This article is more than 1 year old

Pentagon Wikileaks probe reaches MIT

Top boffins implicated in Afghan log dump

The investigation into Bradley Manning - the US Army intelligence private suspected of sending tens of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks - has led to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), it's claimed.

Adrian Lamo, the hacker who reported Manning to authorities in May, said that two men at the prestigious university assisted in releasing the material, CNN reports. Lamo also said the men were connected to Wikileaks and gave Manning encryption software, and taught him to use it.

The claims follow a report in the New York Times on Saturday which also said Pentagon investigators were focused on 22-year-old Manning's acquaintances in the Boston area.

An MIT spokesman said: "We are monitoring the situation closely, but are not commenting at this time."

Manning has been in jail since May and has been charged with leaking a classified video of a helicopter attack in Baghdad. He is now also prime suspect for leaking more than 90,000 Secret intelligence reports from the front lines in Afganistan. He was flown back to the US from the Middle East on Friday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has suggested that security measures would have made it very difficult for Manning to send the reports to Wikileaks over the US Army network. The New York Times reported that investigators believe he copied the mass of files to CDs and may have physically passed them to a contact.

Manning visited Boston on leave in January. ®

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like