Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Clemency for Chelsea Manning
Ex-Army intelligence analyst among 209 inmates receiving shortened sentences.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday reduced the 35year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army private convicted of leaking thousands of classified reports to WikiLeaks and who later became a transgender woman, to the nearly seven years she has served.
The president also pardoned retired Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to FBI agents after he disclosed classified information to a reporter about a covert U.S. cyber attack that targeted Iran’s nuclear program.
In a last minute flurry of orders, Obama commuted sentences for 209 individuals and issued 64 pardons. Aides said he will commute substantially more Thursday, the day before he leaves office and Donald Trump is inaugurated.
The most notable omission on the list was Edward Snowden, who fled to Russia after he leaked a vast trove of highly classified documents about U.S. surveillance systems at home and abroad in 2013.
Snowden has been charged with espionage and is considered a fugitive. Supporters have launched a major effort to get the Justice Department to drop charges, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday that Snowden has not filed paperwork to seek clemency.
Since taking office, Obama has commuted prison sentences for 1,385 people, more than any other president and more than the last 12 presidents combined, according to the White House.
Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in August 2013 after a military court convicted her of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic records, cables and videos to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in 2010.
She will be released on May 17, a six-month wait that was included in all the commutation orders.
A senior administration official said the intelligence community still had “deep concerns” about Manning’s disclosures, but that did not “have any bearing” on Obama’s decision.
“Chelsea Manning accepted responsibility for crimes she committed, expressed remorse for committing these crimes,” said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
By May she will have served nearly seven years in prison and Obama, who despite believing “her actions were criminal” still “believes that is sufficient and has decided to commute her sentence,” the official said.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter did not support the commutation of Manning’s sentence, according to U.S. officials who wouldn’t comment on the matter publicly.
Manning, who has been incarcerated in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., twice attempted suicide last year.
Republican lawmakers condemned Obama’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called her pending release “outrageous” and said it set a precedent so “those who compromise our national security” can evade accountability.
The GOP-led Congress was largely silent on the decision to pardon Cartwright, a decorated officer who had served 40 years in the military.
Cartwright disclosed classified information when he confirmed to a New York Times reporter that a U.S. operation launched under the George W. Bush administration had used a computer worm known as Stuxnet to temporarily cripple Iran’s uranium-enriching centrifuges, a sharp setback to its nuclear program at the time. The U.S. government has never formally acknowledged launching the cyber attack on Iran.
In a statement, Cartwright thanked Obama. “I love this country and believe it to be the greatest nation on earth,” he said. “I have never lost faith in that belief.”
Most of the commutations and pardons were for inmates held for decades.
Among them was Oscar Lopez-Rivera of Chicago, a member of a Puerto Rican pro-independence group sentenced to 70 years in prison for bombings and bank robberies in the 1970s and 1980s as well as for plotting to escape from the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where he has served 35 years.
Puerto Ricans had long demanded the release of Lopez, who belonged to the ultranationalist Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN, which claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings at public and commercial buildings in U.S. cities during the 1970s and 1980s.
More than a dozen FALN members were convicted and imprisoned in the 1980s on charges including seditious conspiracy and armed robbery. In 1999, President Bill Clinton granted conditional clemency to nearly all the prisoners and released them.
Lopez, who rejected Clinton’s conditional offer for a reduced sentence, will now have his term expire in May.
Obama also pardoned Ian Schrager, a New York hotel operator who founded Studio 54, the late 1970s Manhattan disco club known for attracting celebrities and lavish parties.
Convicted of income tax evasion in 1980, Schrager served 20 months in prison and was released in 1981. He later founded a string of successful boutique hotels.
Obama also pardoned Willie McCovey, a former star first baseman with the San Francisco Giants, who pleaded guilty in 1995 to tax evasion. He was sentenced to 2 years’ probation and $5,000 fine in 1996.