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After a war on leaks, Obama makes a U-turn, commutes Chelsea Manning's sentence

• McClatchyDC

WASHINGTON 

With barely 72 hours left in office, President Barack Obama Tuesday did an abrupt U-turn on his years-long assault on government leaks and showed leniency toward two military figures who'd helped make public highly sensitive secrets.

Both Democrats and Republicans said they were bewildered – even angered – by Obama's commutation of the 35-year prison term of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence specialist who turned over some 700,000 classified and sensitive diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

Obama also pardoned retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators when he denied that he revealed to the New York Times the existence of a highly classified campaign to cripple Iran's nuclear program with a computer worm. The Stuxnet virus crippled Iran's delicate nuclear equipment and was the first major use in history of a digital weapon.

For most of his two terms in office, Obama relentlessly sought to prosecute those who spilled government secrets, trying to deter others from following suit. Republican and Democratic critics said Tuesday's commutation rendered that effort worthless.

Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called the commutation of Manning's sentence " a grave mistake that I fear will encourage further acts of espionage and undermine military discipline."

Manning's "dishonor will last forever," McCain said.

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