US intel geek ‘Bradass87’ had said he would reveal the truth'

A 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, facing court-martial, appears to be involved in some way in the biggest leak in US military history of classified documents on the war in Afghanistan.

Bradley Manning, who allegedly boasted online that he was going to reveal "the truth" about the war, is believed to be the main suspect who leaked the information to WikiLeaks, The Telegraph reported.

Manning was arrested in Baghdad in May and charged earlier this month with multiple counts of mishandling and leaking classified data, after a computer hacker turned him in, the paper said. Manning is currently awaiting court martial,

During online chats with the hacker, a man thought to be Manning said he had passed material relating to Afghanistan to Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks which leaked over 92,000 documents to The New York Times, Guardian and Der Spiegel.

Manning is alleged to be a whistle-blower who used the online name 'Bradass87' when he contacted a high-profile Californian computer hacker, Adrian Lamo, on May 21, the paper said.

Over the following five days, Bradass87 held a series of online conversations with Lamo, in which he identified himself as "an army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern Baghdad" with "unprecedented access to classified networks".

He said his job gave him access to two high-security networks: the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, SIPRNET, which carries US diplomatic and military intelligence, and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, which includes "top secret" classification.

Bradass87 said the networks had enabled him to see "incredible things, awful things that belong in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC almost criminal political backdealings the non-PR version of world events and crises".

He said he had downloaded 260,000 classified or sensitive State Department cables and transmitted them by computer to Wikileaks.

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