Reading 05: Chelsea/Bradley Manning and Whistleblowing

Chelsea Manning’s decision to leak sensitive information to WikiLeaks and her subsequent sentencing is one of the hardest topics to have an opinion on that we have discussed in class so far, in my opinion. On the one hand, she exposed the killing of innocents through the ‘collateral murder’ video she released, shining light on an ugly instance of U.S. military activity. On the other hand, she blatantly broke the law, leaking more than 700,000 government files that contained important military secrets that, when exposed, could cause major harm to the U.S. war effort and endanger those fighting to protect our country and our allies. Personally, I believe that, in ruling a nation, there are many things that should be kept secret by the federal government, including these military documents that Chelsea Manning leaked to WikiLeaks. This is not done so that the government can get away with injustices, but rather to protect its people and its operations. The fact of the matter is that nowadays there is a large push to make information widely accessible and open to all, but that goal just doesn’t make sense in the context of the government or the military. When a huge mass of information is exposed in a manner such as Manning’s leak to WikiLeaks, our people are put in harms way. That is why there are laws and structures in place to prohibit information leaks like this: to keep our citizens and the brave men and women defending our nation safe. It is with this viewpoint in mind that I believe Chelsea Manning is guilty and deserving of her sentencing. There are absolutely things that she uncovered that are incredibly troubling, but a massive data dump of government secrets is not in the best interest of the country. I think she clearly violated her duty, going too far in an attempt to reveal a military injustice with the hopes of affecting positive change.

Despite the fact that I hold this opinion, I do believe in the value of whistleblowing and the importance of whistleblower protection laws. When a corporation or entity is breaking a law or abusing its power and negatively affecting the people it deals with, then I would hope there is someone brave enough within it to stand up and reveal these abuses, and I believe the whistleblower protection laws should ensure that this person is not negatively affected by their decision to blow the whistle. This may be an idealistic stance, but there needs to be structures in place to make every attempt to protect legitimate whistleblowers down the road. However, I do not believe that Chelsea Manning was a legitimate whistleblower. Whistleblowing is meant to raise awareness of an organization’s crime, and yet she committed a crime herself by breaking her security clearance and releasing a vast amount of secret information. These information barriers are in place for a reason, and while her attempt to bring awareness to the military’s killing of innocents seemed like a righteous motive, she took it too far and essentially began to dump all the information she could. I do not believe she should be protected by the whistleblower protection laws, and while I hesitate to call her a traitor because I do believe her intentions were good, I think she committed treacherous acts and did harm to the U.S. government and its people.