President Obama has commuted most of the 35-year prison term of U.S. intelligence leaker Chelsea Manning, whose disclosures were coveted by then-al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Manning is set to be freed this May after the president’s order on Tuesday. The White House indicated in recent days that Obama was considering the move, downplaying Manning’s actions in comparison to those of Edward Snowden, who had also petitioned for clemency. Per the New York Times, Press Secretary Josh Earnest granted that while the documents 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.)”
However, Thomas Joscelyn noted that the documents Manning leaked were coveted by bin Laden himself. Quoting from an Associated Press report, at Manning’s trial, “The government presented [an] uncontested written statement that former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden asked for and received from an associate the Afghanistan battlefield reports that WikiLeaks published. The material was found on digital media seized in the May 2011 raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, [lead prosecutor Maj. Ashden] Fein said. Bin Laden was killed in the raid.” Joscelyn continues:
Sen. Tom Cotton, whose active-duty service overlapped with Manning’s, condemned Obama for his decision. “When I was leading soldiers in Afghanistan, Private Manning was undermining us by leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks,” he said in a statement. “I don’t understand why the president would feel special compassion for someone who endangered the lives of our troops, diplomats, intelligence officers, and allies. We ought not treat a traitor like a martyr.”
Manning’s commutation reads as follows:
