Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) is not backing down.
The Republican, who suggested earlier that execution might be a fine punishment for alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning, defended his stance on MSNBC this afternoon — and added that death might have been an appropriate punishment for Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case, too.
Wikileaks has released 92,000 documents related to the Afghanistan War, many of them classified and painting a bleak picture of the ongoing war. Manning is suspected of being the source behind the leak. And for Rogers, that means Manning ought to be a candidate for the death penalty.
“When you think about any of the operations of a soldier in the field that’s released could lead to their death, that is an act of treason. And an act of treason is a capital offense and it should be,” Rogers said on MSNBC.
“You have to stop this culture of disclosure. It’s dangerous. It gets people killed.”
MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur asked: “So would you have supported execution of Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers?”
Rogers paused for a moment, then said, “Well, I don’t know all the circumstances around it. If it was information that certainly put soldiers at risk in the field and he was convicted of treason, absolutely.”
Check out the story on Rogers’ earlier comments here.
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