His obsession with Barrett Brown is weird. Brown hasn’t done anything to Neal. He’s just been a guy targeted by the state.
So for Neal to also target Barrett is weird.
Classic Rauhauser trick is to play both sides of a target. Get in first under an alt, build trust, then attack from your real account. Then, your alt can feed the target bullshit so that they spin their wheels.
And the goal is usually to get info that slips out after long, protracted conversations. It can be anything that people couldn’t learn publicly.
Realize that every claim Neal makes here is not accurate. He’s LARPing to this audience. In this case it’s the former editor of Vice, Rocco Castoro. (sn CappyCarlo). In Rocco’s defense, he doesn’t realize that he’s being taken for a ride (at the time). He realizes it now. And he’s not stupid. But nearly everyone else Neal targets with his LARP fall for it. Carolyn Orr (@RVAWonk) did. She took everything produced by Neal and turned it into press. So much so that when Orr would get published, Neal, in back channels, would repeatedly say “we got some good press” or similar.