Chelsea Manning

The day after her sentencing, on 22 August 2013, Chelsea Manning announced that she is a transgender.

In April 2014, Manning was granted the right to be legally recognized as Chelsea Elizabeth Manning after filing a court petition.

Chelsea Elizabeth Manning was born Bradley Edward Manning on 17 December 1987, in Crescent, Oklahoma to Susan Fox and Brian Manning. Her father served as an intelligence analyst in the United States Navy for five years.

Manning has one older sister named Casey Manning who was born in 1976. Casey took care of her as a child because their mother was an alcoholic.

Chelsea Manning’s parents divorced when she was 13 resulting in her moving out with her mother into a rented apartment in Crescent, Oklahoma. During this period, Chelsea’s mother attempted suicide but was saved after her sister drove them to a hospital in the nick of time.

Manning and her mother moved to Haverfordwest, Wales in November 2001. Manning went to Tasker Milward secondary school located in the town of Haverfordwest where she continued to pursue his interest in computers.

In 2005, after graduating from high school, Manning returned to the United States and moved in with her father, his second wife and her child in their house in Oklahoma City. Manning managed to acquire a job as a developer with a software company named Zoto but left the job after only four months.

In 2007, Chelsea Manning joined the Army after her father’s constant persuasions. Chelsea also believed that joining the army might resolve her gender identity disorders.

On joining the army, Chelsea was the target of severe bullying over here also. After a short time, she was posted at Fort Drum in New York where she began dating Tyler Watkins a graduate of Brandeis University who was the one who introduced her to the Boston hacking community.

In early 2009, Manning was stationed at an isolated site in Iraq which is close to the Iranian border. The site was called Forward Operating Base.

Manning’s duties as Intelligence officer allowed her access to a lot of sensitive information which included everything from top-secret intelligence reports to videos of unarmed civilians being shot at and killed. This horrified and had a profound effect on Manning.

In November 2009, Manning reportedly made contact with the WikiLeaks organization run by Julian Assange, after unsuccessful attempts at trying to contact The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In 2011, she was awarded the ‘Whistleblowerpreis’ by the German Section of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms and the Federation of German Scientists.

In 2012, Global Exchange awarded her the ‘People’s Choice Award’.

In 2013, the International Peace Bureau awarded Chelsea Manning the Sean MacBride Peace Prize.

In 2014, she was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence by Sam Adams Associates.

She was awarded the EFF Pioneer Award in September 2017 for her actions as a whistleblower.