Well you don't get to complain about official channels when you don't make any attempt to use them. I guess that's right. Maybe the more salient point is that

Well you don't get to complain about official channels when you don't make any attempt to use them. I guess that's right. Maybe the more salient point is that obviously official channels would not want to send such a huge volume of documents to journalists, so it would have been a useless exercise to try to go through official channels. Worse than useless, actually, as after that he would never have had the opportunity to leak the material again. even if the facts are not 1:1 the same as his case was. No two things are 1:1 outside of mathematics. For instance, Ellsberg leaked material classified as "top secret" while Manning didn't leak such sensitive material. But overall, these things are pretty close, though. Manning knew full well the import of what he leaked as well: a lot of import. Neither Manning nor Ellsberg knew every detail in what they leaked, as the volume was tremendous. to an American paper, btw, not Soviet, N. Vietnamese, or neutral party Not sure why it matters if you leak it to an American journalist or an Australian journalist or whatever. What if he leaked to a French national working for the NY Times, or an American living abroad? Would that change things?