Washington
Obama also granted a full and complete pardon to retired Marine General James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in an investigation of a leak of classified information about a covert U.S.-Israeli cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program.
The president’s dramatic, last-minute clemency actions for Cartwright and Manning were surprising for an administration that has brought more leak prosecutions than all previous ones combined. Obama took office pledging to bring a new era of transparency to government, but during his eight years, his administration has presided over at least nine leak cases.
But officials said the president thought that in Manning’s case, seven years behind bars was enough punishment and that she had been given an excessive sentence — the longest ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction. The administration has contrasted her case with that of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified documents in 2013 and then fled the country, pointing out that Manning did not try to avoid facing the U.S. justice system for her crimes.
“Chelsea Manning is somebody who accepted responsibility for the crimes she committed,” a senior White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House. “She expressed remorse for committing those crimes. She began serving the sentence that was handed down. The president’s concern was rooted in the fact that the sentence handed down is longer than sentences given to other individuals who committed comparable crimes.”
Republicans immediately blasted the White House’s decision, saying the commutation would encourage others to leak sensitive documents.
“This is just outrageous,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said. “Chelsea Manning’s treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets. President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable for their crimes.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s team did not respond to requests for comment on the case.
Cartwright, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, served as the nation’s second-ranking military officer and was facing his sentencing in two weeks after pleading guilty in October to a felony count of lying to the FBI in a classified leak investigation. He admitted to falsely telling investigators that he did not confirm classified information to reporters writing about a covert U.S.-Israeli cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program.
The senior White House official said Cartwright’s long history of distinguished service to the nation factored into Obama’s decision.
Also on Tuesday, Obama granted clemency to more than 200 low-level drug offenders who were sentenced under harsh laws and would have received lighter sentences if convicted today. In all, the president commuted the sentences of 209 individuals and pardoned an additional 64. He is expected to grant more commutations before he leaves office.
Since 2014, Obama has commuted 1,385 sentences, more than the previous 12 presidents combined. Of those, 540 low-level drug offenders had been serving life sentences.
This “final set of actions” as Obama leaves office “is a signal to the system that prosecutors have gone too far,” said Steven Aftergood, a national security and transparency expert at the Federation of American Scientists.
Manning, 29, will be set free in four months, on May 17, instead of in 2045, under the terms of Obama’s commutation.
The Pentagon did not make the recommendation to the White House to commute Manning’s sentence, and senior Defense Department leaders opposed the move, said defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
White House officials said the president’s decision had nothing to do with a recent pledge by Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, that he would agree to be extradited to the United States if Manning’s sentence was commuted.
Members of Assange’s legal team did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
Manning was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 after she transmitted documents to WikiLeaks that came to be known as the Iraq and Afghanistan “War Logs.” She also shared a video that showed a U.S. Apache helicopter in Baghdad opening fire on a group of people that the crew believed to be insurgents. Among the dead were Iraqi children and two journalists. She also leaked documents pertaining to Guantanamo Bay prisoners as well as 250,000 State Department cables.
In an impassioned statement last year accompanying her petition for clemency, she accepted “full and complete responsibility” for disclosing the material. She said she pleaded guilty without the benefit of a plea agreement because she believed that the military justice system would understand her motivation for the leak and sentence her fairly.
“I was wrong,” wrote Manning, who is imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
She said the 35-year penalty was “far more” than she imagined possible — “unreasonable, outrageous and out of line with what I had done.”
Manning, who formerly went by the name Bradley Manning, came out as transgender after her conviction. She said in her statement that the three years since she had been sentenced had enabled her to reflect on her actions and her struggle to adjust to the military.