With barely 72 hours left in office, President Barack Obama Tuesday did an abrupt U-turn on his years-long assault on government leaks and showed leniency toward two military figures who’d helped make public highly sensitive secrets.
Both Democrats and Republicans said they were bewildered – even angered – by Obama’s commutation of the 35-year prison term of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence specialist who turned over some 700,000 classified and sensitive diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.
Obama also pardoned retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators when he denied that he revealed to the New York Times the existence of a highly classified campaign to cripple Iran’s nuclear program with a computer worm. The Stuxnet virus crippled Iran’s delicate nuclear equipment and was the first major use in history of a digital weapon.
For most of his two terms in office, Obama relentlessly sought to prosecute those who spilled government secrets, trying to deter others from following suit. Republican and Democratic critics said Tuesday’s commutation rendered that effort worthless.
Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called the commutation of Manning’s sentence “ a grave mistake that I fear will encourage further acts of espionage and undermine military discipline.”
Manning’s “dishonor will last forever,” McCain said.
The White House said Obama would issue new pardons and commutations Thursday, raising questions about the future of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, an Australian national who has been in refuge at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012 fighting extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations.
WikiLeaks last week posted a tweet saying Assange, who for years has voiced fears that Sweden would turn him over to stand trial in U.S. courts, would “agree to US extradition” if Obama offered clemency to Manning.
Whether Obama would issue a pardon without a conviction was uncertain, as was how it would be viewed by Republicans, who’ve developed a new-found appreciation for the Australian after his publication of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign team undercut Clinton’s campaign.
“Cue hypocritical outrage from Republicans who have defended Assange role in election-related hacks,” tweeted Brian Fallon, Clinton’s former press secretary.
“This is just outrageous,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, said in a statement. “Chelsea Manning’s treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets.”
The actions on behalf of Manning and Cartwright were included in a list of 273 pardons and commutations issued Tuesday by the White House. Manning, who has served barely seven years of her 35-year jail term, will now be freed from her cell at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on May 17.
This is just outrageous
House Speaker Paul Ryan
Last-minute pardons have raised controversy for other presidents, most notably for President Bill Clinton, who on his final day in office pardoned Marc Rich, a fugitive on tax fraud who owed the U.S. government $48 million.
But there was a special feeling to Obama’s unexpected action on Manning’s behalf.
Washington is wracked by a sense of intrigue that perhaps goes beyond even the consternation that greeted the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks of video and documents Manning copied to a CD from a classified computer system while on duty in Iraq. The national intelligence agencies are feuding with President-elect Donald Trump over the possible role of Russia in the election just past, an unverified dossier compiled by a former British spy is circulating, alleging that Russia has compromising video of Trump, and the nation’s political establishment is angrily debating whether Trump’s soft talk toward Russian President Vladimir Putin is a threat to national security.
That made Obama’s abrupt move to free Manning, a 29-year-old Army private from Oklahoma, seem like an especially sharp slap to the nation’s system of classifying secrets.
Until Tuesday, Obama had defied appeals from advocacy groups, including Amnesty International, to release Manning, who originally was known as Bradley but has been undergoing a gender transformation since she was arrested. She was convicted of multiple counts under the Espionage Act, and given the 35-year term on Aug. 21, 2013. She is serving her term in an all-male prison.
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Manning’s leak arguably changed the course of history. Once secret State Department cables on Tunisia’s corrupt government helped ignite the Arab Spring movement, bringing dramatic and violent upheaval to six nations, at least three of which are still plunged in turmoil.
Tens of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables that pulled back the veil on U.S. policies normally drawn up in private and, in some cases, showed covert support for authoritarian rulers favorable to U.S. interests.