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.

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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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The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act appeared to be headed for approval one year ago - until the release of hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables to the WikiLeaks website, allegedly by Army Pvc. Bradley Manning, thrust it to the sidelines.

Opponents of the bill seized on the incident to strip an important provision from the legislation, which ultimately died when Congress closed for Christmas without taking it up, advocates say.

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“There suddenly became a concern in the Congress that was ill-informed, that the legislation would protect leaks of classified information … which wasn’t true,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent watchdog that seeks good government reforms. “… It was in large part a reason why the legislation stalled and it also caused a real backlash of overreaction by agencies to start clamping down on employees’ access to information.”

As Manning has his first court appearance on Friday – a pretrial hearing – proponents of the legislation to protect government workers who report illegal or unethical behavior by officials have regrouped.

They are pushing a measure -- the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2011 -- winding its way through Congress, but they are encountering some familiar hold-ups. “The Manning case is certainly feeding the resistance,” said Brian, noting it was not the only factor.

Manning, who turns 24 on Saturday, is accused of using unauthorized software on government computers to pull classified information, illegally download it and send the data for public release by what the Army called the "enemy." He has been held for 18 months in confinement and his pretrial hearing at Fort Meade, Md., on Friday will be his first public appearance. He is charged with 22 counts that could land him in prison for life.

The Bradley Manning Support Network argues that the soldier is not a traitor but fits the definition of a whistleblower, citing online discussions in which he allegedly said he hoped to generate “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms” and wanted “people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

The law firm representing Manning did not respond to an email or phone call placed seeking comment on whether they would argue this he was a whistleblower as part of his defense.

Though the new legislation pending in Congress could make some "very modest improvements,” it is still only a Band-Aid, said Stephen Kohn, executive director and co-founder of the National Whistleblowers Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

“I think that the underlying hostility to protecting national security whistleblowers pre-existed Manning … and there’s no end in sight -- meaning Congress, which excluded national (security) whistleblowers from protection in 1978 and has taken no action to fix the problem since, will continue in this current status,” he said.

Kohn said those opposed to the earlier legislation used the Manning case as a “smokescreen.”

“These folks were against it to begin with, they’ve been against it for years,” he said.

The Manning incident was bound to occur, he said, “because if someone was of conscience and did have concerns, they really have no legitimate place to go. … Under the current regime, there’s really no way to disclose these national security violations effectively and protect yourself. It does not exist.”

During the 2010 debate, Kohn’s group sent a letter to Congress with concerns that a provision in the legislation would allow “managers and political appointees to fire career civil servants who disclose violations of law.” This in turn prompted more than 90 organizations to voice their backing of the bill, The Washington Post reported.

Around the same time, the Post reported that Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California who had supported the bill, switched sides and argued for a delay. An Issa spokesman noted then that "new areas of concern that have been raised by the WikiLeaks" releases had convinced the congressman that the legislation should be considered in 2011.

In the first week of November, Issa and other lawmakers introduced the latest version of the legislation to the House.

"There’s really genuine interest in all three parts (White House, Senate, House of Representatives) to get something passed this spring. So I’m very hopeful actually," Brian said.

History has little to show for Americans in similar situations as Manning. In one of the most well-known cases of U.S. whistleblowing, former Marine Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 released what came to be known as the "Pentagon Papers," a secret government study put together during his time as an analyst in the Nixon Administration. The study revealed that previous administrations had deceived Congress about stepping up the Vietnam conflict. A judge eventually threw out the government's espionage and conspiracy case.

"The WikiLeaks’ unauthorised disclosures of the last year are the first in 40 years to approach the scale of the Pentagon Papers (and even surpass them in quantity and timeliness)," Ellsberg wrote in an editorial published in The Guardian, in which he called for other potential whistleblowers to not "wait until a new war has started."

Kohn did note a case that ended with positive results for whistleblowers in 1777, when 10 sailors and soldiers jumped ship and blew the whistle on the U.S. Navy commander for torturing British prisoners. The Continental Congress supported the whistleblowers, passed the country’s first whistleblower law and released all the documents -- regardless of how embarrassing they were to the United States.

“That was the first and maybe only time back in U.S. history that our government backed national security whistleblowers,” he said, chuckling. “It’s been pretty much downhill since 1777.”

Kohn also said the response to the incident showed “the founding fathers’ view of every person’s obligation to disclose misconduct was rather consistent with our view, and in fact, we believe that that is the legislative intent behind the First Amendment.”

Brian said she did not believe legislation to protect the Bradley Mannings of the world for leaking publicly classified information would ever be passed, but she hoped that his case would highlight the issue facing those in his situation. She noted that her organization and its allies were working hard to create "meaningful channels for a Bradley Manning.”

“I really believe that the lack of safe channels for disclosure is part of why people like Bradley Manning need to go straight to the public or to the media,” she said. “I’m hoping that what people learn from this is this is why we need to have a better way of handling this information,  because the government does sometimes hide their misconduct behind classification and we need to have a robust way of dealing with that.”

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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.

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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.

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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."

We've put together a panel of legal experts to discuss the possibility of a U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks leaders under the Espionage Act.

Do you have questions you'd like to pose to the experts? If so, add your comments below.

These are the questions we have so far:

1. The release of these diplomatic cables could not be more public, and about half of the 250,000 cables are classified. Is there any doubt that Assange has violated the Espionage Act?

2. Does it matter that WikiLeaks is the recipient and distributor of stolen material, not the one who stole it?

3. Is Assange a journalist? Is WikiLeaks a news organization? If so, how does that affect a case? How is Assange any different from the newspapers that have republished the cables?

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4. As a non-citizen acting outside the United States, is Assange entitled to First Amendment protections at all? Should the First Amendment ever protect the public dissemination of classified material?

5. Does it matter that WikiLeaks is the recipient and distributor of stolen material, not the one who stole it?

5. What is the greatest hurdle facing a prosecution? How might that be overcome?

6. What is the greatest hurdle facing a defense? How might that be overcome?

7. How should the U.S. deal with future Assanges? What should Congress do in response to this case, in writing the Espionage Act of 2011?

8. Prediction time: What is the likelihood of an indictment of Assange? What is the likelihood of an indictment surviving a motion to dismiss? What is the likelihood of a conviction if a case went to trial?

 What would you like to ask the panel?