Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”

“Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote.

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife

Absolutely amazing!!!!!

You skip over all the wrongdoing in the article and focus on Hilary Clinton.

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife

Absolutely amazing!!!!!

You skip over all the wrongdoing in the article and focus on Hilary Clinton.

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ORIGINAL: Politesub53

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife

Absolutely amazing!!!!!

You skip over all the wrongdoing in the article and focus on Hilary Clinton.

As usual Firm has added 2+2 and made 5. The line about criminal dealing and the line about Mrs Clinton are not even in the same paragraph.

I would have thought the story alone was enough to warrant its own thread, without using it as a political attack on Clinton.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

I'd thought the Right's loathing for Hilary C had died off a bit since somebody else got the Democrat nomination the other year. Evidently not, though.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

I'd thought the Right's loathing for Hilary C had died off a bit since somebody else got the Democrat nomination the other year. Evidently not, though.

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Had to say it twice, huh, Politesub?

You guys have a strong deficiency in the "irony" department.

Firm

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

HTF does a 22 y/o get that level of clearence in the 1st place?

And unless he`s joined,trained and become a SPC in a year and a 1/2,it is bush`s fault..... <pokes Firm in the ribs>

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife

Absolutely amazing!!!!!

You skip over all the wrongdoing in the article and focus on Hilary Clinton.

And maybe you are fixated.

I thought the Clinton stuff was funny.  Especially when you would expect it to have been about Bush, and that administration's dealings in the area, during and after the invasion.

I don't suspect that much of anything that Hillary might be accused of, would match the juiciness of some of that stuff.  And my comments were meant to bring that out.

And, actually, I think a lot of stuff that a young, inexperienced and naive analyst might thing of as "almost criminal political back dealings" would likely just be the same-ole, same-ole diplomatic BS that is thousands of years old.

There was a lot more stuff in the complete article that I thought was pretty interesting, and important as well, but didn't post, and didn't mention.

Fee free to bring them up.

After all, that was why I posted on it.

Firm

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ORIGINAL: hlen5

I read the complete article and commend Lamo for turining him in. If Manning had shown his superiors the lax security, he would have been a hero. The article seems to imply Manning, an isolated, not socially adept soldier was more interested in the splash it would cause.

I agree wrongdoing should be exposed, but it's not up to a 22 year-old to declassify intelligence on his own initiative.

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

So, I guess none of you guys have anything to say about the meat of the article?

Firm

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ORIGINAL: Owner59
<pokes Firm in the ribs>