An American soldier who reportedly passed a classified video of a US army helicopter gunning down civilians in Iraq to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, might also have leaked reams of top-secret cables.
The Pentagon confirmed yesterday that it was holding Army Specialist Bradley Manning, of Potomac, Maryland, in detention in Kuwait, although it did not elaborate on whether the 22-year-old had been officially charged.
The military did not refer to the video. It said only that it “takes the management of classified information very seriously” because of its threat to national security and the lives of its soldiers.
WikiLeaks.org, a three-year-old website that publishes sensitive material globally, posted video earlier this year of a July 2007 attack in Baghdad in which more than a dozen civilians, including a Reuters photojournalist and his driver, were killed. Accompanying audio recorded the crew apparently revelling in the killings.
The video, labelled Collateral Murder by the website, caused outrage, with anti-war campaigners claiming it portrayed a trigger-happy military showing disregard for civilian life. But top US military officials, as well as Defence Secretary Robert Gates, countered that the video was used out of context and ignored the lead-up in which insurgents had attacked US soldiers.
An internal army investigation, which concluded that the soldiers involved acted appropriately, noted that weapons allegedly carried by some of the Iraqis were found at the scene. The website of Wired magazine first reported the detention of Specialist Manning, who had been stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq.
His arrest, nearly two weeks ago, came after he had reached out to a former hacker boasting that he had leaked the video along with other top-secret footage and as many as 260,000 classified US diplomatic cables, which he claimed exposed “almost criminal political back dealings” involving the US State Department.
But Californian Adrian Lamo, a former hacker turned journalist and security consultant, who once infiltrated The New York Times computer system, dobbed the soldier in to authorities after Manning started discussing classified information.
“He just wanted somebody to talk to, somebody he could confide in, and I wish to God he had left it to that instead of going on to discuss classified material with me,” Mr Lamo said.
A spokesman for WikiLeaks declined on Monday to say whether Specialist Manning had been a source but said he believed that the person behind the leak “whoever it is, is protected by law”.
In messages via Twitter, the group elaborated: “We never collect personal information on our sources, so we are unable as yet to confirm the Manning story.” It noted, however, that “if Brad Manning is the … whistleblower then, without doubt, he’s a national hero”.
But WikiLeaks said suggestions that it had received 260,000 documents “are, as far as we can tell, incorrect”.
Relatives of civilians killed in the gunship attack criticised Specialist Manning’s detention. “Justice was what this US soldier did by uncovering this crime against humanity,” said Nabil Noor-Eldeen, whose brother, Namir, was one of the Reuters employees killed in the strike. “The American military should reward him, not arrest him.” – (The Age, Australia)
