"Treason" has a specific U.S. Constitutional meaning. "Aiding the enemy" is probably the nearest equivalent under U.S. military legal procedure. Either definiti

"Treason" has a specific U.S. Constitutional meaning. "Aiding the enemy" is probably the nearest equivalent under U.S. military legal procedure. Either definition would fit the layman meaning of 'traitor'. Your first paragraph is kind of worrisome though. You say that Manning meets the definition of a traitor "if you believe he intentionally leaked information which risked American security during a war". But from the military legal standpoint there is no such thing as "no harm, no foul", so really he would be a traitor "if you believe he intentionally leaked information [to an American enemy] during a war", and this is true whether or not one would go through even a neutral (or Allied!) third-party first. Other military servicemembers have acted as actual whistleblowers, even for things far more embarrassing to the U.S. than leaked diplomatic cables (e.g. Pfc. Justin Watt, who revealed a heinous crime of rape, multiple murders, and arson committed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, or the unnamed(?) whistleblower who revealed the Abu Ghraib abuses). The reason they ended up OK is because they were whistleblowers, and not just exfiltrating as much confidential material as they could (without even examining it all) before their security access was removed due to a previous Article 15 conviction from punching another soldier in the face. I mention this only because I see all the time (even here on HN now) about how people think Pfc. Manning is a "whistleblower" who is being oppressed, but there's far more to that story.