Army Intel Analyst Seen As Main Suspect In WikiLeaks

CNN is reporting that the Pentagon is focusing on jailed 22-year-old Army Pfc. Bradley Manning as the main suspect in a major scandal in which thousands of secret U.S. military documents related to the war in Afghanistan wound up on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

In June, Manning was charged with eight violations of the U.S. Criminal Code for “allegedly illegally transferring classified data,” including a video taken in 2007 that showed U.S troops reigning gunfire from an Apache helicopter upon civilians in Iraq. That video was posted on WikiLeaks earlier this summer.

It is believed that while serving, Manning may have accessed a worldwide military classified internet and e-mail system to download tens of thousands of documents in order to post them to WikiLeaks.

The Army is considering whether he should face the military equivalent of a trial over the charges. Currently, Manning, a resident of Potomac, Md., is being held by the U.S. military in Kuwait while his unit begins to rotate back to the United States…

- Alexa Gitler