In 2010, aged 22, whilst on leave from deployment to Iraq, Chelsea Manning leaked half a million US military incident reports on Wikileaks. She had 12 hours before her flight back to Iraq and was relying on a wifi connection at Barnes and Nobles. Chelsea knew she’d lose her job but instead she was made an example of by the military and lost her anonymity and her freedom. Since then she has also changed her name and her gender, her identity being something she had questioned for many years.
Chelsea has always claimed that she released the information in the public interest to expose human rights abuses and discrepancies in public awareness. Some celebrated her, some condemned her as a traitor. Prior to her trial she was kept in military prison for three years and was subjected to solitary confinement for eleven months. Eventually, she was given a 35 year sentence. It was whilst in prison that Chelsea came out publicly as identifying as a woman. In 2017, seven years into her sentence, Chelsea wrote President Obama a letter pleading for her release and he commuted her sentence.
Chelsea now lives in Brooklyn New York, she has written a memoir called README.txt, referring to the file name she used for the leaks and she has a documentary called XY Chelsea on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. Here, she joins Annie to talk through these monumental moments of change in her life, her life before Iraq, experiencing homelessness, war and prison - three extreme situations, and exactly what freedom is.
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