Plan B Forum

Chelsea Manning, the US army soldier who became one of the most prominent whistleblowers in modern times when she exposed the nature of modern warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who then went on to pay the price with a 35-year military prison sentence, is to be freed in May as a gift of outgoing president Barack Obama.

In the most audacious – and contentious – commutation decision to come from Obama yet, the sitting president used his constitutional power just three days before he leaves the White House to give Manning her freedom. She will walk from the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on 17 May, almost seven years to the day since she was arrested in a base outside Baghdad for offenses relating to the leaking of a vast trove of US state secrets.


Nancy Hollander, Manning’s lawyer, spoke to the Guardian before she had even had the chance to pass on to the soldier the news of her release. “Oh my God!” was Hollander’s instant response to the news which she had just heard from the White House counsel. “I cannot believe it – in 120 days she will be free and it will all be over. It’s incredible.”

Manning, who is a columnist for the Guardian, was the face of one of the harsher aspects of the Obama administration, as an official leaker who suffered under his approach a longer custodial than any other whistleblower of modern times. She was one of several leakers who were prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act – with more individuals falling foul to that anti-spying law than under all previous US presidents combined.

Hall of Fame first baseman Willie McCovey has been pardoned by Barack Obama for a 21-year-old guilty plea to tax fraud.

The San Francisco Giants legend was one of 273 individuals granted a second chance by the outgoing president on Tuesday, when Obama issued 209 grants of commutation and 64 pardons.

McCovey pleaded guilty to income tax-fraud conspiracy in 1995, alongside fellow baseball star Duke Snider, for failing to report thousands of dollars each in fees received from memorabilia and autograph shows.

The plea carried a sentence of up to seven months in jail. Both McCovey and Snider, who died in 2011, were given two years’ probation and a $5,000 fine in 1996.

Guinevere wrote:I just want him to pardon Leonard Peltier. There is a very well reasoned pardon request pending, it wasn't acted on at Christmas, so I'm hoping it comes in the next two days we have left of civilization as we know it.

Guinevere wrote:Not even in the same realm. I'm about to go into a public meeting but I'll be back to explain why this one makes sense.

He also pardoned some general who leaked classified info.

And I do not tthink Snowdon deserves the same consideration at all.

Crackpot wrote:

Guinevere wrote:Not even in the same realm. I'm about to go into a public meeting but I'll be back to explain why this one makes sense.

He also pardoned some general who leaked classified info.

And I do not tthink Snowdon deserves the same consideration at all.

I'm looking forward to reading this (and the Snowden reasoning as well).

Just so you don't forget.

• WASHINGTON, D.C.—At the end of his term, President George W. Bush commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby, who had been convicted of misleading Congress as to the outing (purely out of political vengeance) of a covert CIA operative named Valerie Plame. At the end of his term, President George H.W. Bush pardoned everyone convicted of engaging in the criminal act of selling missiles to a state-sponsor of terrorism and diverting the profits to a private war in Central America. Libby never served a day in jail. Neither did any of the Iran-Contra characters who skated.
  
  In 2013, Chelsea Manning was convicted of the massive leak of government documents that she orchestrated in 2009. On Tuesday, the president commuted most of the rest of Manning's sentence, and she will be released next May, instead of in 2045. Since her conviction, she has been incarcerated at Leavenworth, including long stretches of solitary confinement. She has attempted suicide twice. If you think she got off easy, you're out of your mind.
  
  Libby got off easy. Oliver North got off easy. The people who gave Libby and North their orders got off easy. Once again, the president has turned his big bag of fcks inside out only to discover that it's still empty. Now the attention moves to Edward Snowden, and the White House says the difference is that Snowden fled while Manning faced the music. That's an interesting debate, but there is no serious argument about whether or not Chelsea Manning's punishment was sufficient. Solitary at Leavenworth is as sufficient as it gets.

• I waited to answer my email until after President Obama’s final press conference.
  
  I figured he’d talk about his reasoning, and he did.
  
  And there were no surprises.
  
  First, the president commuted Manning’s sentence. Manning wasn’t pardoned.
  
  That’s an important distinction.
  
  I can perhaps live with a commutation.
  
  But I would be adamantly opposed to a pardon.
  
  Manning doesn’t deserve a pardon in any fashion. She betrayed her country. She betrayed her oath. That is not in question. And Obama didn’t say otherwise and made no excuses for her. Nor did he in any way criticize the military or the military legal process that convicted Manning of her crimes.
  
  But…
  
  But, as much as it galls me – and it does gall me – President Obama was right. Manning’s sentence was out of proportion with other similar cases.
  
  Thirty-five years in Maximum Security was far beyond what others who acted similar to Manning got. Manning wasn’t a spy like John Walker or Robert Hanssen. She was an idiot. She betrayed her country because she was stupid and selfish. She wanted us to think she did it for some higher cause but the truth is she just thought she knew better than all the rest of us. She was a lousy soldier and she shouldn’t have been there in the first place and maybe some of that is on the Army, or maybe not. But in the end perhaps 35 years was too long.
  
  Thirty-five years is too long when a General who gave classified material to his mistress got nothing but a slap on the wrist and is hailed as a hero. And yes, thirty-five years is too long when the Secretary of State can run a private email server in her house with classified information on it. Granted, neither Petraeus nor Clinton’s actions were anywhere near what Manning did, but it’s damned hard to hold the troops to account with their commanders set such examples.
  
  I want you to understand something here: I have no sympathy for Chelsea Elizabeth Manning and I’ll be honest, if she was right now looking at another 28 years in Leavenworth, I would shed not a single tear. She could have rotted there for all of me.
  
  But I’m not particular put out by clemency either. I wouldn’t have done it, but I’m not the president either.
  
  Perhaps my perspective is not yours.
  
  Perhaps my experience is not yours.
  
  Tens of thousands of us went into that lousy war, me included.
  
  We, all of us including Manning, went of our own volition.
  
  Four thousand, five hundred and fourteen of us died in Iraq.
  
  Two thousand, three hundred and ninety-two of us died in Afghanistan.
  
  Those men and women, they don’t get a choice about living with the consequences of their decisions.
  
  Those of us who lived, who held fast to our oath, we have to live with our choices. Every single day.
  
  Manning should have to live with hers.
  
  She betrayed her country. She betrayed her oath. She betrayed us. She did it on purpose.
  
  Whether it be in prison or out, Manning should have to wear that betrayal around her neck for the rest of her goddamned life.
  
  In the end, we all have to live with what we’ve done.
  
  President Obama included.
  
  Perhaps that’s why he made the decision he did.
  
  I guess, I’ll just have to live with that.

If the commutation causes even ONE Trump voter to die of apoplexy, it will have been worth it.