State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley was asked for his thoughts on Bradley Manning’s imprisonment. Here’s the exchange, reportedly:
Manning is, of course, the man who is accused of leaking a mass of documents to WikiLeaks, which embarrassed and hurt the State Department, and put troops in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It doesn’t seem to matter to Crowley that, as John McCormack reported, Manning actually seems to be getting rather good treatment. “Manning only gets access to basic local TV for one to three hours on weekdays and three to six hours on weekends; only gets two hours and twenty minutes a day to write correspondence; only has access to one magazine or book at a time; only gets one hour of exercise a day; only gets to meet with visitors for three hours a day on weekends and holidays,” McCormack reported.
But it does seem to matter to the rest of the State Department, which moved today, after Crowley’s comments surfaced, to distance themselves from their spokesman. CBS reports:
In other Crowley news today, the State Department spokesman apparently thought it would be wise to use Twitter to say this, earlier this morning:
As Josh Rogin reports, Crowley later realized that maybe that Tweet wasn’t such a good idea — and deleted it from his account.
