Michael Isikoff was 'honored' to meet Anonymous 'senior strategist' Barrett Brown

"Self-appointed" Anonymous spokesman [or not] Barrett Brown certainly has his admirers in the mainstream media and liberal blogosphere.

Veteran journalist Michael Isikoff broke many big stories for The Washington Post and Newsweek - including the alleged desecration of Korans at Guantanamo Bay and former President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky - before becoming the national investigative correspondent for NBC News in 2010



A screenshot from a 2011 interview reveals that Isikoff was apparently "honored" to meet Brown, just weeks after Anonymous hackers attacked a US security firm. Perhaps that's the reason Isikoff didn't inform NBC News viewers that Brown was then currently "on day four of withdrawals from opiates."

"He says he's honored," Barrett Brown bragged online to Anonymous members in an IRC chat during the middle of a March, 2011 NBC News interview with Michael Isikoff.



Isikoff can be seen seated next to Brown in the video, so he was able to witness Brown's claim that he was "honored" live as Anonymous members were informed. In his article, Isikoff wrote that Brown "allowed a reporter to observe as he and what he said were other Anonymous members communicated in a secure chat room."

"Why did you tell @BarrettBrownLOL that you were 'honored' to meet him when you interviewed him last year? Or did he lie?," I asked Isikoff over Twitter on Saturday, but he didn't respond. Brown has evaded my questions since last year, although he sometimes mocks me or smears me as crazy, along with his associates Kenneth Lipp and Neal Rauhauser.

Although Isikoff introduced Brown as an "underground commander in a new warfare", and reported that "Brown calls himself a senior strategist for Anonymous", Isikoff ended the NBC News network report by adding, "Brown told us he is not personally involved in any computer hacking but he fully expects federal prosecutors will come after him."

More from Isikoff's related article:

A leader of the computer hackers group known as Anonymous is threatening new attacks on major U.S. corporations and government officials as part of at an escalating “cyberwar” against the citadels of American power.

“It’s a guerrilla cyberwar — that’s what I call it,” said Barrett Brown, 29, who calls himself a senior strategist and “propagandist” for Anonymous. He added: “It’s sort of an unconventional, asymmetrical act of warfare that we’ve involved in. And we didn’t necessarily start it. I mean, this fire has been burning.”

A defiant and cocky 29-year-old college dropout, Brown was cavalier about accusations that the group is violating federal laws. He insisted that Anonymous members are only policing corporate and governmental wrongdoing — as its members define it.

“Our people break laws, just like all people break laws,” he added. “When we break laws, we do it in the service of civil disobedience. We do so ethically. We do it against targets that have asked for it.”

And those targets are apparently only growing in number. Angered over the treatment of Bradley Manning, the Army private who is accused of leaking classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks and who is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military brig in Quantico, Va., Brown says the group is planning new computer attacks targeting government officials involved in his case.

....

(In the interview, Brown, a sometimes freelance journalist, said he is not personally involved in hacking computers, stressing that he only advises the group, participates in its internal strategy sessions and serves as its spokesman. An FBI spokeswoman on Tuesday described the bureau’s investigation of Anonymous members as “ongoing,” but declined further comment.)

Like The New York Times and other media outlets, Isikoff made no mention of Brown's - perhaps still ongoing - drug addictions but unlike other journalists he had first hand knowledge: Brown told Isikoff himself.

Tim Rogers reported for D Magazine last March - in a story called "Barrett Brown is Anonymous" - that his friend emailed him the night before the NBC News interview, telling him, "Apparently Isikoff is freaked out about having another journalist here."

"But I'll secretly record the proceedings and provide to you," Brown promised Rogers.

A little context: Michael Isikoff is a former investigative reporter for Newsweek. Now he’s a correspondent for NBC News. He flew in from Washington, D.C., in late February with a producer and a cameraman to talk to Brown about his involvement with a notorious international group of hackers called Anonymous that recently used their Low Orbit Ion Cannon to bring down the websites of MasterCard and Visa and the Swedish government, among others, because the institutions had made moves hostile to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. It’s complicated—as Isikoff would learn. But more on that in a moment.

....

Isikoff’s cameraman and producer are the first through the door. Then the man himself, suited, gray hair, short. We shake hands. It feels awkward.

Ever the congenial host, Brown introduces us. “Tim’s a friend,” he says to Isikoff. “He’s writing a story. You guys can have a turf war if you want, but I’m on day four of withdrawals from opiates, so I don’t want to get involved.” Only, because he speaks in a low, rapid baritonal mumble, like he is the world’s worst auctioneer, it comes out: “Timsafriendhes‑writingastoryyouguyscanhaveaturfwarifyou
wantbutImondayfourofwithdrawalfromopiatessoIdontwanttogetinvolved.”

Having mumbled the introduction, Brown steps out onto the tiny second-floor patio to smoke a cigarette, leaving me with Loehr, Isikoff, and his two-man crew. The guys from D.C. stare at me.

“What did he just say?” the producer asks.

“Barrett said that I’m a friend of his and that he’s on day four of withdrawals from opiates.”

Brown has used heroin at various points in his life. On the night about a year ago that he met Loehr, in fact, at the Quarter Bar on McKinney Avenue, he told her he was an ex-junkie. “Ex” is a relative prefix. To manage his addiction, Brown was prescribed Suboxone, a semisynthetic opioid that is meant to be taken orally, but he had been dissolving the film strips in water and shooting the solution to produce a more satisfying high. On the Sunday before Isikoff’s visit, Brown showed me the track marks on his arm. He said he had run out of Suboxone, though, and was saving his last dose because he didn’t want to suffer through withdrawals during his big television interview. Then Isikoff rescheduled from Tuesday to Thursday. Brown couldn’t wait. Now he is hurting.

Isikoff and his crew seem to have trouble processing it all. Was Brown kidding about the drugs? Who is this friend again? And will he have to interpret everything Brown says? They are too befuddled to fight any “turf war.” In any case, Brown returns from his smoke break and launches into a primer on Anonymous, sending the cameraman scrambling to set up his lights. The producer clips mics to Brown and Isikoff. I slip into the kitchen, where I can eat the grapes that Brown’s mother bought for him while I watch the proceedings.

According to entertainment lawyer/disc jockey Mirna Hariz, Brown was shooting up heroin as late as 2010, and a week before the Isikoff interview, Rogers warned him "that if he’s going to have an impact, he’s going to have to connect with people, and he can’t do that on heroin. Words to that effect."

"At the risk of sounding like an asshole, a lot of the rules don’t apply to me," Brown informed Rogers. "My heroin addiction is much different than everyone else’s."