Pfc. Bradley Manning got a dishonorable discharge at his sentencing, but he received it with an honorable disposition.
When the judge read out the young soldier's 35-year sentence Wednesday morning for giving classified information to WikiLeaks, family members wept and supporters cried out, "We are with you! You are a hero!"
But Manning, 25, whisked quickly from the room after the brief sentencing, was philosophical. "It's
OK. It's all right,'" he told his attorney, Lt. Col. David Coombs, who was in tears over his client's fate. "I'm going to be OK. I'm going to get through this."
Manning was bound for prison at Fort Leavenworth, but Coombs, free to speak his mind at the end of the three-year legal saga, held a news conference at a nearby hotel in the afternoon and read a statement from Manning to President Obama requesting a pardon.
"I understand that my actions violated the law. I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States," the statement said. "When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others. If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty."
Manning's dignity is a good model for Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker now hiding from American justice in Russia. Manning admitted what he had done, and he used his trial and its conclusion to argue for the righteousness of his cause. That cause was artfully described by Coombs, who, with the shaved head of a military man and the business suit of a civilian lawyer, stood before 20 TV cameras and took as many questions as reporters could ask.
"Under the current administration, an unauthorized leak to the media of classified information is viewed as being tantamount to aiding the enemy," a capital offense, Coombs said. "The government-wide crackdown on whistle-blowers and the extension of this crackdown to journalists threatens to stifle the flow of information that is vital to our public."