An anti-secrecy group on Tuesday released a secretly made audio recording of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's recent hour-long statement to a military judge in which he openly admitted leaking hundreds of thousands of government documents to WikiLeaks as part of an effort to "spark a domestic debate on the role of the military" and "help document the true cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

 "In an era where government secrecy is at an all-time high, we believe Bradley Manning's actions should  be commended rather  than condemned," said Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the group that obtained the audio recording and posted it on its website. "In our minds, Bradley Manning is absolutely a whistleblower."

The group -- whose board members include Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 -- said it obtained the recording from a source it declined to identify. Manning’s statement was made in open court but the group acknowledges the recording  was  made in violation of military  rules which explicitly forbid “photographs, video and sound recordings” of the proceedings.  

On Tuesday, the U.S. Army Military District of Washington notified the military judge presiding over the Manning court-martial that there was a violation of the Rules for Court.

"The U.S. Army is currently reviewing the procedures set in place to safeguard the security and integrity of the legal proceedings, and ensure Pfc. Manning receives a fair and impartial trial," it said in a statement.

During the Feb. 28 session at Fort Meade, Md., Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the lesser charges he is facing, including  unauthorized possession and transmission of "protected information." He is still facing a military court martial in June on 12 more serious charges that include "aiding the enemy" and which could result in a life sentence.

Prosecutors have signaled they intend to call a Navy Seal who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in an apparent move to establish that some of the material that Manning leaked wound up in the al-Qaida leader's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

P.J. Crowley, the State Department's former top spokesman who lost his job after criticizing the U.S. military's treatment of Manning, who was kept in solitary confinement for 10 months, told NBC News  he nonetheless believes the Army private's actions remain indefensible.

"It's nonsense to call Bradley Manning a political prisoner," Crowley said. "He is a member of the military  who was serving in an active war zone and took it on himself to compromise hundreds of thousands of documents."

In his statement to the court, Manning spoke about how as a low-level intelligence analyst in Iraq, he came across material that disturbed him and made him question U.S. policy. He cited a 2007 aerial video of a U.S. helicopter attack that killed innocent civilians and two Reuters journalists.

“The most alarming aspect of the video to me…was the seeming delightful blood lust the Aerial Weapons Team seemed to have,” Manning said. “They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life, and referred to them as quote, unquote, ‘dead bastards.’” 

 Manning also spoke how he became depressed and, as a young gay man in the Army, had trouble fitting in. “In real life, I lacked a close friendship with the people I worked with,” Manning said. “For instance, I lacked close ties with my roommate (because of) his discomfort regarding my perceived sexual orientation.”

Instead, Manning said he found comfort from a relationship he developed online — with someone who worked at WikiLeaks, to whom he sent the aerial video in 2010 after burning a CD copy on his computer. He gave his online interlocutor  –  whom he now believes may have been the group’s founder, Julian Assange, or one of his top associates — the name “Nathaniel.”

“Over the next few months, I stayed in frequent contact with Nathaniel,” Manning said. “We conversed on nearly a daily basis and I felt we were developing a friendship. The conversations covered many topics and I enjoyed the ability to talk about pretty much everything — not just the publications that (WikiLeaks) was working on…

“For me, these conversations represented an opportunity to escape from the immense pressures and anxiety that I experienced and built up throughout the deployment,” Manning said. “It seems that as I tried harder to fit in at work, the more I seemed to alienate my peers and lose the respect, trust and support I needed.”

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 12, 2013 7:35 AM EDT

Jose Luis Magana / Reuters file

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted in handcuffs as he leaves the courthouse in Fort Meade, Maryland, on June 6.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning released classified documents to WikiLeaks in an effort to "spark a domestic debate on the role of our military and foreign policy in general," according to a statement he will seek to read in a court hearing Thursday.

The lengthy statement, which Manning has already submitted to the judge presiding over his case at Fort Meade, Md., will be his first public account of his motivations for leaking hundreds of thousands of battlefield reports relating to U.S. operation in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as State Department diplomatic cables.

The statement appears intended to bolster the defense his lawyer plans to use at his court martial now slated for June -- that Manning was acting as a whistleblower intending to expose government misconduct.

Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, is facing 22 criminal charges that include "aiding the enemy" and could result in a life sentence. He will seek to plead guilty to lesser charges -- such as unauthorized use of his government computer -- at the pre-trial hearing Thursday.

Prosecutors have objected to Manning's partial plea -- it is not the result of a plea bargain -- and made clear that they fully intend to bring him to trial.

See more investigative reports at The Isikoff Files

In reading his statement, Manning also "will speak to larger issues affecting his case" and will expand upon his guilty plea to establish that he acted from a “noble motive,” according to a news release Wednesday by the Bradley Manning Support Network. 

Although the group did not release the text of the statement, it cited an exchange in a hearing earlier his week in which prosecutors objected to Manning being allowed to read some portions of his statement -- including the passage in which he talks about his desire "to spark a domestic debate."

Prosecutors quoted some of the wording in Manning's statement during the hearing, saying the passage -- and another one relating to leaking information about corruption within the Iraqi Federal Police -- should not be allowed because it would be an admission by Manning to "uncharged misconduct." For example, admitting that he intended to provoke a public debate could expose Manning to an additional charge of intending to "discredit" the U.S. military, prosecutors argued. 

Manning's case has been shrouded in secrecy by the military. On Wednesday, the Pentagon released 84 pretrial documents, bowing to public records requests by news organizations, including NBC News. The documents are the first of about 500 that the Pentagon said it will release in response to the requests.

But in the documents released so far, the name of the presiding judge, Col. Denise Lind, has been redacted.  

More from Open Channel

• Deaths among beginning drivers on the increase
• Horse meat in the US? Unlikely, but tests are rare
• Feds say neo-Nazi with guns was tracking community leaders
• Expert: US in cyberwar arms race with China, Russia

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook 

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning leaves U.S. Magistrate Court at Fort Meade, Md., on Tuesday.

Raising the hackles of some attorneys who work on transgender legal issues, defense attorneys for Bradley Manning apparently intend to make an almost novel legal argument -- that the Army private was suffering from gender identity disorder when his alleged crimes were committed -- if his case proceeds to court martial as expected.

In the first five days of Manning’s preliminary hearing at Fort Meade, Md., prosecutors and defense attorneys have both presented evidence that Manning, accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of secret government documents to the WikiLeaks website, was wrestling with gender issues in the period leading up to the publication of the documents.

The defense stated Saturday that Manning, 24, had written to one of his supervisors when he was stationed in Iraq before his arrest and said he had concluded he was suffering from gender identity disorder, which is classified as a medical disorder in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. He included a photo of himself dressed as a woman in the letter and said the issue was affecting his ability to do his job or think clearly.

A defense attorney and a witness also stated that Manning had created a Facebook profile and opened at least one email account using the name “Breanna Manning,” which the attorney described as an “alter-ego.”

As the hearing continued Tuesday, prosecutors presented testimony indicating that Manning had used another soldier’s laptop to order a book on female facial reconstructive surgery from Amazon.com that he had shipped to his Potomac address.

A search of Amazon.com for the term “female facial reconstructive surgery” returns just one title, “Facial Feminization Surgery: A Guide for the Transgendered Woman.”

Also Tuesday, Manning’s attorneys did little to challenge testimony by prosecution witnesses tying Manning to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and other electronic evidence collected in the case.

Manning is charged with aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

If Manning’s case does go to court martial, his attorneys will apparently be just the second defense team to attempt to use a gender identity disorder as at least a partial defense in a military case, according to Jack King, a staff attorney with the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys specializing in mental health issues.

The only other case on record, he said, involved Karen Davis, a Navy electrician's mate, second class, formerly known as Charles Marx, who was prosecuted in the mid-1980s “for wearing women's clothing (a skirt, nylons, a women's blouse, a bra, women's fashion jeans, nail polish, a purse, and a wig) on numerous occasions while at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.”

In appealing her court martial in 1988, Davis' attorneys argued that such conduct was not illegal. They also stated that, while living as Marx, she had been diagnosed by several Navy psychiatrists as having gender identity disorder and that cross-dressing was therapeutic.

The military appeals court allowed her dishonorable discharge to stand for the reason that cross-dressing was “prejudicial to good order and discipline and discrediting of the Armed Forces."

King said such a case would be unlikely today, given the greater understanding of gender identity disorder.

“Now, if a person could show that because he or she believed themselves to be a member of the opposite sex they had an irresistible impulse to cross-dress, they would in all likelihood qualify for a medical discharge,” he said.

Several attorneys who work with transgender legal issues said they were not aware of a gender identity disorder defense being raised in a civilian court, and King said it’s easy to see why not, noting that such a diagnosis “doesn’t prevent you from knowing right from wrong.” The disorder is most often raised in criminal proceedings as part of an overall insanity defense, or by expert witnesses arguing that a defendant is so mentally damaged that he or she should be committed, he said.

And several lawyers who work with transgender clients indicated they were not happy with the direction that the Manning proceedings have taken.

“We don’t think that being transgender, if he in fact is, has anything to do with him breaking the law,” said Kylar Broadus, an attorney with the Transgender Law and Policy Institute. “Obviously the charges are serious and we don’t want the trial to be sensationalized or detracted from by him being transgender.”

“Our opinion is there is no correlation between anything he has done and gender identity disorder,” agreed Dru Levasseur, a transgender rights attorney with Lambda Legal.

“This plays into stereotypes that are not true,” he continued. “There are a lot of people with gender identity disorder fighting for their lives to be respected and understood as human beings who need equal access to the law. This type of scenario just confuses the situation.”

Follow Mike Brunker on Facebook or Twitter.

By Rich Gardella of NBC News and Alex Johnson of msnbc.com

The government's case against Pfc. Bradley Manning is really about keeping government secrets safe by silencing whistle-blowers across the U.S. government, WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange and Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg contended Wednesday.

Manning, 23, an Army intelligence analyst, is charged with leaking thousands of classified documents and diplomatic cables. It is widely believed he provided the documents to WikiLeaks, which began publishing them last year in cooperation with The New York Times and other news organizations. 

Assange has never said Manning was the source, but he has made the soldier's treatment in U.S. custody — confined alone in a small cell at a Marine base in Virginia until he was transferred to Leavenworth prison in Kansas last month — a personal crusade, alleging that it was intended to humiliate him and send a message to would-be government whistle-blowers.

"I don't know whether it (the source) was Bradley Manning or not, but he is only person behind bars on that allegation," Assange said in explaining why he's been so dogged in defending Manning. 

Joined on a conference call with reporters by Ellsberg, Manning's attorney and representatives of the Bradley Manning Support Network, Assange said the government's treatment of Manning amounted to using a "sledgehammer to crack a nut." 

The government is trying "to terrorize whistle-blowers into not revealing information to the public," he charged.

Ellsberg, who triggered a Supreme Court freedom-of-the-press judgment when he leaked the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War to The Times in 1971, called Manning a hero. He said Manning was "accused of being the one person who obeyed his oath to the Constitution" by disclosing government "crimes that could be prosecuted" during the war in Iraq and its aftermath. 

The bigger danger, Ellsberg contended, is that if Manning is convicted, the government would be emboldened to further pursue journalists for reporting leaked material. He and Assange pointed to U.S. prosecutors' decision this week to subpoena Times reporter James Risen to testify at the trial of former CIA operative Jeffrey Sterling, who they allege leaked classified information that Risen used in his 2006 book about Iran's nuclear operations, "State of War."

The Justice Department has cited the 1917 Espionage Act in prosecuting Sterling and at least four other alleged sources of classified material used in various news reports, raising alarms among First Amendment activists that the Obama administration is pursuing a governmentwide war on whistle-blowers.

The administration's interpretation of the act is a fundamental threat to investigative journalism and to "any journalist who has a byline above classified material," Ellsberg said.

Assange added, "The Obama administration's attempts to expand 1917 Espionage Act ... will put a chill across all investigative journalism in the U.S."

But Assange also leveled scathing criticism at U.S. journalists, essentially saying they were wimping out in the face of unconstitutional federal pressure. 

Saying U.S. coverage of Manning's case had been "appalling and salacious," Assange said: "Either the mainstream press collapses as an effective organ, and all sources are forced to deal only with WikiLeaks, or the U.S. is a free society that upholds values."

He added: "From our perspective — from WikiLeaks' perspective — either of these outcomes works."