The world knows Chelsea Manning as the troubled former army private-turned-whistleblower, who came out as transgender in 2013 and served seven years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables and army reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.
But when Manning speaks at Mills College in Oakland Wednesday night, she is likely to emphasize that many of the events that made her an icon to anti-war and pro-transparency activists — but a traitor to others — are behind her.
In an interview Tuesday, Manning said these days she’s happy in her personal life and dedicated to promoting an array of issues that are important to her. That includes advocating for transgender rights, and the rights of prisoners and immigrants. She also still cares about freedom of information, but her work these days involves digital privacy and the need for ethics in the tech industry.
“I’m feeling good,” said Manning. “I’m fairly optimistic. Obviously, there are things troubling about the society we’re living in. But my personal life is fine. I just move forward, I don’t focus on what happened in the past.”
Manning will sit down for the free and open-to-the-public event at Mills with Susan Stryker, a historian, transgender activist and the Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women’s Leadership. The event at 7 p.m. is part of Mills Trans Studies Speaker Series, and people can attend in public or view online.
Stryker, who joined Manning in the interview with this news organization, recalled how she and colleagues made Manning their first “cover girl” when they launched their academic journal, Transgender Quarterly, in 2014.
“Back then, with the WikiLeaks information dump and the whistle-blowing, we thought she was, right at that moment, the most politically and publicly significant trans figure out there,” Stryker said. “We wanted to show solidarity.”
In 2014, Manning was in the first year of what was supposed to be an unprecedented 35-year prison sentence for disclosing secret files to WikiLeaks. The former army intelligence analyst was convicted of numerous violations of the Espionage Act but was acquitted of aiding the enemy.
As the New York Times magazine said in a profile of Manning in 2017, the 2010 disclosure was the largest leak of classified records in U.S. history. It cleared a path for Edward Snowden and elevated the global profile of controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Manning had said she hoped the release of the documents would spark “worldwide discussion, debates and reforms” about civilian casualties and other harsh realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But after accepting responsibility for her crimes, Manning faced a bleak prison existence, in which she struggled to transition to life as a woman in a male military facility. She twice attempted suicide and staged a hunger strike as her lawyers waged a legal battle for her to finally be given the hormone therapy that is prescribed to people undergoing male-to-female transition.
During Manning’s entire seven years in pre- and post-trial custody, she also endured several stints in solitary confinement. Her initial confinement, which lasted for nine months, sparked protests. A United Nations expert called the conditions she endured at different prison facilities “cruel” and “inhumane.”
In 2017, Manning received a surprise commutation from President Barack Obama, who said her original sentence was “very disproportionate relative to what other leakers have received.”
Manning was soon released from prison but incarcerated again in March 2019 because she refused to testify before a grand jury in the government’s ongoing efforts to bring Assange to the United States for trial for Manning’s leaks. Manning remained in custody until March 2020.
But as Manning says, those events are behind her and she prefers not to comment on her case or on Assange. In the interview, she almost seemed to downplay her experience in solitary confinement, but not, as she said, because it wasn’t harrowing, but because it wasn’t unique to her.
“What I went through was fairly typical,” said Manning said, pointing out that at any one time an estimated 60,000 people are in solitary confinement in U.S. jails or prisons.
Manning added that the bulk of her time in prison was spent in the general population where she was with other prisoners who mostly tried to get along and help one another endure their time. Most of the violence and arbitrary cruelty she witnessed was committed by the guards, she said.
Manning’s main message to the general public about prisoners is to not forget them and to realize that the United States houses “the largest prison population on Earth. “Adults over 30 have a ‘Law and Order’ mentality, where someone is accused of a crime, investigated, goes before a court,” Manning said. “There’s a plea agreement and someone is convicted, and that’s the end of the story. The case is closed and everybody goes home. But that’s not the case for the person going to prison.”
But in the interview, Manning also emphasized that her advocacy on behalf of prisoners, transgender rights or social justice is mostly behind-the-scenes and in support of more prominent activist groups and individuals. She explained that she doesn’t necessarily see these issues as her areas of expertise; she most only comes at them from personal experience.
In contrast, Manning explained she feels much more competent in talking about “the tech and privacy space.” She said she’s currently working with a Swiss company that is focused on protecting people’s privacy online. Indeed, Manning gets visibly excited in talking about her work in tech, saying she’s producing educational content that will answer such questions as “What is cryptocurrency and how does artificial intelligence work?”
Manning also thinks it’s important for developers of artificial intelligence and other products to take more responsibility for the impact that these products have on individuals and society.
“People who work on A.I affect large numbers of people, and their applications can be used in life-and-death decisions,” said Manning, explaining that A.I. applications are used in policing and warfare. “Since that’s the case, people developing these applications need to be held to higher ethical standards. But in A.I. development, it’s break things and we’ll figure out later.”
