The Mysterious Death Of The Hacker Who Turned In Chelsea Manning

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The Mysterious Death Of The Hacker Who Turned In Chelsea Manning
Dina Temple-Raston


Adrian Lamo (center) walks out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., where Chelsea Manning's court-martial was held, on Dec. 20, 2011. Patrick Semansky/AP hide caption

Debbie Scroggin and her husband live at the end of a series of gravel roads in a lonesome part of Kansas. It is the kind of place where, Debbie says, "you have to drive 15 minutes to get anywhere." Getting to the Scroggin house involves turning onto a desolate ribbon of gravel that cuts through fields as far as the eye can see. It was easy to think that someone might come here to either get lost or be forgotten. Scroggin remembers Adrian Lamo arriving on a night train with nothing but a broken suitcase and a hangdog expression.

"He was shorter than I thought he would be," she told me as we sat in her living room. "I saw pictures of him when he was young." He was slight, dimpled and smiling, back then. The Adrian Lamo who stepped off the train was thick, stooped and "had on gloves and a hat and this long black trench coat, full of things."


Chelsea Manning Comments Publicly On The Late Hacker Adrian Lamo

The sheer bulk of the coat demanded attention. Its contents rattled and clicked when Lamo walked, and the look of it was dramatic enough to compel the ushers at the Scroggins' church to pull the couple aside and ask, "Who is that guy, is he with you?" Bill Scroggin, Debbie's husband, remembers saying: "If I told you who that guy really was, you'd never believe me."

Read more at: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/760317486/the-mysterious-death-of-the-hacker-who-turned-in-chelsea-manning