A military judge has found Bradley Manning guilty of violating the Espionage Act, but has cleared him of having aided the enemy
By R.M. | WASHINGTON, DC
HERO or villain? Victim or culprit? Patriot or traitor? Bradley Manning has been called all of these things. For nearly three years Americans have debated the character of the young army private who stole and then leaked a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks. On July 30th a military judge announced her opinion, finding him guilty of violating the Espionage Act, but clearing him of having aided the enemy. Hearings on his sentence will begin soon.
There is no argument over what Mr Manning did. Earlier this year he admitted to sending hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, war reports from Afghanistan and Iraq and other files to WikiLeaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad. In doing so, he pleaded guilty to ten of the charges against him and faced up to 20 years in prison. He has now been found guilty of the bulk of the remaining charges, which could see him spend the rest of his life behind bars.
At his plea hearing in February, Mr Manning tried to explain why he had exposed American secrets. He hoped to "spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general" and "cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day." One of his earliest publicised leaks, that of the so-called "collateral murder" video, certainly had the desired effect. Lending credibility to his claim of whistleblowing, other leaked documents exposed acts of abuse and illegality.
It is unlikely, as government officials once claimed, that Mr Manning's leaks endangered lives. But the army private's data dump was so indiscriminate that the prosecution argued that he could not possibly have known how much damage he might have been doing. Indeed, when WikiLeaks published an early batch of Mr Manning's documents, it failed to redact the names of Afghan informants. Many of the conversations and observations recounted in the leaked cables did little to inform the public, but certainly made life more difficult for American diplomats.
The pursuit of Mr Manning is merely the latest battle in Barack Obama's wider war on leakers. Mr Obama's administration has pressed criminal charges against seven (perhaps eight) suspected leakers under the Espionage Act, more than all other administrations combined. But the charge that Mr Manning had aided the enemy was unprecedented. The government reasoned that Mr Manning's leak of defence-related material to an entity like WikiLeaks made it accessible to America's enemies. When American soldiers killed Osama bin Laden, prosecutors noted, they found materials downloaded from WikiLeaks in his compound.
The aggressive charges, along with Mr Manning's shoddy treatment at the hands of American authorities, have already had an effect. Supporters of Edward Snowden, who recently leaked details of an enormous American surveillance programme, cited the case of Mr Manning as a reason for his fleeing the country. The administration says it wants to try Mr Snowden too, even as Congress agonises over the snooping he revealed.
Mr Snowden leaked his information to the Guardian, a British newspaper. Had Mr Manning given his documents directly to the New York Times (something he claims to have attempted), prosecutors say they would have pressed the same charges. This is troubling if one sees the media as a public watchdog, aided by those who expose government wrong-doing. But others will wonder why Mr Manning and Mr Snowden thought they had the right to decide what secrets should become public.
