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Comment by defroost | Hacker News Reader

It absolutely was not "a bunch of chatter about his depression". It was much more. As small sample from the excellent piece by Glen Greenwald at Salon (1):

MANNING: uhm, trying to keep a low profile for now though, just a warning

LAMO: I'm a journalist and a minister. You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection.

It is clear from this passage that Lamo promised legal protection of a journalist-source or priest-penitent relationship. And it shows Poulsen's claim that the withheld chat logs were only insignificant ramblings related to Manning's mental state was simply not true.

(1) http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/

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It doesn't matter one whit whether Lamo offered protection or not, except insofar as what you think of Lamo.

The shield law doesn't require journalists to keep info private -- it simply allows a reporter to quash a subpoena from law enforcement coming knocking for the info.

If indeed Manning had taken Lamo up on the offer, at best, Manning has a civil case against Lamo.

And as for Lamo being a minister, that's a joke. Knowing Lamo he's got a minister certificate he bought for $25 just to say he has it. Furthermore, Manning didn't take him up on the offer and the chats certainly don't look like a minister and a worshipper talking.

While it's clear Lamo is double-crossing Manning and trying to suck info out of him, this bit of the chat logs don't mean anything substantively.

But folks like Greenwald need a nemesis, so any point to beat on Wired.com for reporting the story will work.

Full disclosure: I work for Wired.com and Kevin Poulsen used to be my editor, and still occasionally is. I never saw the logs till they were pubbed and had no hand in the decision.

You wrote: "But folks like Greenwald need a nemesis, so any point to beat on Wired.com for reporting the story will work."

Greenwald doesn't need to go far to find a "nemesis" in this case. And he is not "beating" on Wired for reporting the story, but for reporting only those portions that it deemed relevant. The fact is Poulsen, for whatever reason, was not truthful in his claim that the unreleased chat logs were only Manning's personal meanderings or that they would reveal national security secrets. Whether someone at the DOJ put pressure on Wired not to release the full chat logs, we will never know. But to say that the full logs are not relevant to Manning's defense or Assange's role in all of this, is absurd.

What came out in the logs isn't relevant to Manning's defense, insofar that the logs are in the hands of the prosecution and so would be given to Manning's lawyer, irregardless.

The same goes for Assange. And nothing in the logs rules out that Assange "ran" Manning nor do they prove it. All they have is Manning saying Assange is good at OPSEC. So Assange may not know WHO Manning is, but still may have directed Manning to get more info or look for this or that. That's the presumed essence of the grand jury proceedings.

Nothing in the logs changes any of that, nor would the publication require the gov attorneys to show exculpatory evidence to a grand jury. A grand jury is a one-sided proceeding intended to convince a group of people that someone likely committed a crime.

Lamo promising "immunity" to Manning on journalistic or religious grounds? Meaningless, except for your opinion of Lamo, which I assume was pretty damn low even before you saw the full logs.

This is all sound and fury, when the real truth is simple as can be. Manning chose the worst person in the world to confide in.

I dunno dood. The parts about manning coming to terms with being trans, coupled with his stories about his dad chasing him out of the house with a shotgun seem kinda personal to me.

Greenwald's a douche. These logs are super personal, not super relevant. All this has taught us is that Lamo is a fucking asshole.

I don't think anyone with a modicum of ability to read between the lines needed these chat logs to form a reasonably accurate assessment of Lamo.

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