Saving The World? MIT graduate admits link in leak case
August 1st, 2010
Saving The World? MIT graduate admits link in leak case
Published on August 1st, 2010 @ 09:23:22 am , using 979 words
Boston Globe
By David Abel
A recent MIT graduate acknowledged yesterday that he met and exchanged multiple e-mails with the Army private accused of providing thousands of classified war records to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, but he adamantly denied any role in the massive intelligence leak.
The 23-year-old graduate, who spoke on condition that his name not be published, said investigators from the US Army Criminal Investigations Division interviewed him several months ago to find out whether he or others in the local computer hacker community helped the primary suspect in the leaks, Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.
The Army arrested Manning in May and later charged him with providing a classified video of a US helicopter attack and more than 150,000 classified diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. Military officials have also identified him as the chief suspect in last month’s disclosure of more than 90,000 classified documents from the Afghan war to the website.
“I categorically deny that I had any role in helping Manning leak anything,’’ the former student said in a phone interview. He said he met Manning at MIT in January, when the private was on leave, and later exchanged as many as 10 e-mails with him about security issues.
“I did not help him or know about it before it happened,’’ he said.
The former student said he knows people who work for WikiLeaks, but he said he has never met or corresponded with Julian Assange, the website’s founder. “It’s impossible to be in this community and not know people in WikiLeaks,’’ he said, refer ring to computer hackers. The former student says his specialty is the study of secure information systems and how to penetrate them.
A senior defense official confirmed yesterday that Army investigators, who are working with the FBI, interviewed several students in the Boston area with apparent ties to Manning. Officials at both the FBI and MIT declined to comment.
Another Pentagon official familiar with the investigation, who was also not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said law enforcement officials do not yet consider the individuals accomplices.
“These are people that knew him and might know things about what he may have done,’’ the Pentagon official said.
Adrian Lamo, a former computer hacker who traded instant messages with Manning and later turned him in to authorities, said he knew of five people whom Army officials have interviewed over the past few months in the Boston area, including other MIT students and a student who recently left Boston University to attend Brandeis.
Lamo said he doubts Manning had the technical savvy to copy all the data on his own. He thinks Manning received help from hackers in the area who provided him with encryption software to send the classified information to WikiLeaks, and who helped him ensure those leaks were featured prominently on the website.
“Manning’s a bright, young man, but he didn’t have the technical or political expertise to pull this off,’’ Lamo said in a telephone interview. “He had to depend on people state-side.’’
Lamo said those in the area who he says helped Manning all work in the information security area, oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and have ties to WikiLeaks. “For Manning to have almost a half-dozen friends with ties to WikiLeaks is a matter that has not escaped authorities,’’ he said. “There’s a whole lot of evidence pointing to the fact that it would have been very hard for him to act alone.’’
Lamo, 29, who is originally from Boston, was arrested in 2003 and later convicted of hacking into the computer system of The New York Times. He said he was acquainted with those the Army investigators interviewed, but he declined to disclose their names publicly.
“To a man, I think it’s safe to say that they would not be unhappy if the war was cast in a bad light,’’ he said.
Lamo said he thinks the group in Boston provided Manning with software that allowed him to download thousands of documents without alerting network monitors at the Defense Department. He added that Manning had one of his associates in Boston physically provide WikiLeaks with documents he downloaded on CDs.
“At least one of those acquaintances misled me and defense investigators as to how well he knew some of the people with ties to WikiLeaks,’’ said Lamo, who was criticized last month by WikiLeaks, along with a Wired News reporter, Kevin Poulsen, who broke the story about Private Manning’s arrest, as “notorious felons, informers, and manipulators.’’
Officials at WikiLeaks did not return calls for comment.
Lamo said he thinks Manning was motivated by ideology and by his access to Assange. “He was opposed to what he saw happening on the ground in Iraq and, and I think WikiLeaks played on his ego. He had access to a special server that allowed his leaks jumped to the top of the queue. I think he was made to feel special.’’
For his part, the former MIT student said he thinks Manning was sufficiently intelligent to do it all by himself.
He said that when they met at MIT last winter, Manning spoke about his work as an intelligence analyst and was “nimble’’ about what he could and could not disclose.
“He managed to make his points very well, without compromising anything he wasn’t supposed to be talking about,’’ the former student said. “The fact that he ended up leaking this information is really ironic. He seemed quite sharp and quite capable of doing it on his own.’’
When asked whether there might be additional secret documents in Boston, the former student said he doubts it.
“If anyone had anything remotely incriminating,’’ he said, “I think they would be smart enough to take it outside and burn it.’’
Bryan Bender, Shelley Murphy, and Tracy Jan of the Globe staff contributed to this report. David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.
Permalink
Comment feed for this post
