Amy Goodman
@DemocracyNow·3.2M subscribers·19.4K videos
"He Wanted To Help America": Manning Attorney in First Extended Interview After 35-Year Sentence
Posted
August 22, 2013
Views
1,371
Likes
35
Comments
7
Engagement
August 22, 2013
1,371
35
7
3.06%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
4:37Now PlayingJust after Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Wednesday and before Manning's announcement of a gender transition earlier today independent journalist Alexa O'Brien sat down with Manning's attorney, David Coombs, for his first interview about the case. O'Brien was one of only a handful of journalists to cover the entire Manning trial and was the first to make transcripts of the proceedings publicly available. We air the interview in a Democracy Now! exclusive. Coombs talks about the government's use of classified evidence, Manning's reaction to the sentence and how much of the court record was hidden from the public. "I can't believe that was actually the sentence he received," Coombs tells O'Brien. "Anyone who sat through the hearing and heard all the evidence, even in the closed sessions, there is not evidence there where you would think 35 years would be the appropriate sentence. I wonder now if there had actually been damaged or if he had really intended to harm the United States or wanted to obtain personal gain from selling classified information, just what the sentence would have been. Because this was a person who had true intentions. He wanted to help America. He wanted to get people to think about what was going on in Iraq. He didn't have an evil motive in what he did."
See more Democracy Now! coverage of Manning's case in our archive:
Democracy Now!, is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,200+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch it live 89am ET at
FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE:
Twitter: @democracynow
Subscribe on YouTube
Listen on SoundCloud
Daily Email News Digest
Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today, visit
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
