Bradley Manning's Legal Duty to Expose War Crimes

[TorchTheWitch]

74. he isn't a whistleblower

A whistleblower reveals only that information that shows misconduct. Manning didn't do that. The vast majority of what he stole and gave to Assange to reveal did not show any misconduct, and he himself had no idea what it contained. I don't even know if anything at all that he stole showed any misconduct according to the law. That isn't a whistleblower - a label that Assange insisted he be referred to by the way - by any stretch of the imagination. Who knows why he stole all those documents, but it had nothing to do with whistleblowing. Clearly, his intent in stealing the vast majority of information and turning it over to be revealed he did not know himself what it contained or whether or not any of it contained any information concerning misconduct. Whatever his personal objective was it most certainly wasn't whistleblowing. By definition, he is not a whistleblower.

What he is is a thief. He knew that what he was doing was illegal and that he was not doing it with any intention of whistleblowing but for some personal reason of his own. As I understand it, he had to hack a password to get access to it as he did not have free access to either all or most of the documents he stole.