Chelsea Manning commutation reeks of hypocrisy: James Robbins

Espionage against the USA for causes Obama seems to favor is just fine, but embarrassing his party is not.

On Tuesday President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Army private Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of espionage for leaking 700,000 classified defense documents and numerous videos to WikiLeaks.

The hypocrisy of this move is breathtaking. Obama issued the clemency after weeks of extreme umbrage from congressional Democrats, as well as members of the outgoing administration and liberal pundits, at Russia’s alleged “hacking” of the 2016 election. The prevailing theory is that Moscow engineered the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton adviser John Podesta, and then sent them to WikiLeaks where they were used to derail Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

There is no question that in both cases, a crime was committed. But Manning compromised U.S. national security, placed the lives of members of the armed services and intelligence community and their assets at risk, and damaged the war effort against terrorism and violent extremism. By contrast, the DNC hack did not reveal classified information, no one’s life was threatened because of it, and it can’t be proved to have changed a single vote in the U.S. election.

Most of the revelations were Inside-the-Beltway political stuff of no interest to the average voter. For those of us who followed the DNC leaks closely, the daily anticipation of what might be revealed was more compelling than what ultimately turned up.

Because Manning was granted clemency, shouldn’t the DNC hacker, whoever he or she is, be let off as well? Otherwise, the message seems to be that actual espionage against the United States for causes Obama seems to favor is just fine, but embarrassing the president’s party and his handpicked successor is a high crime against democracy.

The commutation is also a slap in the face to the intelligence community and others who safeguard our secrets. Wasn’t it just last week that Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, took the unprecedented step of publicly lecturing the president-elect to watch what he says on his Twitter account? That sort of open disrespect would be a firing offense under other circumstances. And haven’t we recently heard Democrats condemning President-elect Donald Trump for supposedly damaging the morale of the intelligence community members who risk their lives to protect us? At least he isn’t freeing an actual traitor who literally put the lives of intelligence assets at risk and might have gotten people killed.

Obama also pardoned former general James Cartwright, who was convicted of lying to the FBI about leaking information regarding the Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program. It reinforces the message that where Obama’s pet issues are concerned, national security takes a back seat.

Obama has abused the power of clemency. Letting off people who compromised our nation’s most closely guarded secrets is always a bad idea. Doing so for apparently personal reasons compounds the offense. And comparing these acts of executive excess with the hot rhetoric we have heard in recent weeks regarding the DNC and Podesta hacks, it becomes much easier to argue that the Democrats are simply trying to hobble Trump as Obama slips out the door.

James S. Robbins, an expert on national security, foreign affairs and the military, is an author and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. His books include This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive.