The article hints at a suspicious death, possibly linked to his project. Maybe, but also people die unexpectedly. Add drugs and diseases and you multiply the odds.
Bradley Manning (at the time) was suicidal. Instead of actually doing it, she chose another method that is as good as suicide: Indiscriminate leaking of classified information to someone listed as an enemy combatant, confessing to her act, and waiting for others to bring the punishment: Death by military court.
In this dramatic suicide attempt, she implicated Lamo. Lamo's hand was forced: You are talking to an unstable person who just admitted to indiscriminate leaking of classified information. You don't know their level of access, so you assume they can do maximum damage to your country men.
What was the patriotic thing to do? Certainly not to let Bradley keep doing what she was doing. What was the hacker thing to do? Exfiltrating information you are formally granted access to on a lady gaga CD is not being a hacker. Manning was not a friend of Lamo, just because she struggled with similar sexuality issues.
Lamo was compromised and knew that any future misstep could land him back in jail. He had the FBI looking over his shoulder. It is not worth it to go to jail for another person's suicide attempt, not even to get those cables released (besides embarrassment and the WikiLeaks/Russia tactic of making the US intelligence community "clam up", this did not do much).
I do wonder how many of the people that despised him, called him a dirty rat, liar, snitch, would have done exactly the same in his situation. The Kevin Poulsen article made it worse than it had to be for all parties involved, though I could understand the wish to have the details come out (there is conscientious snitching and malicious snitching, and the chatlogs point to conscientious snitching to me).
One thing that nags me is that the official police report [1] speaks of "dead bodies found", not "dead body found".
Perhaps Lamo's death was a trigger for Manning's recent suicide attempt (another dramatic cry for help/attention), perhaps Manning is just struck with a perpetual urge to end her life, and this will not be last one. [2]
Perhaps this is the mystery (one can only speculate, and while not proper/classy, the article kind of invites it): Project Vigilante was a group of (compromised) hackers working for the government to ensnare other hackers and stay closely connected to the "scene". PV was the main reason that Lamo turned in Manning. Lamo got chastised and lambasted for this. Sees Manning hailed as a legit whistle blower and patriotic hero, and sees himself vilified and not belonging to any group anymore: government sees him as untrustworthy hacker, hackers sees him as untrustworthy G-Man. Decides to take his life, overdosing on whatever concoction he could find in "suicide.zip", implicating the ultimate reason by putting a sticker of the Project Vigilante on his leg and checking out.
Also note that in the latest suicide attempt, Chelsea now implicates her very own friends, there is a pattern there (maybe she wants to go out with a bang, not a whimper):
> Im not really cut out for this world - I tried adapting to this world out here but I failed you - I couldn't do this anymore - I can take people I don't know hating me but not my own friends," she added. "I tried and I'm sorry about my failure.
Imagine being the last one to have an argument with Manning and her going through with it, leaving this public tweet to be found by you... You killed her with your hatred!
What had Manning to gain to contact and thereby grossly implicate Lamo - a complete stranger to her - with espionage, something that would completely define the last years of his life? The cables were already leaked to Assange. Manning just seemed to be bragging and thought she had a connection with Lamo, due to sharing sexuality issues, which was very naive and poor OPSEC on her part. What was she thinking? "Us LGBT need to stick together, and don't tell the authorities when somebody is doing something flagrantly against the law, possibly endangering soldier lives"?
If her multiple suicide attempts in captivity had succeeded, I am sure, would be implicating the inhumane prison treatment she received (such as taking away a blanket to avoid noosing, and checking up on her every two hours).
