Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old private charged in an earlier leak to WikiLeaks, was under renewed scrutiny in the latest release to the same whistleblowers' website, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

"He is obviously a person of interest with regards to this leak but we don't know at this point," Morrell told MSNBC, referring to Manning.

The investigation was assigned to the same Army Criminal Investigation Division that has been investigating Manning, who was arrested in May for allegedly leaking a video of a Baghdad air strike to WikiLeaks.

Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the agency would be taking a "broad look" at the latest leaks, a trove of 92,000 military reports from 2004 to 2009 that together paint an unsettling picture of a troubled war effort.

"The current investigation into the release of the documents to WikiLeaks, this recent release, isn't focused on any particular individual. It is a broader look," he said.

The Pentagon is conducting a separate assessment into the potential damage to security caused by the latest Wikileaks expose, Lapan said.

Pentagon officials have expressed concerns that the disclosures may have put US and NATO troops at risk, but the main impact to far appears to have been political, coming at a time of gnawing public doubts about the war.

Manning, who is in a military prison in Kuwait, has been charged with transferring classified information onto a computer, adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system, and passing defense information to an unauthorized source.

A former intelligence analyst, Manning allegedly told a former hacker, Adrian Lamo, that he had passed 260,000 diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks in addition to videos of two air strikes in Iraq.

One video that gained wide attention showed a helicopter gunship attack in Baghdad in 2007 in which two employees of the Reuters news agency were among several people killed.

related report
General calls leak 'appallingly irresponsible'
The general named to lead US forces in the Middle East said Tuesday the leak of a trove of Afghan war documents was "appallingly irresponsible" and likely to have a chilling effect on US allies.

But General James Mattis, nominated to replace General David Petraeus as head of the US Central Command, said the more than 90,000 military files posted by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks contained "no big revelations."

"That said, ... I thought it was just an appallingly irresponsible act to release this information. It didn't tell us anything I've seen so far that we weren't already aware of," he told senators.

"One of the newspaper headlines was that the war was a tense and dangerous thing. Well, if that is news, I don't know who it is news to on this planet," he said.

"But I think I would be more concerned about our allies being more circumspect than our own troops," he said.

The US Army on Tuesday launched a criminal investigation into the massive leak and the Pentagon's chief spokesman named a soldier jailed for an earlier leak to Wikileaks as a "person of interest."

The documents span a period from 2004 to 2009 as the US and NATO war effort in Afghanistan ran into a rising Taliban insurgency.

Mattis, a Marine who was a commander in Iraq before his current post as head of the US Joint Forces Command, is expected to win confirmation in his appoint to oversee military operations in the Middle East, including Afghanistan.

related report
No change to Afghan war strategy after leak: US admiral
The US military's top officer on Tuesday said information in leaked documents on the war in Afghanistan did not call into question the US strategy or Washington's relationship with Pakistan.

Admiral Mike Mullen said he was "appalled" at the leak of 90,000 secret military files on the Afghan mission, but that the information in the papers -- including about Pakistan's activities -- were taken into account during a strategy review on the war last year.

"Certainly the information that I've seen so far in the documents, there's nothing in there that wasn't reviewed or considered in the strategic review" on the war, Mullen told reporters on his plane before landing in Iraq.

He said the administration of US President Barack Obama was still "working through" all the documents, adding that most of the files appeared to be "field level information, raw intelligence."

The documents, made public by the website WikiLeaks, allege that Pakistan -- a key ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda and its associates -- allows its spies to meet directly with the Taliban and even plot to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Asked if the files show Pakistan had duped Washington, Mullen said that was not the case and that the United States has made clear to Islamabad its concerns about possible links to militant groups.

US relations with Pakistan have "dramatically" improved in the past year and Islamabad has launched offensives against Islamist extremists in the northwest, involving tens of thousands of troops, Mullen said.

"I've seen some very positive steps," he said.

But he added that Washington remained concerned about Pakistan's intelligence service, amid allegations it has ties to Laskhar-e-Taiba (LeT), blamed for the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, and the Haqqani network, which targets US-led forces in Afghanistan.

Mullen said "any links which exist with terrorist organisations, whether it's Haqqani or LeT, it's just completely unacceptable."

The admiral, who has cultivated ties with the head of the Pakistani army, made similar remarks during a visit to India and Pakistan last week.

The US military is studying the leaked documents for any potential risks posed to American forces, said Mullen, who condemned the security breach.

"I'm appalled at the release. I feel very strongly that we need to make sure to do all we can that leaks like this don't occur."

At a press conference later in Baghdad, Mullen said the government documents were outdated as the administration had adopted a new strategy for the Afghan war.

"Much has changed since 2009," he said.

While the leaked files "focused on the past, I'm very focused on the future."

The 92,000 documents released Sunday, dating from 2004 to 2009, triggered an outcry from nations fighting in the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan.

In addition to the Pakistan allegations, the leaked files allege US forces covered up the deaths of some innocent Afghan civilians.

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