US hunts Wikileaks founder following soldier's arrest

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Mole passed on 260,000 military and diplomatic cables

The US authorities have confirmed that are looking for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as they believe he was passed a huge cache of classified State Department cables by a disgruntled soldier in Iraq.

According to The Daily Beast officials at the Pentagon have determined that a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Manning, has passed information to the site, including the already published video of the killing of two Reuters correspondents and Iraqi civilians, as well as over 260,000 cables between the US and Iraq.

Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public, Manning wrote in messages obtained by Wired.

The officials fear that the disclosure of the documents will harm US national security and it is possible that by receiving and decrypting them Assange has broken US law. Manning was arrested two weeks ago and is currently in military prison in Kuwait.

We'd like to know where he is; we'd like his cooperation in this," one U.S. official told the Daily Beast.

The contents of the cables are likely to be discussions of foreign policy objectives, situation reports from the ground and advice on overseas diplomatic leaders.

If he really had access to these cables, weâve got a terrible situation on our hands, an anonymous American diplomat told the Daily Beast.

We are still trying to figure out what he had access to. A lot of my colleagues overseas are sweating this out, given what those cables may contain.

Assange has already cancelled two scheduled trips to the US for fears that he could be arrested on arrival.

Looks like we're about to be attacked by everything the US has, said Wikileaks via Twitter.

The site said that as yet it had not been contacted by the State Department

Any signs of unacceptable behavior by the Pentagon or its agents towards this press will be viewed dimly.

The apparent ease with which military encryption systems have been broken by the site is causing serious concern in security circles. If military encryption systems are weak then commmercial systems used by business may also be at risk.

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