Chelsea Manning thanks Obama in first TV interview after release
Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. Army soldier who served seven years in
prison for leaking classified data, tearfully thanked former President Barack
Obama for granting her clemency.
In excerpts of an interview aired on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday,
Manning said she had not spoken to Obama since he commuted her sentence five
months ago, but that if she could, she would tell him how grateful she was.
"I was given a chance, that's all I wanted," Manning told ABC's "Nightline"
co-anchor Juju Chang, her voice choked with emotion. "That's all I asked for was
a chance, that's it."
Manning, 29, was released in May from a U.S. military prison in Kansas where
she had been serving time for passing secrets to the WikiLeaks website in the
biggest breach of classified data in the history of the United States.
She had been working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. She was convicted by
court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for furnishing more than
700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, an international
organization that publishes information from anonymous sources.
Manning came out as transgendered shortly after her sentencing, but the
military denied her request for hormone therapy treatment while behind bars. She
was placed in solitary confinement after attempting suicide twice.
Manning continued to fight for the treatment, and the authorities ultimately
relented. In her ABC interview, she said the hormone therapy was essential.
"It's literally what keeps me alive. It keeps me from feeling like I'm in the
wrong body," Manning said. "I used to get these horrible feelings like I just
wanted to rip my body apart."
Source: Reuters
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