U.S. military whistleblower Chelsea Manning releases book detailing 'coming-of-age' story

At 34 years old, Chelsea Manning, famed for leaking confidential U.S military documents, has released a 'tell-all' book on the incident.

"It's a coming-of-age story," Manning told CTV's Your Morning on Monday. "The trials and tribulations of really a young person … these sort of the events that transpired and my childhood and my upbringing."

Manning, who was a U.S army intelligence analyst during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, leaked thousands of military and diplomatic records to WikiLeaks in 2010. This is regarded as the largest classified records breach in American history.

One of the documents included a battlefield video showcasing soldiers mistaking civilians and a journalist for insurgents.

"This was obviously something that I had thought about doing and really wanted," Manning said. "I'd spent basically the previous two weeks trying to reach out to the Washington Post and The New York Times."

Her book, "README.txt" starts with the moments leading up to the leak.

"There was this blizzard, and I had to dig a car out of the snow," Manning said.

Without power at her aunt's house, she made the treacherous journey to a Starbucks where she uploaded the documents online.

"I just thought about just giving up right then and there, and abandoning the entire thing and just saying, 'You know this is just not meant to be,'" Manning said.

In August 2013, she was sentenced for six Espionage Act violations and 14 other offences for leaking more than 700,000 documents. She was initially sentenced to 35 years.

Manning's book details her time in prison where she came out as a transgender woman. In 2017 then-U.S. President Barack Obama used his clemency powers to cut Manning's sentence 30 years ahead of schedule.

Since being released, Manning explains in her book how she navigates the world.

"They (people in prison) treated me as a human being but now I needed to navigate a larger world with this new identity," she said. “It's a struggle, to sort of live and to learn, because I'm essentially learning how to be an adult in my 30s, as opposed to my 20s."

 

Watch the full interview with Chelsea Manning by clicking the video at the top of this article.