USA TODAY International Edition
Manning should have served at least a decade behind bars
If President Obama felt compelled to commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army private who was convicted in 2013 of providing an enormous trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks, it would have been more appropriate to let Manning serve at least 10 years.
Under Obama’s grant of clemency, announced in the final days of his presidency, Manning will walk free in May, after serving about seven.
Ten years is the minimum Manning was likely to serve under the maximum 35- year sentence handed down by a military judge in 2013. Inmates must serve at least a third of their sentences, and they get time off for good behavior.
Ten years also happens to be the minimum that federal inmates with longer sentences are supposed to serve before seeking a commutation from the president, under a special initiative Obama’s Justice Department outlined in 2014 to encourage more inmates to apply for commutations. There’s no reason Manning deserved a special exception to this guideline.
At Obama’s news conference Wednesday, he explained that Manning “has served a tough prison sentence,” and that no one considering such a crime would think “it goes unpunished.”
Republicans begged to differ. “It’s a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R- Wis. Other critics pointed to the hypocrisy of Democrats blasting WikiLeaks for publishing hacked emails from Democratic Party operatives during the election, and then having a Democratic president commute the sentence of someone who turned over classified documents to WikiLeaks.
The Manning case has always been a thicket of contradictions and complexities.
Manning was tried as Bradley Manning but identifies as a wom- an and now is known as Chelsea. The case attracted widespread sympathy from privacy and transgender activists who complained Manning couldn’t get the help she needed in the military prison in Leavenworth, Kan.
While Manning’s leaks exposed injustice, they also did injustice by revealing the identities of people who put themselves at risk for the U. S. in repressive countries.
Manning copied and released more than 700,000 classified files — not through reporters who would have vetted the material — but through an irresponsible organization, WikiLeaks.
Some of the information, such as a video of a helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed civilians, was material the public deserved to see to get a fuller portrait of the Iraq War. But Manning’s thoughtless dump of so much material, including a quarter million diplomatic cables, may have put real people at risk by exposing U. S. activity abroad that is confidential for good reason.
The military court found Manning not guilty of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, but convicted the defendant on a long list of lesser crimes, including violating espionage laws.
Obama could have struck a better balance between justice and respect for the intelligence community by setting a commutation date sometime in 2020.