Leaked Audio of Bradley Manning's statement released by Freedom of the Press Foundation

The Freedom of the Press Foundation, of which I am a board member, today published the full, previously unreleased audio recording of Private First Class Bradley Manning's speech to the military court in Ft. Meade about his motivations for leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks. In addition, the group has published highlights from Manning's statement to the court.

"While unofficial transcripts of this statement are available," FotPF's Trevor Timm and Rainey Reitman wrote, "this marks the first time the American public has heard the actual voice of Manning.

In the speech, he explains why he leaked; he believed the WikiLeaks files were evidence of government wrongdoing, and he hoped their the release would "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan."

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Daniel Ellsberg, former military analyst and leaker of the historic "Pentagon Papers," published a guest editorial on Boing Boing today with his thoughts on the sigificance of the audio leak: "A Salute to Bradley Manning, Whistleblower, As We Hear His Words For The First Time."

Glenn Greenwald, who is also a FotPF board member, wrote about the audio at the Guardian today. "The US government and its military has carefully ensured that people hear about Manning from the government, but do not hear from Manning himself," Glenn writes. "It is way past time for Manning's voice to be heard."

NBC's Today Show covered the news of the audio file's release today. A minor nitpick, I suppose, but it's unfortunate they chose to label FotPF as an "anti-secrecy" group. I guess when the only tool you have is a hammer, every organization working toward greater transparency looks like Wikileaks.

A statement from the organization follows.