Manning expected to leave prison, 28 years early
Obama commuted bulk of her sentence for leaking secrets
WASHINGTON — Chelsea Manning is expected to walk freely out of the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Wednesday, bringing to a close one of the most extraordinary criminal cases in American history over the leaking of government secrets to the public.
Sentenced to an unprecedented 35-year prison term for disclosing archives of secret files to WikiLeaks, Manning spent about seven years in prison — double the second-longest sentence in any leak case. She is set to be freed 28 years early because President Barack Obama, in one of his final acts, commuted the bulk of her remaining sentence.
Both the military and Manning’s legal team, seeking to avoid a media circus, disclosed few details about her release and immediate plans. The military would not say what time she would depart and said it would not permit reporters to wait near the gate to the prison barracks complex.
Manning’s support network, which raised about $138,000 in online donations to help cover her initial living expenses, has said she eventually intends to settle in Maryland, where she has family. But her supporters have also been secretive about where she will be for the next few weeks.
“I look forward to working with her in the coming days and weeks to provide her with the support and stability she wants and needs to heal and plan out the next stages of her life,” said Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who helped represent Manning in a lawsuit over her medical treatment in the military prison. “The traumas of the past few years will not simply evaporate when she walks out of the prison.”
A historic whistleblower
Manning was known as Pvt. Bradley Manning in 2010 when she was arrested on suspicion of having copied hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic files from a classified computer network, to which she had access as a low-level intelligence analyst at a forward operating base in Iraq. After her conviction, she announced that she was a transgender woman and changed her name to Chelsea.
Hoping to inspire “worldwide discussion, debates and reforms,” as she wrote at the time, Manning had uploaded the files to the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks. It published them in batches, working with traditional news organizations, including The New York Times.
Manning’s act had broad consequences. It inaugurated a new kind of leak: the bulk copying and dissemination of many files about many disparate topics, foreshadowing the 2013 leaks of National Security Agency files by the intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
Her leaks brought to light numerous hidden facts about the world, including previously unknown civilian bystander killings in the Iraq War, backroom diplomatic dealings and discussion of local corruption around the world and intelligence assessments about Guantánamo Bay detainees.
They also vaulted WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, to global prominence and put them at odds with the Obama administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That mutual enmity set the stage for WikiLeaks’ role, six years later, in disseminating campaign-related emails.
In the meantime, Manning’s own story had several twists. Her pretrial treatment — the military held her apart from other prisoners and kept her under austere prevention-of-injury conditions, even after a prison psychologist said it was no longer necessary — prompted protests. She became an icon to anti-war and anti-secrecy activists, who viewed her as a historic whistleblower, even as prosecutors portrayed her as a traitor.
‘The lasting effects’
And in another unprecedented move, the military charged her with “aiding the enemy” — the equivalent of treason — on the theory that providing information to the public meant adversaries like al-Qaida would learn from it, too. That charge alarmed First Amendment advocates, who saw it as a milestone in the Obama administration’s criminal crackdown on leakers. And while a military judge acquitted her of aiding the enemy, Manning was convicted of numerous violations of the Espionage Act.
After her 2013 conviction, Manning was taken to Fort Leavenworth to serve her 35-year sentence. There, she struggled to transition to life as a woman within a male military prison. Twice last year, she tried to commit suicide.
Strangio said Manning had “to contend with and heal from the lasting effects” of her seven years in prison but added, “There is no question in my mind that as she navigates the future, she will remain and emerge as an even stronger advocate for trans justice, government transparency and the core principles of democracy.”