-ANON please.
Q: From the readings, what is your opinion of Chelsea/Bradley Manning‘s decision to leak sensitive information to WikiLeaks and her subsequent sentencing? Is what she did ethical or did she violate her duty? Should she have been protected under the Whistleblower protection laws? Is she a revolutionary hero or a traitor?
A: Even though I was reading through the articles provided by Professor Bui about whether Chelsea Manning was a hero or not, I think I just needed to hear an answer from her herself, on whether what she leaked would be a danger to the public, or whether it was a harried grab of information and deciding to spread it everywhere. From ABC’s interview with her, the interviewer asked her if she had that intent in mind, and she decidedly said no. I think from then on, it was clear in my head that Chelsea Manning was a hero. It’s true what she says, war is not a clear good and evil, it’s always messy. And this principle has been reiterated over and over again in many texts and biographies that at some point, maybe we’ll learn from it. Also, the decision to remove soldiers from that region by President Obama made me realize that the amount of resources going into it weren’t necessarily needed.
However, the information she revealed, most importantly or at least the most highlighted one, was definitely of corrupt nature. The video gained traction by showing a gunning of 2 journalists and innocent civilians. Also, since that video was never meant to come to public light, it’s sort of scary to think about that the information we see may never be the full story.
In her interview, she reiterated the point that what she did was her responsibility, her duty. It’s not something that was drafted up in one night. It took a lot of thought and choice into releasing something like this.
However, I do see the panic behind the nature of her whistleblowing event. The hacker that she was in contact with at the time, made a reasonable decision to turn this information and the informant to the government, as it was during a tenuous time and the amount of classified information presented could make anyone nervous about its release.
First off, it’s kind of funny that there’s now a whistleblower protection act, because one of the parties that hid information was the government itself. Besides the fact, should Chelsea Manning have been protected under these laws? I think if the authority, in this case the government, is hiding information, and is selecting what information to broadcast for propaganda, then I think I would interpret that as an abuse of authority. However, critics do say that this act violated protection laws since the act of whistleblowing itself was a potential threat to public safety. That’s where I needed to hear Manning herself have the intentions that was the complete opposite of that. To hear her intent of having public attention, discussion, and knowledge without endangering the public at the same time, was a little reassuring, even though no one truly knows the circumstances.