Chelsea Manning safe after tweet scare
Photo showed convicted U.S. leaker on a ledge
BALTIMORE • A close friend and colleague of Chelsea Manning said Monday that the convicted leaker of government secrets and longshot candidate for U.S. Senate is safe after a photo on her Twitter account apparently showed the 30-year-old woman standing on the edge of an upper-storey window ledge.
The photo was posted to her Twitter account late Sunday with the words: “I’m sorry.” It was sent shortly after a separate tweet that said: “im not really cut out for this world.” The tweets did not make clear where the photo was taken, and Manning’s friends declined to say.
The alarming tweets were deleted after about 10 minutes, followed by a message on her account saying Manning was OK and asked people to “please give her some space.”
Kelly Wright, a friend of Manning who also is the communications director for her Senate bid in Maryland, said on Monday that the 30-year-old transgender woman now needs the “space to heal.” She did not reply when asked if Manning was seeking professional help.
When asked whether Manning had suspended her Senate campaign, Wright wrote: “Negative.”
Manning, who makes her living on the speaking circuit, is fresh off an appearance at an international business conference in Montreal. When Wright was asked if Manning was in Montreal when the photo was posted from the ledge, Wright would only say: “I’m not going to disclose her location due to safety concerns.”
Wright said that Manning’s adjustment to life outside prison has been “extremely difficult.”
“I have seen firsthand and up close the violence inflicted on her by years of imprisonment, solitary confinement and torture,” Wright said. “This is made worse by the impossibly high expectations our society sets for public figures, especially on social media.”
Manning, who twice tried to kill herself while in a U.S. military lockup, recently told attendees at a Berlin tech conference that she felt a “kind of cult of personality” foisted upon her that she found really intimidating“and ”overwhelming.“
Former president Barack Obama commuted her 35-year sentence, the lengthiest ever for revealing U.S. government secrets.