When Barack Obama, in one of his final acts of president of the United States, announced the commutation of Chelsea Manning's 35-year sentence for espionage on Tuesday, it relieved the former soldier's advocates, who supported her passing of thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, and angered those who believed that the disclosure endangered American lives and US security.
It also prompted more discussion about the fate of the era's other significant whistleblower, Edward Snowden, still exiled in Moscow after leaking National Security Agency documents that revealed the scale of the US surveillance state, and who did not receive presidential clemency after applying to be pardoned.
The Obama White House claimed that the two cases are significantly different, in that Manning went through the legal process, pleaded guilty to her crimes and has spent almost seven years in prison. Snowden, on the other hand, fled the United States before the leaks were published.
Both leaks were extremely consequential: Manning's revealed widespread US military abuses in Iraq, including a video showing the murder of citizens and Reuters journalists by a military helicopter, even if the diplomatic cables demonstrated the fundamental integrity of the US state department, then run by Hillary Clinton.
Snowden's leaks were even more important, forcing into the open a crucial debate about the dangers of mass surveillance and as a result curbing some of the worst excesses. History will likely regard him as a brave and conscientious whistleblower in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst, is celebrated for leaking the Pentagon Papers, in 1971.
Snowden is right that his chances of receiving a fair trial are minimal; the disproportionate sentence handed to Manning is evidence enough of that. Perhaps the most shameful aspect of the Obama administration was the zeal with which it pursued whistleblowers.
But whistleblowing is a form of civil disobedience, and a key aspect of civil disobedience is the willingness to face the consequences of one’s actions, including the legal consequences.
