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.  

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Leon Neal / AFP - Getty Images

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange stands in front of a backdrop featuring inverted banking company logos at a news conference Monday in London.

WikiLeaks, online publisher of leaked government and corporate documents, has temporarily suspended  publication, and founder Julian Assange said Monday that the controversial site will cease to exist at year’s end if it is unable to circumvent what it calls a “banking blockade” that is choking off its financial support.

The suspension of publication was announced on Sunday in a statement (.pdf) on the WikiLeaks website, which said that an “arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade” imposed on Dec. 7, 2010, by the U.S. and other governments “destroyed 95 percent of our revenue.” It blamed the funding cutoff on on its publication of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables in November.

Sharp criticism of the publication by U.S. officials led numerous financial institutions – including Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, eBay Inc unit PayPal and Western Union. – to block donations to the whistle-blowing organization.

The WikiLeaks statement said the publishing suspension would allow members of the secretive group to focus on fund-raising.

At a news conference Monday in London, Assange said that WikiLeaks only has enough cash on hand to cover the next few months.

 "If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the new year," he said. "If we don't knock down the blockade we simply will not be able to continue."

The WikiLeaks statement said the organization is challenging the financial action in an antitrust complaint filed with the European Commission and has initiated “pre-litigation” action in the U.S.,U.K., Iceland, Denmark, Brussels and Australia.

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."