Wiki Leaks - Dont know source of documents

WikiLeaks staff do not know if a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst detained by military authorities was the source for the confidential U.S. diplomatic cables released this week, a spokesman said on Monday. Kristinn Hrafnsson said WikiLeaks had contributed to a fund established to pay for the defense of Bradley Manning, 23, who is being held at a Marine base near Washington in connection with the disclosure of U.S. secrets. U.S. officials have declined to say if the cables he is accused of mishandling are the same ones that WikiLeaks has made public this week. "WikiLeaks has contributed to his defense, a substantial amount of money," Hrafnsson said. "I don't even know if he is the source of the material." "If he is the source of the material that he is being accused of leaking, I think he is a hero," Hrafnsson, a former Icelandic television journalist, told an event in London. WikiLeaks has shaken the diplomatic world by publishing excerpts of more than 250,000 confidential cables in partnership with five Western newspapers, including The New York Times and The Guardian in Britain. The disclosures exposed the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy, including candid assessments of world leaders. Earlier this year Manning was charged with downloading more than 150,000 State Department documents and leaking some cables while assigned to the intelligence branch of a U.S. Army unit in Iraq. "The basis of the organization is to have a gateway for whistleblowers. We don't identify our sources and we don't even know our sources," Hrafnsson said. Hrafnsson said people had a right to know what officials working on their behalf were doing and dismissed concern that the publication of the cables would damage cooperation between countries. "If global stability is based on deception and lies, maybe it needs a bit of a shaking up," he told Reuters Television. WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, an Australian-born former computer hacker, leads a nomadic existence and keeps his location a secret for fear of reprisals, but Hrafnsson said he personally had no concerns about his own position. "We are doing a good thing. We are doing this for the general public," he said. "I think it is perfectly legal. We haven't heard any justification or reference to any legal code that we are supposed to have broken, so we don't think we have broken any law." He said only a few hundred of the thousands of cables had been published and it could take months to disclose them all. (Reuters)