A few days ago the Freedom of the Press Foundation published the full, previously unreleased audio recording of Bradley Manning’s statement to the military court in Ft. Meade about his motivations for leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks including the so-called Collateral Murder video. Laura Poitras‘ short film combines his statement with the original footage:
From the Freedom of the Press Foundation:
He explains to the military court in his own cadence and words how and why he gave the Apache helicopter video, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars Logs, and the State Department Diplomatic Cables to WikiLeaks.
Manning explains his motives, noting how he believed the documents showed deep wrongdoing by the government and how he hoped that 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.“
(…) We hope this recording will shed light on one of the most secret court trials in recent history, in which the government is putting on trial a concerned government employee whose only stated goal was to bring attention to what he viewed as serious governmental misconduct and criminal activity.