Listen To Bradley Manning's Leaked Wikileaks Statement

Bradley Manning, the U.S. army soldier facing charges for leaking secret information to Wikileaks, took the stand at a pre-trial hearing late last month to explain for the first time his motivations for leaking classified military and diplomatic documents. The Freedom of the Press foundation posted Tuesday a leaked audio recording of Manning's speech, which you can listen to below. Only unofficial text copies of Manning's testimony have been previously available.

In his testimony, Manning revealed he believed the world would become a better place if it had access to the information he shared with Wikileaks: A wealth of classified military and diplomatic cables as well as video of a July 2007 helicopter strike in Baghdad, Iraq which claimed the lives of 12 men, some armed and others unarmed with two Retuers employees among the latter group.