By Associated Press
U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning
FORT MEADE, Md. — Bradley Manning plans to live as a woman named
Chelsea and wants to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible, the
soldier said Thursday, a day after being sentenced to 35 years in prison
for sending classified material to WikiLeaks.
Manning announced
the decision in a written statement provided to NBC's "Today" show,
asking supporters to refer to him by his new name and the feminine
pronoun. The statement was signed "Chelsea E. Manning."
"As I
transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the
real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel,
and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon
as possible," the statement read.
Manning's defense attorney David Coombs told "Today" in an interview
that he is hoping officials at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth,
Kan., will accommodate Manning's request for hormone therapy.
Undated photo provided by the U.S. Army of Pfc. Bradley Manning posing for a photo wearing a wig and lipstick.
"If Fort Leavenworth does not, then I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure they are forced to do so," Coombs said.
Coombs did not respond to phone and email messages from The Associated Press on Thursday.
Manning's struggle with gender identity disorder — the sense of being a woman trapped in a man's body — was key to the defense.
Attorneys had presented evidence of Manning's struggle with gender
identity, including a photo of the soldier in a blond wig and lipstick
sent to a therapist.
Meanwhile, the fight to free Manning has
taken a new turn, with Coombs and supporters saying they will ask the
Army for leniency — and the White House for a pardon.
Even Manning's supporters have pivoted. During the sentencing hearing
Wednesday, they wore T-shirts reading, "truth," as they had for the
entire court-martial. Hours later, they had changed into shirts saying,
"President Obama: Pardon Bradley Manning."
"The time to end Brad's
suffering is now," Coombs told a news conference after Manning's
sentence was handed down. "The time for our president to focus on
protecting whistleblowers instead of punishing them is now."
The
sentence was the stiffest punishment ever handed out in the U.S. for leaking information to the media.
With good behavior and credit for the more than three years he has been
held, Manning could be out in as little as seven years, Coombs said.
Still, the lawyer decried the government's pursuit of Manning for what
the soldier said was only an effort to expose wrongdoing and prompt
debate of government policies among the American public.
The
sentencing fired up the long-running debate over whether Manning was a
whistleblower or a traitor for giving more than 700,000 classified
military and diplomatic documents, plus battlefield footage, to the
anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. By volume alone, it was the biggest leak
of classified material in U.S. history, bigger even than the Pentagon
Papers a generation ago.
Manning was to return to the military
prison at Fort Leavenworth, Coombs said, adding that he didn't know
precisely when the soldier would leave Maryland. Coombs said he will
file a request early next week that Obama pardon Manning or commute his
sentence to time served.
Coombs read from a letter Manning will
send to the president that read: "I regret if my actions hurt anyone or
harmed the United States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone."
Manning said the disclosure was done "out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others."
The
White House said the request would be considered "like any other
application." However, a pardon seems unlikely. Manning's case was part
of an unprecedented string of prosecutions brought by the U.S.
government in a crackdown on security breaches. The Obama administration
has charged seven people with leaking to the media; only three people
were prosecuted under all previous presidents combined.
Coombs
also will work in coming weeks on a separate process in which he can
seek leniency from the local area commander, who under military law must
review — and could reduce — Manning's convictions and sentence.
Manning,
an Army intelligence analyst from Crescent, Okla., digitally copied and
released Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department
cables while working in 2010 in Iraq. Manning also leaked video of a
2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that mistakenly killed at least
nine people, including a Reuters photographer.
Manning said the
motive was exposing the U.S. military's "bloodlust" and generate debate
over the wars and U.S. policy. The government alleged Manning was a
traitor who betrayed his oath as a soldier in order to gain notoriety.
He
was found guilty last month of 20 crimes, including six violations of
the Espionage Act, but was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding
the enemy, which carried a potential sentence of life in prison without
parole.
Whistleblower advocates said the punishment was
unprecedented in its severity. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of
American Scientists said "no other leak case comes close."
Daniel
Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in
1971, on Wednesday called Manning "one more casualty of a horrible,
wrongful war that he tried to shorten." Ellsberg also was charged under
the Espionage Act, but the case was thrown out because of government
misconduct, including a White House-sanctioned break-in at the office of
Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
Others disagreed.
Gabriel
Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute think
tank and author of the book "Necessary Secrets," welcomed Manning's
punishment.
"The sentence is a tragedy for Bradley Manning, but it
is one he brought upon himself," he said. "It will certainly serve to
bolster deterrence against other potential leakers."
But he also
warned that the sentence will ensure that Edward Snowden — the National
Security Agency leaker who was charged with espionage in a potentially
more explosive case while Manning's court-martial was underway — "will
do his best never to return to the United States and face a trial and
stiff sentence."
Coombs said that he was in tears after the
sentencing and that Manning comforted him by saying:
"Don't worry about
it. It's all right. I know you did your best. ... I'm going to be OK.
I'm going to get through this."
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