Chelsea Manning leaves prison after serving seven years for giving U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks
Chelsea Manning, the Army private behind one of the largest leaks of classified government documents in U.S. history, was released Wednesday from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence.
President Barack Obama, in one of his final acts in office in January, commuted her sentence after deciding that she had been punished enough for handing a trove of military and diplomatic reports to the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks.
“After another anxious four months of waiting, the day has finally arrived,” Manning said in a statement released by her legal team. “I am looking forward to so much! Whatever is ahead of me is far more important than the past. I’m figuring things out right now — which is exciting, awkward, fun, and all new for me.”
She posted a photograph on her social media accounts of two feet in black Converse sneakers. “First steps of freedom!!” she wrote.
Manning’s lawyers confirmed that she had been released safely but provided few details about her plans, saying that they want to give her time to adjust to life outside prison in privacy.
An online fundraising page set up by her supporters said she was headed to Maryland, where she has family. As of Wednesday afternoon, the page had raised more than $158,000 to help with her living expenses and health care.
Army officials said that she would remain on active duty, although on unpaid leave, while she appeals her court martial conviction. Under this status, she is eligible to receive care at military medical facilities and other benefits.
Manning, a transgender woman who was known as Pfc. Bradley Manning when she was arrested in 2010, began her transition in prison after lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the Department of Defense over her medical treatment for gender dysphoria.
But she struggled to cope at the all-male facility, where her lawyers said she endured long stretches in solitary confinement and was not permitted to adhere to female grooming standards. She twice attempted suicide last year.
In a statement released last week, Manning thanked the many supporters whose letters she said had lifted her spirits in “dark times.”
“For the first time, I can see a future for myself as Chelsea,” she said. “I can imagine surviving and living as the person who I am and can finally be in the outside world.”
Manning, whose actions launched a new era of massive security breaches in the internet age, was lauded by anti-war and anti-secrecy activists as a hero, even as others, including President Donald Trump, branded her a traitor.