Hailed as a patriotic whistleblower by some and by others condemned as a traitor to his country, former army private Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for violating the espionage act, disseminating classified military documents and State Department cables and assessments of Guantanamo prisoners. He is eligible for parole in seven years.(The Washington Post, August 21, 2013, by Julie Tate)
Some observers commented on the harshness of the sentence, the longest of its kind in U.S. history, according to Gregory Ferenstein, TechCrunch, August 21, 2013. The sentence supported the Obama administration’s stance in aggressively shutting down leaks of sensitive information.
A New York Times editorial on August 21, 2013 argued that the sentence was extreme given Manning’s intention to reveal the workings of the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and encourage debate. “In their drastic attempt to put Private Manning away for most of the rest of his life, prosecutors were also trying to discourage other potential leakers, but as the continuing release of classified documents by Edward Snowden shows, even the threat of significant prison time is not a deterrent when people believe their government keeps too many secrets,” wrote the Times.
A Los Angeles Times editorial August 22, 2013 found the sentence fair and just. The Times wrote that some see Manning as “a heroic whistleblower,” for revealing some serious error by the military, “But Manning’s disclosures went well beyond that. Many of the 700,000 files the young soldier downloaded from government computers and turned over to the WikiLeaks website undermined U.S. diplomacy without providing any commensurate public benefit.”