Color emphasis is mine, for the sake of clarity.
Julian Assange? I don't know whether he would really be working for the Russians. It's quite possible, but he could just as easily be working for yet another nation state. Or maybe there's something else that drives him. He either way does have an agenda that's greater than just whistleblowing, yes — that much has already been obvious for quite some time now — and he has also already been described as a narcissist.
The vilification of the Russians however is another red herring, started by George W. Bush and escalated by Barack Obama. Not that the Russians are completely innocent, but you must never forget that what we hear about the Russians here in the West — and especially so from the US government and the US mainstream media — is by definition suspect, and most likely propaganda aimed at feeding the Cold War revival that started under George W. Bush.
Edward Snowden?
I'm not sure but I think Snowden would still be hiding in Russia at the moment.
The fact that Bradley Manning chose to become a transgender is the very reason why he was pardoned.
Both Barack and Michelle Obama are very pro-gay and pro-transgender, and the US Acronymian left-wing — insomuch as that can be considered left-wing when compared to other nations, but I'll stick with the US-specific jargon in this context — has already long been "politically weaponizing" the concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity. It's a trend that has blown over to Europe and other areas of the world as well in the meantime.
Had Manning been straight, then he would still have been on an extended vacation at a barb wire hotel today.
Barack Obama was a technocrat. He stuck to what was mandated either by tradition or by law. To a certain extent, so did George H. Bush at the time. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump on the other hand are more into freewheeling — they feel that the law applies to everyone except for them. But then again, their degree of narcissism can be considered of clinical proportions compared to that of Obama and Bush Sr.
Reagan and Carter were not narcissistic, and neither were JFK and Eisenhower. I don't know enough about Lyndon B. Johnson or Gerald Ford to say anything on account of narcissism on their part. Nixon didn't strike me as a narcissist either, even though he certainly was a crook — sort of like Dick Cheney, but with OCD added to the mix.