In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted a video of Iraqi civilians being slaughtered by a US military helicopter in Baghdad, Iraq. The video went viral on social media, attracting significant coverage from international media outlets. Reports indicated that WikiLeaks might have several sources inside the US government. However, in May 2010, authorities arrested a US Army intelligence analyst named Chelsea Manning for sharing the aforementioned video and several other documents with WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Manning pleaded guilty, and the court sentenced her to 35 years in prison.
Born on December 17, 1987, Chelsea Manning joined the US Army in 2007. At the time, she identified herself as Bradley Manning, per The Guardian. Two years later, Manning goes to Iraq and starts working as an intelligence analyst for the US Army. Despite some senior officials doubting her capabilities, they decided to deploy Manning to Iraq, per ABC News.
In November 2009, Manning learned about WikiLeaks after it published documents related to 9/11. Almost two months later, more than 700,000 classified documents were uploaded to WikiLeaks. By April 2010, WikiLeaks started publishing the material on its website, including the helicopter video.
In May 2010, police apprehended Chelsea Manning in Baghdad and charged her with leaking classified information. After her arrest, she was brought back to the US for a trial. At the pre-hearing trial, Manning pleaded guilty to leaking classified information. However, according to The Guardian, she pleaded not guilty to 12 serious charges. The court convicted her of most charges but acquitted her of the most serious charge – aiding the enemy. After this, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, per ABC News. One day after sentencing, Manning revealed herself as transgender and requested everyone to call her Chelsea.
Chelsea Manning lives a normal life and has returned to working as a DJ. ABC News reported that the 36-year-old is also an anti-secrecy activist and whistleblower.
Who Is Chelsea Manning?
According to The Washington Post, Chelsea Manning released a statement saying that she wants to live her life as a woman. Citing her statement, the publication reported Manning wanted to go for a “hormonal therapy” for body transformation. She said, “As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.”
After serving almost seven years of her sentence, the then-US President Barack Obama commuted her remaining sentence. Correspondingly, in May 2017, she announced on social media that she was free now. She wrote, “First Steps of Freedom.” However, she returned to prison in 2019 after refusing to testify against Julian Assange. A year later, the judge ordered Chelsea Manning’s release.
Where is Chelsea Manning now?
After her release in 2022, Chelsea Manning wrote a memoir titled README.txt, which covered her early life as a soldier and what happened after she leaked classified documents. While talking about her memoir, Manning told NPR that she wrote it to talk about her struggles with gender dysphoria.
She said, “I really came to want to write my version of events, write my story, tell things from my perspective, because I think it’s kind of gotten lost in a lot of people projecting their ideals or their fears or their anxieties onto me or whatever it is, whereas I’m just kind of me.”
Earlier this year, Chelsea Manning opened up about her time in solitary confinement at a poetry event. She started her performance with a few minutes of silence, noticing that she got used to this experience while in solitary confinement. Per ABC News, Manning said, “So, that was a few minutes of silence. I became very used to this experience that you just had, which is sitting there in silence for several minutes. I did that for almost a year.”
She currently DJs at several venues in New York and recently performed at Rash Bar on May 30.
