Chelsea Manning: Corrections And Clarifications

A subheading on an interview with Benedict Cumberbatch (Wanted man, 14 September, page 34, Weekend) said he talked about "why Chelsea Manning deserved her sentence". This did not accurately reflect a long and nuanced interview in which Cumberbatch said that though he thought the sentence was very severe, he understood why Manning had to be convicted. Since the interview, he has clarified that he thinks Manning should be pardoned, but that that is unlikely to happen.

The Guardian. 

The actual paragraph reads;

As for Bradley, now Chelsea, Manning, the young US army officer who leaked hundreds of thousands of war logs, diplomatic cables and other US state secrets to Assange and has just been sentenced to 35 years, Cumberbatch is sympathetic on a human level. "But he broke a law. He knew what he was doing." Manning has applied for a presidential pardon, but Cumberbatch can't see why Obama should grant it. "He did what he did out of a conviction that an alarm bell needed to be sounded. But his superiors might have been right to say to him, it's not your position to be worried about it within the hierarchy of the military organisation, which is why he had to be sentenced. He took an oath, and he broke that oath."

The journalist, Decca Aitkenhead, commented astutely; "This sounds to me like the former public schoolboy in Cumberbatch speaking..."

After Cumberbatch complained about being misrepresented, The Guardian published online an unedited transcript of his comments on Chelsea.
Here's a withering critique of Cucumberpatch's words by Alexander Reed Kelly on Truthdig; "What is heartbreaking about this set of sentences? Aside from the abandonment of the notion that individuals are obligated to the best of their ability to discover and struggle for what is right—especially as they grow up—it’s the contradiction involved in simultaneous claims to sympathy for one’s fellow humans and unthinking deference to authority."

• Queer+ Friends Of Chelsea Manning.

Cumberbatch is set to play Alan Turing in a biopic. Fagburn wonders if BC believes Turing deserved to be arrested and chemically castrated, too.