This video flagged by Michael Whitney last week, which contains an exchange between President Barack Obama and a supporter of alleged leaker Bradley Manning in which Obama flatly states Manning broke the law, makes me uncomfortable.
On the substance of this exchange, I largely agree with the president when he says, "I can't conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]," (that still shouldn't become an excuse to use official secrecy to hide government wrongdoing). But Obama should have been aware of how it looks when the commander in chief declares someone who is about to face a military trial guilty of the crime for which they are accused. It compromises the integrity of the proceedings.
That said, I don't agree with the equivalence some Manning defenders have drawn between Manning and other leakers. Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald wrote that "once again we find how much we now rely on whistleblowers in general – and WikiLeaks and (if he did what’s accused) Bradley Manning in particular – to learn the truth and see the evidence about what the world’s most powerful factions are actually doing." There's a difference between the kind of targeted leaking whistle-blowing involves and simply releasing reams of information, which is what Manning is accused of doing. There's a difference between what Manning is accused of doing and Thomas Tamm, the FBI agent who exposed an unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program. There's a difference between what Daniel Ellsberg did when he exposed years of government lies about Vietnam, even if Ellsberg himself doesn't see it. A targeted leak meant to expose a specific instance of government malfeasance is qualitatively and morally distinct from someone simply exposing volumes of information without regard for what might be in them, even if some of that information ultimately leads to the disclosure of information related to government misbehavior.
None of this is to say that Wikileaks should be prosecuted, an act that would set a disturbing precedent that could endanger the First Amendment rights of all media organizations. I do however, think if Manning is guilty he should be punished. I don't mean punished by austere conditions in pre-trial detention, before any level of legal culpability is established, but I do think the government has the authority to go after leakers rather than whistle-blowers, and if the accusations against Manning are true, he's the former rather than the latter. Official secrecy should never be used to cover up government malfeasance, but there are some government functions that require secrecy, and those cannot be performed if there is no legal barrier to disclosing that information.
