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You are right, we should be clear about what is being claimed by the government.

However, is there any legitimate alternative method for a whistleblower to expose the US government of warcrimes, as WikiLeaks did? It seems quite unfair for a government to murder innocent civilians and then protect itself by putting the evidence behind a password.

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To be clear, the evidence was not behind a password (at least, it was already accessible to Manning). The purpose of cracking the password was to allow Manning to download the information from a different account, in order to obfuscate the source of the leak.

That's incorrect. Assange was trying to brute force the administrator password on a DoD system to give Manning elevated access on the host that she didn't have at the time. It wasn't an obfuscation exercise, it was an attempt to uncover classified information Manning wasn't privy to with her current account access.

*Edit: and it was done after Manning had handed over everything she could access with her own account. At least that's what the charge is in the initial indictment.

This makes an important difference!

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