Adrian Lamo, the former recreational hacker who reported Chelsea Manning to authorities, says he’s glad the WikiLeaks source will get a second chance.

Lamo elicited a confession from Manning and gave it to military investigators in 2010, resulting in a 35-year prison sentence for the leaker who embarrassed U.S. officials by disclosing a massive number of military and diplomatic documents.

The informant says “it was not my most honorable moment,” though he says he made peace with the effects of his decision, even before President Barack Obama on Tuesday granted clemency to Manning, who will be released in May rather than in the 2040s.

Lamo, who is vague about his current employment, says he decided to report Manning to protect potentially vulnerable people identified in 250,000 State Department documents and 500,000 military field reports.

He says he hopes, however, that politicians and pundits outraged by the commutation will see things as he does.

In a statement posted to Medium, Lamo framed the commutation as an example of American exceptionalism that proves inaccurate visions of U.S. authoritarianism common among Manning supporters. And he tells U.S. News that Manning “has suffered, relatively speaking, more years than she has actually been in prison.”

While in custody, Manning – formerly known by the first name Bradley – announced she is a transgender woman. She struggled for access to specialized health care and twice attempted suicide.

“I would not be upset to see her happy,” Lamo says, though he’s not sure he ever will contact Manning, saying, “I don’t want to bring back any unpleasant memories for her at what is bound to be a fragile juncture in her life.”

The case had a significant effect on Lamo after he turned in the then-22-year-old Army private. As the WikiLeaks source sat in a cell, Lamo was inundated by indignant reactions from her supporters.

One lesson he learned, Lamo says, is that “you can’t really know a person or their motives unless you’ve sat where they sat and seen the situation through their eyes, no matter how much you believe you do. So many people think they know why I did what I did or what I was thinking or why I made my choice. And almost without exception they’re wrong.”

He adds, “There’s essentially a public avatar that’s Adrian Lamo that they’re looking at, and then there’s me. And I can’t be upset about what they think of something that isn’t me.”

RELATED CONTENT NSA Whistleblowers Defend Snowden's Decision to Flee

Lamo, who spoke on the phone slowly with apparent deliberation as music played in the background, says he acted only to protect people from potential harm.

The well-known former hacker, who once breached major corporations, says he currently works as a threat analyst but declined to identify his employer. He put a classification header on an email and his phone number displayed on caller ID as belonging to the CIA, though it’s unclear if it actually does.

Lamo recalls Manning sending three encrypted email messages to him before they chatted about the leaks. He says he contacted Manning on AOL Instant Messenger before they switched to a program called OTR.

Lamo surmises Manning contacted him because he was featured in a recently leaked film called “Hackers Wanted” and was a known WikiLeaks donor. The film was leaked on May 20, 2010. Lamo and Manning began chatting on May 21, logs published by Wired show. And by May 26, Manning was in custody.

At the time, Lamo says, he generally offered to act as either a priest or a journalist for hackers confiding in him, so that he could cite confessional or reporter’s privileges to fight government attempts to compel testimony. He can’t recall if he offered to act as a priest for Manning, and he's not sure he would have honored either privilege anyhow.

“Literally dozens, if not hundreds, of hackers have told me about their exploits,” he says. “My standing rule had always been if the harm to the individual from prospective punishment outweighs the harm to the public from what they did, I don’t say anything. And Manning was the only case that came across my desk that tripped that rule.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Lamo says "a decent number" of hackers still confide in him.

Though he steered the conversation away from politics, Lamo says he does encourage anyone with information about hackers who released documents from Democratic Party institutions and officials last year to report the culprits to the Department of Homeland Security rather than the FBI.