A rather strange story has appeared in the Telegraph which does its best to suggest that the Guardian's new WikiLeaks book somehow "names" US private Bradley Manning as the source of the leaked US embassy cables which were passed to WikiLeaks. A similar allegation was last night tweeted by WikiLeaks.
The classified cables, of course, caused a worldwide furore when published by the Guardian and other international media.
The Telegraph story is so preposterous that it would be amusing if it were not such a serious allegation. No journalist likes to be accused of betraying a confidential source.
But this charge is particularly ridiculous. The Guardian book contains nothing about Manning's involvement in the leak that is not in the public domain already, from his own mouth. Manning is currently in a US military jail, because he outed himself in some detail as WikiLeaks' source for the cables, in a set of online chats last May.
His correspondent, Adrian Lamo, took these chat-logs to the US military, who promptly arrested Manning and charged him with leaking these cables and the other leaked classified material.
All the "confessions" in the chat-logs were then subsequently published, largely in Wired magazine, as we acknowledge in our book.
So Manning has already been "named" over and over again as the source. WikiLeaks even posts the legend Free Bradley on every one of its tweets – which might suggest it also thinks he has something to do with the leaked material. Does that constitute "naming" a source?
We possess no evidence which incriminates Manning, who was never our source. We have published nothing which could be used as evidence against him. The whole world knows he is alleged to be the source. So to accuse us of somehow naming him looks at best like a piece of mischief and at worst something more unpleasant. Why would the Telegraph want to smear rivals at the Guardian? We could maybe make a guess. Or were they just misinformed?
