Chelsea Manning Writes Bill to Protect Freedom of Press
LEAVENWORTH, Kan., May 7 (UPI) —Chelsea Manning, the former soldier convicted of giving classified military documents to Wikileaks, submitted a bill to Congress protecting journalists and limiting the Espionage Act.
The proposed bill, which she titled the National Integrity and Free Speech Protection Act, would grant journalists the legal freedom to protect their sources and criticize the government without fear of prosecution.
The act would also lift restrictions in the Freedom of Information Act, making documents accessible in electronic format and preventing government departments from charging journalists for those documents if the department fails to meet time limits set by law.
A proposed amendment to the Espionage Act would require the government to prove that a person accused of releasing classified information did so believing it would cause injury to the United States or give advantage to a foreign nation.
Manning is acutely aware of the repercussions of violating the current Espionage Act. She is serving a 35-year sentence in Leavenworth prison in Kansas for leaking hundreds of documents and video footage of a helicopter attack in Iraq that killed several civilians in 2007.
At the time Manning — then identified as Bradley Manning — said the information “belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C.”
On Wednesday, she wrote an op-ed piece in The Guardian saying U.S. citizens are not subjects and as such should have the right to freedom of speech and press.
“The U.S. needs legislation to protect the public’s right to free speech and a free press, to protect it from the actions of the executive branch and to promote the integrity and transparency of the U.S. government,” she wrote.
“We need to create a media ‘shield’ law with teeth and substance that creates an effective federal privilege for communications between a journalist and her sources, preventing the government from compelling testimony from the journalist and to protect the documents, records and other information created by the journalist and the actual communications between the journalist and her sources. The privilege should be in effect unless the government can prove with clear and convincing evidence that very clear and dangerous circumstances should merit an exception.”
