Intelligence leaker busted by hacker :: War on Terror

« Democrats avoiding town halls | Main | Re: Obamacare deja vu. And vu, and vu ... »

June 7, 2010

Intelligence leaker busted by hacker

In what Jules Crittenden describes as a sort of a "hacker bites dog" story, Threat Level reports that Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence 22-year-old Army specialist Bradley Manning, who boasted to a hacker concerned about threats to U.S. national security, about giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks:

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing "almost criminal political back dealings."

"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 classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public," Manning wrote.

Wired.com could not confirm whether Wikileaks received the supposed 260,000 classified embassy dispatches.

[...] From the chat logs provided by Lamo, and examined by Wired.com, it appears Manning sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker. He discussed personal issues that got him into trouble with his superiors and left him socially isolated, and said he had been demoted and was headed for an early discharge from the Army.

When Manning told Lamo that he leaked a quarter-million classified embassy cables, Lamo contacted the Army, and then met with Army CID investigators and the FBI at a Starbucks near his house in Carmichael, California, where he passed the agents a copy of the chat logs. At their second meeting with Lamo on May 27, FBI agents from the Oakland Field Office told the hacker that Manning had been arrested the day before in Iraq by Army CID investigators.

Lamo has contributed funds to Wikileaks in the past, and says he agonized over the decision to expose Manning -- he says he's frequently contacted by hackers who want to talk about their adventures, and he's never considered reporting anyone before. The supposed diplomatic cable leak, however, made him believe Manning's actions were genuinely dangerous to U.S. national security.

It's downright scary to know that obviously immature and anti-American nutjobs like Manning are given intelligence clearances. When someone proves to be so clearly a threat to his country that a hacker who has in the past contributed to Wikileaks sees a guy as a dangerous threat - it's way past time that our own intelligence people should have picked up on it.

Posted by Richard at June 7, 2010 11:41 AM

Articles Related to War on Terror: