A United States soldier was acting as an agent of WikiLeaks as he "systematically harvested" hundreds of thousands of classified files, prosecutors said yesterday.
On the opening day of a court martial, the US Government challenged Private First Class Bradley Manning's claim to be a solitary whistleblower who was "young, naive but good-intentioned" as he carried out the largest intelligence leak in American history.
Prosecutors alleged that Manning, 25, plotted with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and worked to fulfil a "most-wanted list" of documents desired by the anti-secrecy website.
They also claimed that the leaked files had directly aided al-Qaeda in its struggle against the US and that Osama bin Laden had made use of the WikiLeaks releases. The Government said it would use computers recovered from the raid on bin Laden's compound to show that the terrorist leader had read leaked files about US forces in Afghanistan.
"This is a case about a soldier who systematically harvested hundreds of thousands of documents from classified databases and then dumped the information on to the internet and into the hands of the enemy," said Captain Joe Morrow, for the prosecution.