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Showdown in the courtroom: Bradley Manning comes to face to face with the man who alerted the authorities
Last updated at 9:34 AM on 21st December 2011
Testimony: Former hacker Adrian Lamo faced a grilling from Manning's lawyer
Bradley Manning came face to face in the same room on Tuesday with the man who alerted the authorities about his alleged leaks.
Former hacker Adrian Lamo took the stand on the fifth day of Manning’s pretrial hearing at
Lamo, who shopped Bradley Manning to the FBI and Army for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents to WikiLeaks, denied in his testimony that he’d violated a journalistic or ministerial promise of confidentiality when he turned over the chat logs that led to Manning’s arrest.
The 30-year-old said he had decided just a day after first chatting over instant messenger with Manning, who used the handle bradass87 in their online chats, to report the Army intelligence analyst.
Lamo said he decided to do it because what was being confessed was so 'egregious' that action needed to be taken.
The 'depth of the unsurpassed leakage' made Lamo also concerned that he could get in trouble for remaining quiet.
'I'm a journalist and a minister,' Lamo wrote to Manning, 24, in one chat, egging him on to elaborate on his confession.
'You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection.'
The government, which rested its case against Manning on Tuesday afternoon, wants Manning court-martialed for aiding the enemy and 21 other charges.
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But Manning's lawyers argue that others had access to the
They maintain he was a troubled young man who shouldn't have had access to classified material; that military computer security was lax; and that the material WikiLeaks published did little or no harm to national security.
Lamo, who acknowledged in the hearing to being diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder, remained unperturbed throughout the hearing, even when things the exchanges between him and Mannings attorney David Coombs became more animated, Wired.com reports.
Coombs asked Lamo why he told bradass87 in their chat that 'none of this is for print,' when he’d already handed over logs of their initial chats to law enforcement agents.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson watched with keen interest on Tuesday as David Coombs, right, defended Bradley Manning in his cross-examination pf former hacker Adrian Lamo
He would also later go on to give all of the chat logs to the government and to Wired.com.
'It was not for print by me,' Lamo responded.
Coombs asked: 'So you thought Wired magazine wouldn’t print it?'
Lamo said he gave the chats to Wired.com before he met with law enforcement agents a second time because he was not sure if they would arrest him.
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He had been convicted in 2004 for hacking Microsoft and the New York Times.
Coombs’ questioning of Lamo sought to portray him as a dishonest informant who was trying to get Manning to incriminate himself.
The attorney quizzed Lamo over his role as a minister and asked: 'Don’t you think he was contacting you for moral support?'
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Manning took notes at times during Lamo’s testimony and sometimes looked right at him.
Wired.com reports that the only moment Manning showed any real animation was when Lamo was shown dozens of pages of the chat logs and was asked if he recognized them.
As the courtroom waited in silence for an answer, Lamo took several pages to look at every page and Manning leaned and held out the palm of his hand, as if in exasperation.
Lamo has a history of psychological disorders and drug abuse but said he wasn’t on drugs and was feeling 'more normal than usual' when he recorded the chats and gave them to authorities.
Special Agent Antonio Patrick Edwards, who works for the Army’s Computer Crime Investigation Unit, testified earlier in the day that he received the chats from Lamo after getting an e-mail from Chet Uber, a civilian who had worked with Lamo.
The email alerted Edwards that Uber was 'aware of a person in contact with an intelligence analyst who was releasing information to an Australian national in connection with WikiLeaks.'
Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2076917/WikiLeaks-Bradley-Manning-comes-face-face-hacker-alerted-authorities.html
Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
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