, in a June 6 interview on CBC Radio:

[Manning] also also mentioned to me a top secret operation that the Army for lack of a better word freaked out over when I mentioned it to them. They would not even say it out loud, they wrote it on paper and showed it to somebody else when discussing it . . . . It was when I initially confirmed through a friend of mine who had experience in military counterintelligence and had him virtually blanche -- or at least I imagined over the telephone -- when I mentioned the operation, that I knew that I had to act."

Yet despite how alarmed they were by how sensitive this information was -- and despite the Obama DOJ's well-documented  harsh crackdown on all leaks -- the FBI and Army Intelligence officials simply let Lamo keep copies of the chat logs and freely hand them out to Wired's Kevin Poulsen in order for Poulsen to publish whatever he wanted without input or influence from those agents?  Very little about what Lamo, Poulsen and Wired claim here makes sense.  The chat logs -- or at least Wired's confirmation about what is in them -- is the only thing that could clear any of this up.

* * * * *

Wired's principal goal in responding to what I wrote was to raise all sorts of questions about my motives.  My motive could not be any clearer or more obvious.  Bradley Manning is being incarcerated in extremely oppressive conditions and charged with crimes that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.  The DOJ is threatening to do the same with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, based largely on statements they want to extract from Manning. 

The chat logs that Wired has but is withholding -- and about which they are refusing to comment -- are newsworthy in the extreme.  They cannot but shed substantial light on what really happened here, on the bizarre series of events and claims for which there is little evidence and much cause for doubt.  I expect government officials to shield the truth from the public and to conceal key evidence and facts.  But those who claim to be journalists should not be aiding in that effort.  Wired is doing exactly that.  

I'm going to address each and every one of their accusations in order (their accusations are indented and my responses follow).  I realize this is lengthy.  But I take the accusations seriously, know that they're false, believe it's incumbent to provide the same accountability and responsiveness I demand of others, and everyone is free to read only those portions which interest them.

Hansen

Tellingly, Greenwald never misses a chance to mention Poulsen’s history as a hacker, events that transpired nearly two decades ago and have absolutely no bearing on the current case. This is nothing more than a despicable smear campaign based on the oldest misdirection in the book: Shoot the messenger. 

This is all false.  I've actually mentioned Poulsen's hacker past very rarely, and every time I did, it was in connection with substantive questions raised about his relationships to key players in these events, including Lamo and Mark Rasch.  I don't think Poulsen's credibility is impaired because he was once a hacker or even a felon.  I think it's impaired because he is withholding key evidence and pretending that he and Lamo have nothing more than a standard journalist-source relationship. 

Even Greenwald believes this … sometimes. When The New York Times ran an entirely appropriate and well reported profile of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — discussing his personality and his contentious leadership style — Greenwald railed against the newspaper, terming the reporters “Nixonian henchmen.”  

This claim is designed to accuse me of hypocrisy for simultaneously arguing that Assange should not be subjected to scrutiny while demanding full disclosure of the chats.  That accusation is made only by wildly distorting what I wrote in the very piece Hansen cites.  My objection to The New York Times smear job on Assange was that by prominently featuring gossipy, personality issues about him on the very day the Iraq War documents were released, the paper distracted attention from what actually mattered:  what the documents showed about American behavior in the war (the same reason why Nixon wanted dirt about Ellberg's psychiatric state:  to impugn the source of the Pentagon Papers).  In fact, I argued the opposite of what Hansen suggests:  "None of this is to say that WikiLeaks and Assange shouldn't be subject to scrutiny. Anyone playing a significant role in political life should be, including them." 

Moreover, I never argued that Wired should release deeply personal, irrelevant aspects of the chat logs.  I argued that they should be much more diligent about making those assessments given that part of what they withheld was not personat at all and, more important, that they should release the portions about which Lamo has made public claims or confirm they do not exist.

Hansen:

Similarly, when Assange complained that journalists were violating his privacy by reporting the details of rape and molestation allegations against him in Sweden, Greenwald agreed, writing: “Simultaneously advocating government transparency and individual privacy isn’t hypocritical or inconsistent; it’s a key for basic liberty.”

With Manning, Greenwald adopts the polar opposite opinions. “Journalists should be about disclosing facts, not protecting anyone.” This dissonance in his views has only grown in the wake of reports that Manning might be offered a plea deal in exchange for testimony against Assange. 

Hansen again wildly distorted what I wrote by taking a Twitter comment and tearing it out of context.  I most certainly never "agreed" that "journalists were violating [Assange's] privacy by reporting the details of rape and molestation allegations against him in Sweden,"  That's a total fabrication.  I don't believe that and never said that.  Hansen made that up.  

Assange was asked in a BBC interview questions such as "how many women have you slept with?"  When Assange refused to answer, many WikiLeaks critics pointed to this as hypocrisy -- oh, see, he doesn't believe in transparency for himself -- and my tweet pointed out the obvious fallacy of that claim:  there is nothing inconsistent about demanding transparency for government while insisting upon personal privacy.

Moreover, the question Assange refused to answer -- "how many women have you slept with?" -- is relevant to absolutely nothing of public interest, including the rape accusation.  By stark contrast, the information Wired is concealing -- whether Lamo is telling the truth about his various claims -- goes to the heart of one of the most significant political controversies in the world.

Hansen:

Nonetheless, once the Times story — and our explanation — was over a week old, Greenwald sent Poulsen an e-mail inquiring about it, and giving him one day to respond to his questions. He sent that e-mail on Christmas Day.

When we didn’t meet the urgent Yuletide deadline he’d imposed on himself to publish a piece about a 10-day-old newspaper article, he wrote in his column that we “ignored the inquiries,” adding: “This is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth.” 

First, not only did I raise most of these issues six months ago (about which Poulsen says "We took the high ground and ignored Greenwald and Salon"), but I loudly re-raised them on my Twitter feed -- from which Hansen quotes -- on Friday, December 24.  See here ("Read the first 6 paragraphs of this article to see how inexcusable it is for Wired not to release the chat logs it has: http://is.gd/jo29s"), here ("Wired Magazine [and the WashPost] possess key evidence on 1 of the year's most important news stories but have concealed it for months") and here ("Fair enough - I mean @KPoulsen: RT @stevesilberman "Do not underestimate the cultural divide between "Wired magazine" and wired.com.").

Second, after trumpeting my intention to raise these issues the day before, I then emailed Poulsen on Saturday morning -- Christmas -- and told him I intended to write about this the following day.  When I didn't hear back from him all day Saturday, I waited the entire next day (Sunday) and, in the hopes of getting a reply from Poulsen, still didn't write anything.  I only published my piece mid-morning on Monday:  two full days after I first emailed Poulsen.  Once it was published, Poulsen, despite being "on vacation," certainly responded on Twitter very quickly. 

Third, my accusation -- that "this is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth" -- was not based exclusively or even primarily on Poulsen's failure to answer my questions; it was based on his six-month-and-counting withholding of key evidence and his failure to confirm or deny all of the serious claims made by his close associate, Adrian Lamo.

Poulsen

To Greenwald, all this makes Lamo “a low-level, inconsequential hacker.” This conclusion is critical to his thesis that Lamo and I have something more than a source-journalist relationship. Greenwald’s theory is that Lamo’s hacks were not newsworthy.

That Lamo's skills as a hacker are "critical" to any issue I've raised is just absurd.  In speaking to numerous hackers and others in that community, I repeatedly heard the same thing about Lamo:  that his hacking exploits were unsophisticated but designed to achieve the only thing he cares about:  press attention for himself.  That issue is interesting because it suggests what Lamo's motive might have been for turning government informant on Manning -- an opportunity to get his name in the paper -- but it has little or nothing to do with the ethical issues I raised about Wired and Poulsen.

I detailed with multiple links and documentation in my June article exactly what makes this Lamo-Poulsen relationship so strange.  Lamo basically used Poulsen as his personal spokesman for years:  he'd hack, and then have Poulsen announce it.  When Lamo was involuntarily hospitalized, it was Poulsen he called, so that Wired would write about in the light Lamo wanted.  This is how Information Week described the relationship all the way back in 2002:

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.

Lamo posts smiling, arms-around-each-other pictures with Poulsen on his Facebook page, including one the day before Wired published excerpts of the chat log.  Nadim Kobeissi, Lamo's longtime friend, told me that Lamo has long considered Poulsen his friend.  This is anything but some objective, arms-length journalist-source relationship.

Poulsen:

From that bit of sophistry, Greenwald descends into antics that shouldn’t pass muster at any serious news outlet. He bolsters his argument by quoting Jacob Appelbaum as an expert on Lamo. Appelbaum has "known Lamo for years," he writes, and "Lamo’s ‘only concern’ has always been ‘getting publicity for Adrian'."

Nowhere in the article does he disclose that Appelbaum -- the only third-party source in the piece -- is a key WikiLeaks activist: a man who’d shared hotel rooms with Julian Assange, and had already spoken publicly on behalf of the organization. Appelbaum's key role in the organization has been a published fact since April.

The quote from Appelbaum about Lamo's desire for publicity is (a) something that at least ten other people told me in that period and (b) completely ancillary to any points I raised about Wired.  I will readily concede that Appelbaum's association with WikiLeaks should have been disclosed.  It wasn't for a simple reason:  I wasn't aware of it.  Poulsen claims that "Appelbaum's key role in the organization has been a published fact since April" but notably links to no news report saying that (only to Appelbaum's Twitter feed).  I was unaware -- and still am -- of any news reports before then identifying him as such.  If there were any, I didn't see them.

I quoted Appelbaum because his quote was most usable, but I could easily have quoted at least ten other people with knowledge of Lamo to make this same point.   Indeed, in a June email he sent me after I wrote that article -- none of which was off the record:  indeed, it was all explicitly on the record at his request -- Wired's own Ryan Singel told me: "Lamo is clearly starved for attention.  Often he gets it by coming up with odd leads. Here he decided to become a rat, and then went on to brag about it."  That quote would have sufficed just as well as the Appelbaum one.  That Lamo is pathologically fixated on self-promotion is an article of faith in the hacker world.

Poulsen:

After that glaring omission, Greenwald mischaracterizes my contacts with the companies Lamo hacked. In writing about Lamo’s New York Times hack, Greenwald claims: “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.” In truth, I contacted a spokeswoman for the Times, notified her of the intrusion, gave her time to confirm it, and then quoted her in the article. 

This is the type of accusation that proves how weak is Poulsen's claim that my articles were filled with a "litany of errors."  Read what Poulsen claims I wrote.  Then read what he says is the reality.  They're the exact same thing.  That's one his leading examples of my "errors."

Poulsen:

Nearly half of his article is devoted to a characteristically murky conspiracy theory involving a well-known cybercrime attorney and former Justice Department lawyer named Mark Rasch. Rasch is one of three people that Lamo sought for advice while looking to turn in Bradley Manning.

The blockbuster, stop-the-presses, “incontrovertibly true” disclosure with which Greenwald caps his piece? That Rasch once prosecuted me for hacking the phone company.

Based, apparently, on something he read on a website called GovSecInfo.com, Greenwald announces that "Rasch is also the person who prosecuted Kevin Poulsen back in the mid-1990s and put him in prison for more than three years." (I served five, actually, and all but two months of it was in pretrial custody, held without bail.) He then attacks me for failing to report on this supposed link. "Just on journalistic grounds, this nondisclosure is extraordinary," he claims. . . . 

Rasch, who worked for the Justice Department in Washington D.C., left government service in 1991. I had two prosecutors in my phone-hacking case: David Schindler in Los Angeles and Robert Crowe in San Jose, California.

Greenwald, a former law professor, could have learned this in a few seconds on Pacer, the federal court’s public records system. It would have set him back 16 cents, and his article would have been half as long.

First, I was never a "law professor" and never claimed to be one.  By Poulsen's reasoning, this grave inaccuracy proves how his response is filled with "a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness."

Second, my statement that Rasch prosecuted Poulsen is based on far more than "something [I] read on a website called GovSecInfo.com."  It is true that Rasch's GovSec biography does say that he "investigated and prosecuted the earliest computer crime cases including those of Kevin Poulsen."  But so do other sources.  From a 2002 article in Information Week:  "Lamo could face felony charges, says Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime Unit, who prosecuted Poulsen and Mitnick."  Rasch's biography for Secure IT Experts similarly states:  "Mark investigated and prosecuted the earliest computer crime cases including those of Kevin Poulsen, Kevin Mitnick and Robert T. Morris."  

Beyond those sources, Rasch was the head of the DOJ's Computer Crimes Unit until 1991:  the year Poulsen was arrested after several years of being a fugitive and one of the Government's most-wanted hackers.  Rasch was probably not the courtroom attorney litigating the case against Poulsen -- it'd be highly unlikely that he would be -- but it's inconceivable that, as head of the Computer Crimes Unit, he wasn't significantly involved in the investigation of and search for Poulsen and his ultimate arrest, which is presumably why these multiple sources contain the claim that Rasch "investigated" and/or "prosecuted Poulsen."

That the same Mark Rasch then proceeded to have numerous interactions over the years with Poulsen -- and then end up as the person who helped direct Lamo to government authorities to inform on Manning -- is absolutely relevant and is something that should be disclosed when Poulsen writes about this case.  If, despite these facts, Rasch actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the investigation of Poulsen, then Poulsen should say so, and if it's true, I'll be the first to rescind this disclosure objection.  But my statements were well-grounded in these sources and facts.

Poulsen:

The “regularly contributes to his magazine” part is apparently a reference to this single 2004 opinion piece [by Rasch] in Wired magazine.

My claim that he was a "regular contributor" to Wired was based on numerous sources, apparently including Rasch himself.  From Rasch's biography on the SCIIP Board of Advisers:  "He writes a monthly column in Symantec’s Security Focus online magazine . . .  and is a regular contributor to Wired magazine."  His biography as a guest on The Charlie Rose Show states that he "is a regular contributor to 'Wired' magazine."  His own prepared biography makes the same claim ("a regular contributor to Wired Magazine").  If Rasch has nothing to do with Wired other than the single article, then there is obviously no disclosure issue, but it also means that someone has been making false claims about Rasch's relationship to that magazine.

I could go on -- the daily, off-the-record conversations Greenwald had with Assange while penning at least one of his anti-Wired screeds; or the fact that he failed to disclose in the body of his first article that he was personally trying to secure a new attorney for Manning while writing the piece. 

Poulsen seems to think that it's some sort of secret that I am an active supporter of both WikiLeaks and Manning.  Unlike Poulsen, I don't conceal my relationships to subjects or my views of them.  That I am a fervent supporter of WikiLeaks and Manning is about the most disclosed fact about me.  I've twice encouraged readers to donate money to WikiLeaks, including all the way back in March when few people had heard of the group.  I've also encouraged readers to donate to Manning's defense fund right out in the open on my blog.  I've made repeatedly clear -- by writing it -- that I consider both of their actions heroic.

Poulsen doesn't provide any citation for his grand discovery that I spoke with Assange while writing my piece in June; that's because he presumably knows that because I said it.  I often make clear that I communicate with Assange about WikiLeaks matters (from CNN's introduction of me on Monday night:  "Glenn, I'd like to start with you. I know you have spoken to Julian Assange several times").  I don't know where Poulsen gets the idea that my conversations with him were "off-the-record":  the reason I didn't quote Assange in my piece on Wired is because he had nothing of relevance to say.  Indeed, the only statement of WikiLeaks that I used was its allegation that Poulsen himself acted as government informant -- an accusation I stated in both articles had no evidence to support it.

Honest journalists disclose rather than hide their associations and views.  And that's exactly what I've done from the start with both WikiLeaks and Manning.  

Finally, we have this:

But by now it should be clear why we don’t seek Greenwald’s advice on a serious matter of journalistic ethics. 

Over the years, Wired has repeatedly -- and always approvingly -- cited to, quoted from, and otherwise used my work.  Its reporters, including Ryan Singel and others, have sent emails with lavish praise.  After my first article about Wired in June, Singel emailed me to defend Poulsen and contest my objections but wrote:  "I've long been a fan of your work and I'll continue to be."  

But now that I've written critically about Wired, I'm suddenly converted into a dishonest, ethics-free, unreliable hack.  That's par for the course.  That's why so few people in this profession are willing to criticize other media outlets.  Journalists react as poorly as anyone to public criticism; it doesn't make you popular to do it; it can terminate career opportunities and relationships; it's certain your credibility will be publicly impugned.  But journalists need scrutiny and accountability as much as anyone -- especially when, as here, they are shaping public perceptions about a vital story while withholding important information -- and I'd vastly prefer to be the one to provide it even if it means that the targets of the criticism don't like it and lash out. 

Ultimately, what determines one's credibility is not the names you get called or the number of people who get angry when you criticize them.  What matters is whether the things you say are well-supported and accurate, to correct them if they're not, and to subject yourself to the same accountability and transparency you demand of others. 

 

UPDATE:  Poulsen's claim that Rasch has contributed to Wired only a "single 2004 opinion piece" is false. Here are two at least -- here and here -- in addition to the close to 40 times that he has been cited as a source in Wired articles, including -- as I documented in my piece on Sunday -- multiple times by Poulsen and Zetter. That's presumably why he calls himself a "regular contributor" to Wired. And that's all independent of the other forms of interaction over the years Poulsen and Rasch have had. That Poulsen and Wired has this long and varied relationship with the person who put Lamo in touch with federal authorities in order to inform on Manning in certainly something I'd want to know -- and I think the reasonable reader would want to know -- when reading Poulsen write about the Manning case.