US soldier Manning says is female, wants to live as a woman

U.S. soldier Bradley Manning, sentenced for leaking classified U.S. documents, said he is female and wants to live as a woman named Chelsea.
   
A statement from Manning was read on NBC News' "Today" program on Thursday.
   
Manning, 25, was sentenced on Wednesday to 35 years in a military prison for turning over classified files to WikiLeaks in the biggest breach of secret data in the nation's history.
   
His lawyer, David Coombs, also told NBC said he expects Manning to get pardoned.

The fight to free U.S. soldier Bradley Manning is taking a new turn as he returns to prison to serve a 35-year sentence for the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history. His lawyer says he will ask the Army for leniency  and the White House for a pardon.
    
Even Manning's supporters have pivoted. During the sentencing hearing Wednesday, they wore T-shirts reading, "truth." Hours later, they had changed into shirts saying, "President Obama: Pardon Bradley Manning."
     
"The time to end Brad's suffering is now," defense attorney David Coombs told a news conference. "The time for our president to focus on protecting whistleblowers instead of punishing them is now."
    
Manning faces the stiffest punishment ever handed out in the U.S. for leaking information to the media. With good behavior and credit for the more than three years he has been held, Manning could be out in as little as seven years, Coombs said.
     
Still, the lawyer criticized the government's pursuit of Manning for what the soldier said was an effort to expose wrongdoing and prompt public debate of government policies.
     
Manning has been called both a whistleblower and a traitor for giving more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents, plus battlefield footage, to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
      
Manning said he chose to disclose classified information, "out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others."
    
The White House said the request would be considered "like any other application." However, a pardon seems unlikely.
     
Manning's case was part of an unprecedented string of prosecutions brought by the U.S. government in a crackdown on security breaches. The Obama administration has charged seven people with leaking to the media; only three people were prosecuted under all previous presidents combined.
         
Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, digitally copied and released 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.
     
Manning said he did it to expose the U.S. military's "bloodlust" and generate debate over the wars and U.S. policy. The government alleged he was a traitor.
     

AP/REUTERS