Suspected leaker’s Boston ties probed

[unhappycamper]

Suspected leaker’s Boston ties probed
By Elisabeth Bumiller
New York Times / July 31, 2010

WASHINGTON — Army investigators are broadening their inquiry into the recent disclosure of classified military information to include friends and associates who may have helped the person they suspect was the leaker, Private First Class Bradley Manning, people with knowledge of the investigation said yesterday.

Two civilians interviewed in recent weeks by the Army’s criminal division said that investigators were focusing in part on a group of Manning’s friends and acquaintances in the Boston area. Investigators, the civilians said, apparently believed that the friends, who include students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University, might have connections to WikiLeaks, which made the documents public.

It is unclear whether the investigators have specific evidence or are simply trying to determine whether one person working alone could have downloaded and disseminated tens of thousands of documents.

The Army has charged Manning with disclosing a classified video of a US helicopter attack to WikiLeaks, as well as more than 150,000 classified diplomatic cables. Military officials said yesterday that the private was also the main suspect in the disclosure to WikiLeaks of more than 90,000 classified documents about the Afghan war, some of which were published this week by The New York Times, the German magazine Der Spiegel, and the British newspaper The Guardian.

A military official acknowledged yesterday that Army investigators were looking into whether Manning physically handed compact discs containing classified information to someone in the United States. Manning, an intelligence analyst who was deployed over the past year in Iraq, visited friends in Boston during a home leave in January.

[stray cat]

1. What is leaked is important - bank employees who leak my ss # and account

I don't consider heroic - even if they put it on a web site. Dick Cheney I did not consider a hero for leaking Plaines CIA role, Leaking the name of Afgan informants I don't consider heroic - if the army is covering up something they did ie a massacre and someone risks their life to bring the truth to life - that is heroic!