Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

"Only after Manning gave WikiLeaks the video of the Apache assault in Baghdad shortly thereafter did he start to hear back from someone in the IRC using the handle “Ox.” He believed that Ox was “likely Julian Assange” or Assange’s then-second-in-command, “Daniel Schmitt” — the German activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Shortly thereafter, Manning encouraged Ox to use a different handle to contact him, “Nathaniel,” after the author Nathaniel Frank.

Manning said his ensuing discussions with “Nathaniel,” often about the classified material, became friendly, enjoyable and long. “In retrospect, I realize these dynamics were artificial,” Manning continued. “They were valued more to me than Nathaniel.”"

and

"But Manning said that no one at WikiLeaks ever encouraged him to leak — which may be significant, if the U.S. government is, as rumored, considering charging Assange in connection to the leaks.

“No one associated with the WLO [WikiLeaks Organization] pressured me to give them more information,” Manning said. “The decision to give documents to WikiLeaks [was] mine alone.”"

and

"...Manning said he first tried to take his information to the Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico, before contacting WikiLeaks."

and

"“I never hid the fact that I downloaded copies of CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A” and burned them onto CDs, Manning said, even labeling and storing them “in the open” in his unit’s tactical operations center. Nor did he hide that he also downloaded compression software to facilitate the transfer, Manning said."

and

"In each of these cases, Manning denied that he was compromising national security. The military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan were often “historic,” with its intelligence value perishable after “48 to 72 hours.” The Guantanamo Bay documents had “no useful intelligence” and did not disclose any results of detainee interrogations. The State Department cables were available to “thousands” of people throughout the government. A Washington Post reporter, David Finkel, had already written about a deadly Apache helicopter attack in 2007, in which civilians were killed, that Manning viewed on video."

I know that most news organizations have a slant to their reporting. Please do find me the transcript of Manning's statement so that I can see where he gives the impression that he was hung out to dry by either Wikileaks, or Assange himself.