Comment by etjossem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by etjossem | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Chelsea Manning brought us video footage of Baghdad airstrikes with civilian and press casualties. The motive was clear-cut: she wanted to expose hidden truths about the war in Iraq that might convince the American people it was no longer worth the cost. That's the definition of a whistleblower.

"[She] didn’t like that people were being killed, particularly the citizens, innocent people," Campbell said. "I remember us specifically talking about how we were having a hard time getting information on how many people were being killed."

"On one of [her] last visits to Boston, Manning told Keith Rose, a friend [she] had met at Brandeis, of [her] misgivings about Iraq because of what [she] was learning as an intelligence analyst. "[She] expressed a feeling to me like how messed up the situation is," Rose said. "[She] said things like, 'If more people knew what was going on over there, they would not support the war.'"

Manning: “The thing that got me most was discovering that 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing ‘anti-Iraqi’ literature” had in truth printed a “benign political critique” against the corruption in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet.

Her conscience could not bear to keep these human rights abuses secret, and she revealed them to a world that needed to know about them. I am getting very tired of a narrative in which Manning's actions are mischaracterized as a "vendetta against the US Army" and a "cowardly act." It's an insidious and despicable way to shift attention away from civilian deaths in war and the mistreatment of detainees, the latter of which Manning continues to experience even today.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/who-is-wik...

>Her conscience could not bear to keep these human rights abuses secret

Manning had no idea what was in any of the information being leaked. This is not the actions of a conscientious objector. The amount of re-writing history going on here is absurd.

> no idea what was in any of the information being leaked

After watching journalists get annihilated by an Apache missile strike, there is not a lot of room for confusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

So because there happened to be something bad among the 250k documents, the act itself is completely absolved? If I were to murder 100 people randomly should I be absolved because it turned out one of them was a child molester?

> If I were to murder 100 people randomly should I be absolved because it turned out one of them was a child molester?

You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question.

> So because there happened to be something bad among the 250k documents, the act itself is completely absolved?

In short, yes. Her 7-year sentence has already been quite enough.

I will concede that the outlet through which the leaks were published didn't meet the standards to which we usually hold investigative reporting. Manning chose to disclose all cables in confidence to a team she felt could sift through them for evidence of wrongdoing. That team then proved themselves irresponsible by publishing everything. They should have been far more selective about what they disclosed to the public.

I don't blame the source here. I absolutely do blame the coverage.

>You sound ridiculous. Let's get to the real question.

It's not ridiculous, its a reductio ad absurdum of the principle you seem to be employing, that a chance positive result of an action justifies the original action. Or are you just making things up as you go along to reach the conclusion you prefer?

>In short, yes.

OK, here's a more down to earth scenario. Say I'm a high level administration official and I have access to all classified information. Should I release literally all of it because surely somewhere in the dump will be some wrongdoing by somebody? Surely your answer to this must be no?

That's more like it! Naturally, the answer's no - there's plenty of material the public doesn't need to know about, and which could compromise ongoing operations if it were completely transparent. Sources who want to ethically be whistleblowers need to work with reputable press outlets, releasing only what is necessary to people they know will further trim the leak - until the final product does only good for the public.

Here's a quote from Snowden on just that:

"I never published a single document on my own because I believe that the model, the ideal of American government is actually quite a shrewd one,” he said. “I tried to emulate the model of checks and balance. Instead of making a unilateral decision, that ‘The world must know,’ I worked with the free press, institutions that we trust, American journalists.”

Could Chelsea Manning have chosen a better way to release the documents than WikiLeaks? Absolutely. Do I still consider her a whistleblower? Yes - though I would never claim she was as responsible about it as someone like Snowden.

>Naturally, the answer's no - there's plenty of material the public doesn't need to know about

This can't be reconciled with saying Manning's actions were justified without post-hoc rationalizing.

>Do I still consider her a whistleblower? Yes

Then clearly the meaning of words mean nothing to you. Which is fair, a lot of that going around lately.

> This can't be reconciled with saying Manning's actions were justified without post-hoc rationalizing.

> Then clearly the meaning of words mean nothing to you.

I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the post-hoc fallacy.

If you want to get strict about definitions, look up "whistleblower." You'll find it covers anyone who acts as an informant to reveal something illicit within an organization. For someone like yourself who seems to be eager to find a reason to dislike Chelsea Manning: yes, there's such a thing as an irresponsible whistleblower.

> post-hoc fallacy.

You're just misquoting me.

>If you want to get strict about definitions, look up "whistleblower."

If you rely on dictionaries written at a third grade reading level as your source of meaning, you're doing it wrong.

When it comes to prescriptive definitions for words in the English language, I trust the concurrence of Merriam-Webster and Collins a bit more than I'm willing to trust your word. You won't convince me otherwise. If you feel a whistleblower who also causes unrelated data to be leaked "doesn't count," you are welcome to take that point of view up with the publishers. Have a great day!

>If you feel a whistleblower who also causes unrelated data to be leaked "doesn't count,"

Again with the mischaracterizations! You should stop that.

I feel someone who had no knowledge or suspicion of wrongdoing and no intention to just reveal wrongdoing does not count as a whistleblower. Pretty simple.

That is a fair way of looking at it (and consistent with prevailing definitions). However, Manning strongly suspected wrongdoing, made herself aware of it, and leaked a video in which it was blindingly obvious. She doesn't fall under your exclusion at all.

None of that is true as far as I'm aware. Do you have a source that Manning knew of the video ahead of time?

You betcha.

From "Facts regarding the unauthorized storage and disclosure of the 12 July 2007 aerial weapons team or AW team video", a statement by Manning to the US Army:

The video depicted several individuals being engaged by an aerial weapons team. At first I did not consider the video very special, as I have viewed countless other war porn type videos depicting combat. However, the recording of audio comments by the aerial weapons team crew and the second engagement in the video of an unarmed bongo truck troubled me.

As Showman and a few other analysts and officers in the T-SCIF commented on the video and debated whether the crew violated the rules of engagement or ROE in the second engagement, I shied away from this debate, instead conducting some research on the event. I wanted to learn what happened and whether there was any background to the events of the day that the event occurred, 12 July 2007.

Using Google I searched for the event by its date by its general location. I found several new accounts involving two Reuters employees who were killed during the aerial weapon team engagement. Another story explained that Reuters had requested for a copy of the video under the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA. Reuters wanted to view the video in order to understand what had happened and to improve their safety practices in combat zones. A spokesperson for Reuters was quoted saying that the video might help avoid the reoccurrence of the tragedy and believed there was a compelling need for the immediate release of the video.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-mannin...

Well I read his statement and its definitely interesting. It doesn't really help his case though. Some of his actions he was acting as a whistleblower (releasing videos of civilian deaths), other actions he was acting as someone who simply felt information should be leaked (diplomatic cables and such). The problem is that these were separate acts and so while he may have been a whistleblower for some of the releases, the others were plain leaking classified info. One doesn't absolve the other.

I can accept that the whistleblower label isn't completely incorrect, but the problem is that people use it in place of leaker in an effort to establish moral justification for all his leaks. He wasn't kept in prison for 7 years because he was a whistleblower, it was because he was a leaker. But he was also a whistleblower.

I would argue Snowden's approach - working with the most reputable news outlets in the US to release only what was necessary - serves as a good example of ethical whistleblowing. Nonetheless, the intelligence community wanted him arrested after the NSA slides went public, and he will still be arrested if he sets foot back in the United States.

Whistleblowers in the US government can and do go to prison, regardless of whether they're responsible about it or not. I think clemency in this case (shortening the sentence for disclosure of the cables to 7 years) is the least the President could have done.

Please use "she," by the way. Chelsea's gender and correct pronoun are some of the most well-known in the world by now. Nobody can claim ignorance anymore.

I think 7 years is plenty although I don't think anyone should have to suffer solitary for any reason.

And yeah I generally just avoid using the pronoun or use she when forced to. But the article you linked had pictures of "him" at the bottom and so using he was unconscious.

>I feel someone who had no knowledge or suspicion of wrongdoing and no intention to just reveal wrongdoing does not count as a whistleblower. Pretty simple.

Intelligence analyst, no knowledge or suspicion... uhhhh what?

Well "wrongdoing" is a little bit too generic. What I meant was breaking the law (or some severely immoral acts). His opinion regarding the diplomatic cable doesn't justify releasing it and claiming he's a whistleblower.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com