Afghan WikiLeaks: Was Pvt. Bradley Manning the Source?

(July 26) -- Army intelligence analyst Pvt. Bradley Manning -- who was charged in July with passing confidential information to WikiLeaks -- is almost certainly the source of the 92,000 military documents passed to the website, according to the former hacker who tipped off the Pentagon about Bradley's alleged activities.

Computer wiz Adrian Lamo told ABC's "Good Morning America" today that, shortly before he turned Manning in, the soldier confessed to him that he had passed "a significant amount of classified information" to WikiLeaks. However, Lamo added that the sheer scale of the leak implies that Manning also had external assistance.

"I do not believe that Private Manning had the technical expertise necessary to communicate this amount of information to the outside world without being detected on his own," Lamo told ABC. "And I don't believe he operated without guidance; rather, I think it's more likely that he was a personal shopper for classified data for the WikiLeaks apparatus."

And speaking to The Daily Beast, Lamo accused WikiLeaks of betraying the 22-year-old soldier by releasing the papers before his trial.

"For WikiLeaks to do this, it's transparently callous in its attitude toward [Manning]," Lamo told the site. "The information wasn't going to go away. WikiLeaks could have waited until after Manning was sentenced, after he was tried. WikiLeaks is just paying lip service to wanting to protect Manning as a potential source, while letting him get hit by a train over this."

Manning was held by the U.S. military in Kuwait after his arrest in May.