Chelsea Manning Libre!

WASHING­TON — Presi­dent Obama on Tues­day commu­ted all but four months of the remai­ning prison sentence of Chel­sea Manning, the Army inte­lli­gence analyst convic­ted of a 2010 leak that reve­a­led Ameri­can mili­tary and diplo­ma­tic acti­vi­ties across the world, disrup­ted Mr. Obama’s admi­nis­tra­tion and brought global promi­nence to Wiki­Le­aks, the reci­pi­ent of those disclo­su­res.

The deci­sion by Mr. Obama rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to kill herself last year, from an uncer­tain future as a trans­gen­der woman incar­ce­ra­ted at the men’s mili­tary prison at Fort Leaven­worth, Kan. She has been jailed for nearly seven years, and her 35-year sentence was by far the longest punish­ment ever impo­sed in the United States for a leak convic­tion.

At the same time that Mr. Obama commu­ted the sentence of Ms. Manning, a low-ranking enlis­ted soldier at the time of her leaks, he also pardo­ned James E. Cartw­right, the reti­red Marine gene­ral and former vice chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who plea­ded guilty to lying about his conver­sa­ti­ons with repor­ters to F.B.I. agents inves­ti­ga­ting a leak of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about cybe­rat­tacks on Iran’s nuclear program.

The two acts of clemency were a remar­ka­ble final step for a presi­dent whose admi­nis­tra­tion carried out an unpre­ce­den­ted crimi­nal crack­down on leaks of govern­ment secrets. Depen­ding on how they are coun­ted, the Obama admi­nis­tra­tion has prose­cu­ted either nine or 10 such cases, more than were char­ged under all previ­ous presi­den­cies combi­ned.

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In addi­tion, Mr. Obama on Tues­day commu­ted the sentence of Oscar Lopez Rivera, who was part of a Puerto Rican nati­o­na­list group that carried out a string of bombings in the late 1970s and early 1980s; the other members of that group had long since been freed. Mr. Obama also gran­ted 63 other pardons and 207 other commu­ta­ti­ons, mostly for drug offen­ders.

Under the terms of the commu­ta­tion announ­ced by the White House on Tues­day, Ms. Manning is set to be freed on May 17 of this year rather than in 2045. A senior admi­nis­tra­tion offi­cial said the 120-day delay was part of a stan­dard tran­si­tion period for commu­ta­ti­ons to time served, and was desig­ned to allow for such steps as finding a place for Ms. Manning to live after her rele­ase.

The commu­ta­tion also reli­e­ved the Defense Depart­ment of the diffi­cult respon­si­bi­lity of Ms. Manning’s incar­ce­ra­tion as she pushes for treat­ment for her gender dysp­ho­ria, inclu­ding sex reas­sign­ment surgery, that the mili­tary has no expe­ri­ence provi­ding.

But the move was sharply criti­ci­zed by seve­ral promi­nent Repu­bli­cans, inclu­ding the chair­men of the House and Senate armed servi­ces commit­tees, Repre­sen­ta­tive Mac Thorn­berry of Texas and Sena­tor John McCain of Arizona, who called her leaks “espi­o­nage” and said they had put Ameri­can troops and the country at risk.

Spea­ker Paul D. Ryan called it “outra­ge­ous.” “Presi­dent Obama now leaves in place a dange­rous prece­dent that those who compro­mise our nati­o­nal secu­rity won’t be held accoun­ta­ble for their crimes, ” he said in a state­ment.

But in a joint state­ment, Nancy Hollan­der and Vince Ward — two lawyers who have been repre­sen­ting Ms. Manning in appe­a­ling her convic­tion and sentence, and who filed the commu­ta­tion appli­ca­tion — prai­sed the deci­sion.

 

“Ms. Manning is the longest-serving whistle-blower in the history of the United States, ” they said. “Her 35-year sentence for disclo­sing infor­ma­tion that served the public inter­est and never caused harm to the United States was always exces­sive, and we’re deligh­ted that justice is being served in the form of this commu­ta­tion.”

In recent days, the White House had signa­led that Mr. Obama was seri­ously consi­de­ring gran­ting Ms. Manning’s commu­ta­tion appli­ca­tion, in contrast to a pardon appli­ca­tion submit­ted on behalf of the other large-scale leaker of the era, Edward J. Snow­den, the former inte­lli­gence contrac­tor who disclo­sed archi­ves of top-secret survei­llance files and is living as a fugi­tive in Russia.

Asked about the two clemency appli­ca­ti­ons on Friday, the White House spokes­man, Josh Earnest, discus­sed the “pretty stark diffe­rence” between Ms. Manning’s case for mercy and Mr. Snow­den’s. While their offen­ses were simi­lar, he said, there were “some impor­tant diffe­ren­ces.”

“Chel­sea Manning is some­body who went through the mili­tary crimi­nal justice process, was expo­sed to due process, was found guilty, was senten­ced for her crimes, and she acknow­led­ged wrong­doing, ” he said. “Mr. Snow­den fled into the arms of an adver­sary and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concer­ted effort to under­mine confi­dence in our demo­cracy.”

Mr. Earnest also noted that while the docu­ments Ms. Manning provi­ded to Wiki­Le­aks were “dama­ging to nati­o­nal secu­rity, ” the ones Mr. Snow­den disclo­sed were “far more seri­ous and far more dange­rous.” (None of the docu­ments Ms. Manning disclo­sed were clas­si­fied above the merely “secret” level.)

Ms. Manning was still known as Brad­ley Manning when she deployed with her unit to Iraq in late 2009. There, she worked as a low-level inte­lli­gence analyst helping her unit assess insur­gent acti­vity in the area it was patro­lling, a role that gave her access to a clas­si­fied compu­ter network.

She copied hundreds of thou­sands of mili­tary inci­dent logs from the Afgha­nis­tan and Iraq wars, which, among other things, expo­sed abuses of detai­nees by Iraqi mili­tary offi­cers working with Ameri­can forces and showed that civi­lian deaths in the Iraq war were probably much higher than offi­cial esti­ma­tes.

The files she copied also inclu­ded about 250,000 diplo­ma­tic cables from Ameri­can embas­sies showing sensi­tive deals and conver­sa­ti­ons, dossi­ers detai­ling inte­lli­gence assess­ments of Guantá­namo detai­nees held without trial, and a video of an Ameri­can heli­cop­ter attack in Bagh­dad in which two Reuters jour­na­lists were killed, among others.

She deci­ded to make all these files public, as she wrote at the time, in the hope that they would incite “world­wide discus­sion, deba­tes and reforms.” Wiki­Le­aks disclo­sed them — working with tradi­ti­o­nal news orga­ni­za­ti­ons inclu­ding The New York Times — brin­ging noto­ri­ety to the group and its foun­der, Julian Assange.

The disclo­su­res set off a fran­tic scram­ble as Obama admi­nis­tra­tion offi­ci­als sought to mini­mize any poten­tial harm, inclu­ding getting to safety some foreig­ners in dange­rous coun­tries who were iden­ti­fied as having helped Ameri­can troops or diplo­mats. Prose­cu­tors, howe­ver, presen­ted no evidence that anyone had been killed because of the leaks.

 

At her court-martial, Ms. Manning confes­sed in detail to her acti­ons and apolo­gi­zed, saying she had not inten­ded to put anyone at risk and noting that she had been “dealing with a lot of issues” at the time she made her deci­sion.

Testi­mony showed that she had been in a mental and emoti­o­nal crisis as she came to grips, amid the stress of a war zone, with the fact that she was not merely gay but had gender dysp­ho­ria. She had been beha­ving erra­ti­cally, inclu­ding angry outbursts and lapsing into cata­to­nia midsen­tence. At one point, she had emai­led a photo­graph of herself in a woman’s wig to her super­vi­sor.

Prose­cu­tors said that because the secret mate­rial was made avai­la­ble for publi­ca­tion on the inter­net, anyone, inclu­ding Al Qaeda, could read it. And they accu­sed Ms. Manning of trea­son, char­ging her with multi­ple counts under the Espi­o­nage Act, as well as with “aiding the enemy, ” a poten­tial capi­tal offense, although they said they would not seek her execu­tion.

Ms. Manning confes­sed and plea­ded guilty to a lesser version of those char­ges without any deal to cap her sentence. But prose­cu­tors pres­sed forward with a trial and won convic­ti­ons on the more seri­ous versi­ons of those char­ges; a mili­tary judge acquit­ted her of “aiding the enemy.”

In her commu­ta­tion appli­ca­tion, Ms. Manning said she had not imagi­ned that she would be senten­ced to the “extreme” term of 35 years, a term for which there was “no histo­ri­cal prece­dent.” (There have been only a hand­ful of leak cases, and most sentence are one to three years.)

After her senten­cing, Ms. Manning announ­ced that she was trans­gen­der and chan­ged her name to Chel­sea.

The mili­tary, under pres­sure from a lawsuit filed on her behalf by Chase Stran­gio of the Ameri­can Civil Liber­ties Union, has permit­ted her to partly tran­si­tion to life as a woman, inclu­ding giving her cross-sex hormo­nes and letting her wear women’s under­gar­ments and light cosme­tics.

But it has not let her grow her hair longer than male mili­tary stan­dards, citing secu­rity risks, and Ms. Manning said she had yet to be permit­ted to see a surgeon about the possi­bi­lity of sex reas­sign­ment surgery.

Until recently, the mili­tary dischar­ged trans­gen­der soldi­ers. In June, Secre­tary of Defense Ashton B. Carter chan­ged that policy and said the mili­tary would instead provide treat­ment for them, even­tu­ally inclu­ding such surgery if doctors said it was neces­sary.

Presi­dent-elect Donald J. Trump mocked that change as exces­si­vely “poli­ti­cally correct, ” raising the possi­bi­lity that he will rescind it.

But even if he does, Ms. Manning will soon no longer be subject to the mili­tary’s control.