WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning is being moved from the Quantico brig where he is currently being held to the prison at Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas, according to the Pentagon.

The Associated Press reported that the move is connected to criticism about how the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia, has treated the Army soldier. But at a press conference on Tuesday, the Army’s general counsel downplayed the criticism.

“I won’t say that his conditions at Quantico had nothing to do with this,” said Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s general counsel, but also added that “the fact that we have made a decision to transfer him should not be interpreted as a criticism of the place he was before.” The Pentagon, he said, remained satisfied that Manning’s treatment at Quantico was in compliance with “legal and regulatory standards in all respects, and we salute the military personnel there for the job they did in difficult circumstances.”

Manning’s treatment during his detention has been the subject of intense criticism. The ACLU called his treatment “gratuitously harsh” in a letter sent last month to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was forced to resign after publicly calling Manning’s treatment by the military “counterproductive and stupid.” President Obama found himself defending Manning’s treatment at a press conference last month.

Johnson, however, said there were a number of other issues that led the Pentagon to re-evaluate Manning’s confinement location. These included the length of time he’s expected to be confined prior to undergoing a trial, and the services available to pre-trial prisoners.

Johnson said Quantico was designed for only short pre-trial stays of a few months, whereas Manning was already in his ninth month at Quantico and is not expected to go to trial for many more months. Leavenworth was also more suitable because it has better mental health support and is an Army facility. Manning is an Army soldier, and the case against him is being handled by the Army, not the Marine Corps.

“We have assessed that this is in Private Manning’s own best interest to move him at this juncture of the case,” Johnson said.

“We just wanted to get him to a place … where his well-being and his care and his pretrial confinement could be the very best that we could provide,” added Army Undersecretary Joseph Westphal. “He is a soldier, he is our soldier, and we felt we needed to take care of that.”

In the press conference, which was hastily organized late in the day after the Associated Press broke the news that Manning was to be moved, Johnson revealed that Manning had recently been interviewed for a mental health assessment requested by his attorney. The so-called “706 board” inquiry will determine if Manning suffered a “severe mental disease or defect” at the time of his alleged leaking. If he’s found to have been mentally fit, the case will proceed to the military equivalent of a grand jury to determine if he should be court-martialed. His trial would be held in the Washington, DC, area.

Johnson said that Manning had been interviewed for the inquiry on April 9, and now that his role in that process was completed, he could be moved to a new facility. He said the inquiry began in January, and it would be “a matter of weeks” before the board reached its decision.

He said the Army began thinking about moving Manning a couple of weeks ago, but wanted to wait until his 706 interview was completed.

Asked if concerns about Manning’s mental health were a factor in moving him to Leavenworth, Johnson said that “without commenting on Private Manning’s particular situation, mental health support, mental health infrastructure was a consideration in looking at Leavenworth and other facilities.”

Manning, 23, was arrested last May in Iraq after telling a former hacker that he had leaked vast amounts of classified material to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks. He was subsequently transferred to Kuwait, where he was detained for about two months before being moved to the Quantico brig at the end of July.

For most of his time at the brig, Manning has been held in highly restrictive pretrial confinement. Designated a maximum-custody detainee under prevention-of-injury watch, or POI, he is confined to his cell for all but an hour a day, and has a number of other restrictions placed on him. At one point his clothes were taken away, and he was forced to sleep naked.

Manning’s father, Brian Manning, recently called the treatment of his son “shocking.”

The brig maintained that Manning’s treatment was consistent with other prisoners placed under POI watch. But Manning’s attorney, David E. Coombs, filed protests alleging mistreatment and indicating there was no legitimate reason for his client to be under protective watch.

Speaking at the press conference on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton, garrison commander at Ft. Leavenworth, said the Army had only recently opened a new facility there, the Joint Regional Correctional Facility, to house pre-trial prisoners and post-trial prisoners.

She said Manning would undergo an in-depth risk assessment upon arriving at the facility — to include mental health, physical, emotional, and spiritual evaluations. He would also be evaluated for his ability to assimilate with other prisoners to determine his external risks at the facility. Based on all of this information she, along with a panel of experts, would determine the conditions under which he would be confined.

“It’s all based upon the initial assessment when he comes into the facility and environment and how he assimilates into the environment,” she said.

She said he would be housed with other pre-trial inmates, though he would be confined to a single-man cell, as other inmates in the facility are housed. Depending on his risk assessment, he would receive three meals a day in the dining facility and would have three hours of indoor and outdoor recreational time each day. Asked if Manning would have access to a computer at Leavenworth, Hilton said that he would have access to a law library where a computer is available for inmates.

The Joint Regional Correctional Facility currently has 150 inmates, of which eight are in the pre-trial confinement section, a medium-security facility, according to Hilton. She invited the media to visit the facility for a tour to “see how wonderful” it is.

Photos: (Left) Military police captains depart the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., which is a separate prison facility from the one where Manning will be held. AP Photo/Orlin Wagner. (Right) A cell inside the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. AP Photo/U.S. Army