Obama Commutes Most of Chelsea Manning's Sentence

The notorious leaker of Army documents will be freed in May
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 17, 2017 3:48 PM CST
Chelsea Manning Will Be Freed in May
On Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, President Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who leaked Army documents and is serving 35 years.   (U.S. Army via AP, File)

Former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who made WikiLeaks a household name in 2010, will be released from prison in May after President Obama commuted her sentence Tuesday, the New York Times reports. Manning leaked classified military documents that revealed, among other things, the Iraqi military abusing detainees and the likely under-reporting of civilian deaths in Iraq. She was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison, according to USA Today. Manning, a transgender woman being housed in a men's prison, has tried to kill herself twice in the past year. Her commutation was part of 64 pardons and 209 commutations made by Obama on Tuesday.

One of those pardons was of a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who pleaded guilty in October to making false statements during an investigation into a leak of classified information about a covert cyberattack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The AP reports James Cartwright's plea ended a Justice Department investigation into a leak regarding a computer virus called Stuxnet that disabled equipment the Iranians were using to enrich uranium. Cartwright, 67, falsely told investigators that he did not provide or confirm classified information contained in a news article and in a book by New York Times journalist David Sanger, according to charging documents unsealed by prosecutors. (More Chelsea Manning stories.)

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