I figured: “Hey, Sawyer, you don’t appear on this list” “Well my real name is James Ford…” took place off screen at some point.
Do we know where Locke and Sawyer were sitting? If they were close together, and the flight manifest was listed by seat number, Locke may have seen or even spoke to Sawyer on the plane, and seen that seat number listed to James Ford on the manifest. He’s good at putting stuff together like that.
Dammit, been pouring through google images looking for just the right face…and you beat me to it!
-rainy
Interesting thought that just occurred to me: there were (are?) 6 or so separate Dharma Initiative stations on the island, supposedly, each with their own project going, at least once upon a time. We know there are multiple groups of people on the island. The Losties had only crash-landed 50 days ago. And yet…
Bluebeard/Zeke’s crew are quite skilled at moving through the jungle quietly. There may be at least one more set of people on the island with the same skill (the Tailies’ Others). Lighting and extinguishing all those torches simultaneously isn’t something a group of people can do so perfectly without practice, even if those torches are propane and can be adjusted with the turn of a knob. There’s that night marksman who grazed Sawyer. BB/Z has at least some information about the Losties. They have superior infiltration skills, and yet haven’t acted to harm the Losties. When you consider this, it’s not too much of a stretch to believe BB/Z’s crew knew all about the raft, and were out actively looking for it that night (otherwise, why waste what might be a precious commodity - fuel - on a night boat ride?).
Some have mentioned that BB/Z folded too easily with his line in the sand offer. It does seem kinda wussy, considering how the above facts would seem to indicate that BB/Z’s crew could do some serious damage to the Losties/Tailies if they wanted to. But what if, as others have surmised, there were something more. Something that BB/Z wanted to keep the Losties away from, or even keep them from knowing about. That makes BB/Z’s actions seem to have more sense.
Getting to the point, I think Flight 815 dropped into the middle of a war, a war between the different stations, and one unlike any war previously fought. Each station has unique weapons or abilities to bring to the fight, and they’ve likely been at it for a while (otherwise why would people need to learn to move so quietly as a group?). People are brought to the island to help those fighting that war - they’re ammunition as defined by the project a given station was working on.
Even if this isn’t what’s going on, it’s fun thinking about.
I snarfed my coffee and it’s your fault.
My assumption is that if Ethan wasn’t their mole, somebody else is. Remember, there’s 30 people there whose names we haven’t heard and haven’t had any lines yet. There could be several spies, now that Hurley’s census has been proven to be incapable of catching Sawyer, who isn’t exactly the craftiest spinster at the scrapbooking seminar.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that Hurley’s census is incapable. All Sawyer had to do was show Hurley his passport. After all … there’s nobody named “Hurley” on the manifest, either. Back up off the doughboy. 
There’s been some spoilers floating around that…Libby is a liar. Perhaps she wasn’t on staff at the hospital, but a patient.
Yes, but that would imply that Hurley would have gone, what, 30-40 days without mentioning that Sawyer’s name is actually Ford?
I’d rather believe that all those people could survive the plane crash than that Hurley could keep a secret that long.
Well, that is certainly a point I cannot argue.
Another point that just occurred to me, possibly clarifying whether Michael was talking to Walt or not. If he wasn’t talking to Walt, the directions would have sent him to the middle of freakin’ nowhere, not straight to the Others.
Unless it was one of the others luring him into a trap.