Bradley Manning Sentence Is 35 Years In Prison

After being found guilty last month of 20 crimes, including six violations of the Espionage Act, as part of the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on media leaks, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was sentenced on Wednesday to 35 years in prison.

Manning, 25, shared thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks in one of the nation’s biggest leak cases since the Pentagon Papers more than a generation ago.

The former intelligence analyst could have gotten 90 years behind bars. Prosecutors asked for at least 60 years as a warning to other soldiers, while Manning’s lawyer suggested he get no more than 25, because some of the documents he leaked will be declassified by then.

Via MSN News:

The native of Crescent, Okla., digitally copied and released more than 700,000 documents, including Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department cables, while working in 2010 in Iraq.

He also leaked video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that mistakenly killed at least nine people, including a Reuters photographer.

A potentially more explosive leak case unfolded as Manning’s court-martial was underway, when former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden was charged with espionage for exposing the NSA’s Internet and telephone surveillance programs.

At his trial, Manning said he gave the material to the secrets-spilling website WikiLeaks to expose the U.S. military’s “bloodlust” and generate debate over the wars and US policy.

During the sentencing phase, he apologized for the damage he caused, saying, “When I made these decisions, I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people.”