During his question and answer session with selected Guardian readers, NSA leaker Edward Snowden defended Wikileaks and Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army soldier currently facing a court martial over a trove of secret documents he handed over to Wikileaks in 2010.
Snowden was asked if his criticism of the way Manning went about releasing hundreds of thousands of documents meant that he believed the Army private had intended to harm people. Snowden replied:
Wikileaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the argument that “documents were dumped” to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a valid assertion here.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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