US WikiLeaks Video: Obama on Bradley Manning "He Broke the Law"
Saturday, April 23, 2011 at 7:47So much for due process of law, "innocent before proven guilty", etc. --- President Obama condemns Private Bradley Manning, held by the military in effective solitary confinement for allegedly passing information to WikiLeaks.
Video and transcript via Andy Greenberg:
OBAMA: People can have philosophical views about....
[Questioner: unintelligible]
No, no, but look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source. That’s not how…the world works. If you’re in the military, and…I have to abide by certain classified information. If I was to release stuff, information that I’m not authorized to release, I’m breaking the law....We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate....
He broke the law.
[Questioner: "You can make it harder to break the law."]
Well, what he did was he dumped....
[Questioner: something about President Nixon's prosecution of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg]
It wasn’t the same thing. What Ellsberg released wasn’t classified in the same way. So. Anyway. Alright.