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Fort Meade, Md. • Army Pfc. Bradley Manning stood at attention in his crisp dress uniform Wednesday and learned the price he will pay for spilling an unprecedented trove of government secrets: up to 35 years in prison, the stiffest punishment ever handed out in the U.S. for leaking to the media.

Flanked by his lawyers, Manning, 25, showed no reaction as military judge Col. Denise Lind announced the sentence without explanation in a proceeding that lasted just a few minutes.

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, said his lawyer, David Coombs. The soldier was also demoted and will be dishonorably discharged.

The sentencing fired up the long-running debate over whether Manning was a whistleblower or a traitor for giving more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents, plus battlefield footage, to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. By volume alone, it was the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history.

In a statement from London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange decried Manning's trial and conviction as "an affront to basic concepts of Western justice." But he called the sentence a "significant tactical victory" because the soldier could be paroled so quickly.

Manning could have gotten 90 years behind bars. Prosecutors asked for at least 60 as a warning to other soldiers, while Manning's lawyer suggested he get no more than 25, because some of the documents he leaked will be declassified by then.

Military prosecutors had no immediate comment on the sentence, and the White House said only that any request for a presidential pardon would be considered "like any other application."

The 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 from Crescent, Okla., 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.

He was found guilty by the judge last month of 20 crimes, including six violations of the Espionage Act, but was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, which carried a potential life in prison without parole.

Whistleblower advocates said the punishment was unprecedented in its severity.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank and author of the book "Necessary Secrets," welcomed Manning's punishment.

"The sentence is a tragedy for Bradley Manning, but it is one he brought upon himself," he said. "It will certainly serve to bolster deterrence against other potential leakers."

Coombs said Manning will seek a presidential pardon or a commuted sentence.