Thaindian News

By Gina Gomez
Aug 2, (THAINDIAN NEWS) As the United States government takes every possible step in the investigation of leakage of thousands of secret documents about the Afghan war, a key figure in the probe has revealed to the authorities that army private Bradley Manning, who is charged with leaking the confidential documents, had civilian help. The revelations made by the computer hacker Adrian Lamo who informed the authorities about WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning, might turn into a major step in the probe into the leaks made by the whistle-blower website in the past week.

The California-based hacker stated in a telephone interview which on held on Saturday that he has knowledge about a person who had assisted Bradley Manning in developing an encryption software to transmit the confidential information to WikiLeaks. Despite the fact that Adrian Lamo reiterated that the man was among a group of people based in Boston who are associated with WikiLeaks, he refused to divulge the identity of the person to the authorities. However, the computer hacker revealed that the person who has helped the army private in creating the encrypted software was a student of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the meanwhile, when the whistle-blower online portal was asked about the allegations made by Adrian Lamo that people working with WikiLeaks helped Bradley Manning, the website responded by saying that it is unable to shed any light into the issue as a matter of policy as it does not discuss any matters regarding the identity of sources. Army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning who is considered to be the prime suspect in the leakage of secret war documents by the Pentagon officials, is being held in a detention facility in Virginia.