My first conversation with the hacker Adrian Lamo , who died on March 14 , took place in June 2010 . Two weeks earlier , the Pentagon had arrested a 22-year-old analyst named Manning , and I had reported on that case , resorting to what little information I was able to glean from my sources at the US Defense Department . I took an interest in the case because Manning had leaked hundreds of thousands of classified US documents to WikiLeaks , and later boasted about it in a private chat with Lamo , a known American hacker of Colombian descent . I could not then have imagined that EL PAÍS would be among the newspapers selected by WikiLeaks to publish the largest ever leak of classified diplomatic cables . I couldn ’ t live with the idea of not having done anything Adrian Lamo Lamo , who was born in Boston 37 years ago , died last week in Kansas , as his father Mario confirmed on Facebook in a Friday post : “ With great sadness and a broken heart I have to let know all of Adrian ’ s friends and acquittances [ sic ] that he is dead . A bright mind and compassionate soul is gone , he was my beloved son ... ” Neither the family nor authorities have revealed the cause of death . WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange immediately tweeted the following message : “ Coroner says serial FBI snitch Adrian Lamo is dead . Lamo , a fake journalist , petty conman & betrayer of basic human decency , promised alleged source @ xychelsea journalistic protection , friendship and support , then sold him to the FBI. ” It was the expected reaction . Coroner says serial FBI snitch Adrian Lamo is dead . Lamo , a fake journalist , petty conman & betrayer of basic human decency , promised alleged source @ xychelsea journalistic protection , friendship and support , then sold him to the FBI . https : //t.co/SkvbrG7Kyn pic.twitter.com/vZMyJhRWCW — Julian Assange ⌛ ( @ JulianAssange ) March 16 , 2018 The story I wrote about Manning , and which I insistently offered to my editors in the summer of 2010 , was headlined : ‘ El fanfarrón y el delator ’ ( or , The show-off and the snitch ) . Manning had boasted about his leak to Lamo , about whom I wrote that he was “ a 29-year-old hacker who was once wanted by the FBI , famous for having broken into the computer networks of The New York Times , altering their databases and adding his name to their list of columnists. ” Manning ( whose first name is now Chelsea following sex-reassignment surgery ) revealed to Lamo that she was the source who had given WikiLeaks a video showing a 2007 helicopter air strike in Baghdad where 12 civilians had died , and of a 2009 air strike against the Afghan locality of Garani that resulted in around 100 civilian deaths . Chelsea Manning . AFP Faced with a hermetic response from the Pentagon , which would only admit that Manning was in Kuwait awaiting a court-martial , I decided to search for Lamo online . I sent off several desperate messages to all the accounts I could find with the name Adrian Lamo . To my surprise , he replied immediately through a Google service , we briefly chatted through Gmail , and he later phoned me from a private number . Despite being a hacker , and quite adept at covering his tracks , he didn ’ t seem particularly concerned that the authorities might eavesdrop on what he had to say , as he never once resorted to encrypted communications . The fact was , Lamo had already shared everything he knew about Manning with the US Army . He told me that it had been a tough decision to make , that he had thought about it for a long time , and that he still had to come to terms with it . “ It wasn ’ t easy , of course it wasn ’ t easy , but a soldier had given WikiLeaks and who knows how many foreign governments thousands and thousands of classified documents , ” he told me in perfect Spanish . “ Do you know what might be in there ? The names of undercover agents , the names of informers , secret locations that may now be attacked. ” That conversation produced my first story about Manning on June 10 , 2010 , which was headlined ‘ Un topo con problemas de autoestima ’ ( or , A mole with self-esteem issues ) . That was my first impression of Manning , not because of what Lamo told me , but because of the chat logs of their conversations dating back to May 2010 , and which Lamo shared with me . This is how it began : Lamo told me that he was certain Manning had been deceived by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “ im an army intelligence analyst , deployed to eastern baghdad , pending discharge for “ adjustment disorder ” in lieu of “ gender identity disorder. ” if you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months , what would you do ? ” Later , Manning boasted about how she was burning information on a CD that he had labeled Lady Gaga , as she was listening to a song by this artist and Beyoncé . On other occasions the conversation revealed great vulnerability , to the point of casting doubt on Manning 's mental health . “ im very isolated atm… lost all of my emotional support channels… family , boyfriend , trusting colleagues… im a mess ... im in the desert , with a bunch of hyper-masculine trigger happy ignorant rednecks as neighbors… and the only safe place i seem to have is this satellite internet connection ” Lamo later explained to me that he detected something frivolous and unwitting about Manning , and that this was what led him to turn Manning in : Lamo felt that Manning had not properly gauged the potential effects of cooperating with WikiLeaks . “ I don ’ t think she was aware of what she was doing . I ’ m sure she wasn ’ t . It made me very doubtful . What I did was not easy . But she was not a hacker who was moved by ideals , or by a code , ” he told me . It was difficult to talk to Lamo . He had Asperger ’ s syndrome , and had additionally been committed to psychiatric institutions for substance abuse and panic attacks . My conversations with Lamo throughout the years were more like monologues that occurred with no prior warning , on topics ranging from hacking to political crises in Latin America . In fact , following our initial conversation , he disappeared and did not show up again until he found out that EL PAÍS was one of the news organizations publishing the WikiLeaks cables , six months later . During our second conversation , Lamo told me that he was certain – and he wanted me to write it this way – that Manning had been deceived by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange . The latter , he said , had manipulated a young soldier , making the most of an emotional weakness to steal classified US information and offer it to the nation ’ s enemies . “ Manning will pay , but the culprit is Assange , ” he said . Manning was indeed court-martialed , found guilty , and sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years in prison for violation of the Espionage Act . Barack Obama commuted Manning 's sentence before handing the Oval Office to Donald Trump , and in the meantime Julian Assange took refuge inside the Embassy of Ecuador in London to evade arrest over rape allegations in Sweden . Lamo and Manning saw each other face to face only once , in June 2013 , during the last weeks of the court-martial at Fort Meade , a military base outside Washington DC . The uniformed soldier , staring straight ahead , teeth clenched , heard the hacker ’ s reasons for alerting authorities . Lamo did little more than answer the defense and prosecution ’ s questions , most of the time with yes-no replies . He was evidently uncomfortable . He was now detested by the group of hackers that he had long been a leading member of . By that time I myself was far away , in Jerusalem , covering other issues for the newspaper . But when I read about Lamo ’ s testimony , it brought to mind a few snippets of our earlier conversations , the notes of which I still keep . “ I couldn ’ t live with the idea of not having done anything . I am sure that if she ’ d kept giving information to Assange , many more lives would be in danger , ” he said . “ Now I have to come to terms with myself. ” I suspect that he was not very successful at this last task . English version by Susana Urra .
The family of the man who turned in Chelsea Manning announced his death on Friday . This reporter reveals the conversations he had with Lamo over the course of several years