If WikiLeaks Suspect Manning Is Legally Guilty, What Punishment?

In October, the Pentagon concluded that the leak "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods", and that furthermore "there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak."

What great moral wrong did he see? He leaked diplomacy cables.

He claimed to have been rummaging through classified military and government networks for more than a year and said that the networks contained “incredible things, awful things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC.”

“He wanted to do the right thing,” says 20-year-old Tyler Watkins. “That was something I think he was struggling with.”

“He would message me, Are people talking about it? Are the media saying anything?” Watkins said. “That was one of his major concerns, that once he had done this, was it really going to make a difference? He didn’t want to do this just to cause a stir. He wanted people held accountable and wanted to see this didn’t happen again.”

The second video he claimed to have leaked shows a May 2009 air strike near Garani village in Afghanistan that the local government says killed nearly 100 civilians, most of them children. The Pentagon released a report about the incident last year, but backed down from a plan to show video of the attack to reporters.