♪ intermittent percussive beats ♪
♪ brooding instrumental music ♪
I don't know. I just like coming-of-age stories.
There's something about them.
Not...
...hero versus villain.
Maybe it's the trans part of me that feels like
life is a coming-of-age story.
I'm not the person that people think I am.
I just know that.
Hold on. I've got to take this call.
Hello.
Hello?
Yes, it is.
I do.
Oh, my God.
- Oh, my God!
What did he commute it to?
Oh.
Oh, I can't tell you...
I can't tell you how happy I am.
Thank you so much. How do I...
He's gonna announce it in a couple of minutes?
And how do we tell her?
Vince!
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
I just got a call from the President's counsel.
It's commuted plus 120 days.
- Are you serious? - Yeah, the...
Let's do it out here.
The President's counsel just called me.
He's gonna announce it in a couple of minutes.
I'm pretty speechless.
I'm gonna start crying.
Holy shit!
Fucking shit.
It's just...
I just... I just...
I can't even fucking...
It's crazy.
Jesus fucking Christ.
First of all...let's be clear,
Chelsea Manning has served
a tough prison sentence.
The sentence that she received was disproportionate
relative to what other leakers had received.
She took responsibility for her crime.
It made sense to commute, and not pardon, her sentence.
- Nancy just got the order... - I just got it.
...with the Barack Obama signature.
- Oh, my God! - So that is in possession.
Oh, God.
- This is a lot to process. - Yeah, it is.
- These types of huge changes. - Yeah, yeah.
So...
You know, we're here, Chelsea. We're thrilled for you.
But it doesn't mean it's all just simple.
- An inmate
at a military correctional complex...
- ...Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
This call is from a correction facility
and is subject to monitoring and recording.
This is a prepaid call from...
- Manning.
Hey. So, you're on today's New York Times.
And your story is upper right-hand corner, baby.
Yay!
He had to be a human being for this to work.
We didn't know if he was or not, right?
I didn't know.
Yeah?
I got the Elle magazine.
Hold on. I'm running off to get it.
Where did that thing go? Oh, here it is.
I got the Elle. They didn't have Marie Claire.
But it's gonna come in tomorrow.
Yes. And bow...
And a bow. Bows on the shoulders.
Yes?
Six women.
- Far left. A little suit. - Yeah.
Yeah. That's cute.
- Vincent? - Yes, ma'am.
Commander, sir. I'm gonna be there to make sure she's safe.
- That's great. - You know, we did her clemency.
We're her clemency lawyers.
We're gonna make sure this clemency happens.
She's really worried
that she's gonna do something stupid.
What does that mean?
Well, what she kept saying was,
"I might run away. You guys should be aware of that."
And I said, "You're not...
Once you're with us, you won't be able to run away."
I don't think people realize how traumatic
getting out of jail is.
Imagine going from being in the military
- to being incarcerated. - I know.
Because people who are in the military and get out
- have difficulty transitioning. - That's right.
She needs to go figure out her life.
Having been in the military,
I can't imagine making a decision like that.
I just can't. No chance I would've done that.
It takes a rare historical person
who is willing to sacrifice personal freedom
and all the privileges of life,
doing what he or she thinks is the right thing to do.
You have to have a little bit of a sense of self-importance
about yourself...
...a bit of ignorance...
...a little bit of a sense of optimism.
Mostly, they're just people who, deep down,
feel as though there's some problem
or something's really wrong.
Yeah.
I'm particularly bitter that a Commander in Chief,
in a time of war, would pardon a traitor.
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan
released a statement saying,
"Chelsea Manning's treachery put American lives at risk."
This young man or woman, or whatever,
should have been hung.
I don't think it's right.
She should serve her time. 35 years.
100 years ago,
they'd have just taken him out and shot him.
The debate about how much harm was caused,
or wasn't, by her actions, is ongoing.
National security officials will tell you
Manning gravely harmed national security.
So far as actually killing someone,
there's absolutely no credible allegation of that happening.
And another factor, as you alluded to,
seems to be the stress for Manning's gender transition.
Chelsea Manning
attempted to commit suicide twice last year.
Is it clear that the gender transition concern
was part of this, that she'd been going through...?
It seems to be.
♪ brooding instrumental music ♪
♪ brooding piano music ♪
♪ tone of music brightening ♪
- Another day. - Hey.
Another day in the woods.
God, it's such a beautiful sight.
I wasn't handling it very well initially.
- You... - Aargh.
We were in an actually incredibly stressful situation
where I thought I was gonna vomit.
- Um, so... - You wanted to vomit, too?
Yeah. I really did. I was, like, "Oh,
I'm gonna be super embarrassed
if I throw up in front of these security guys."
- We're still trying to adjust. - Yeah.
To find a soft landing. So, I think, today,
just kind of... vegging out a little bit
and, like, you know, like, learning.
Learning how to...
I mean, for me, learning how to...
Yeah.
...be again.
Yeah, fuck, I mean, you're, like...
- Fuck.
- It's still sort of amazing. - Yeah.
And unimaginable, like, this is...
...this is where you are
on May 17, 2017.
- Yeah. - And not 2045.
- How the fuck did I get here? - Yeah.
You ever find yourself asking yourself that?
- Yeah. Yeah, I do. - "How did I get here?"
Yeah.
It just feels so natural for me to do whatever I want...
- Yeah. Yeah. - ...in nature.
You get past this idea
of, like, "Oh, a miracle might happen."
I mean, I was in prison for the rest of my life.
There was a lot of people that...
didn't think it was worth the effort,
didn't think Obama would consider it,
it was never gonna happen.
It was a shot in the dark.
I am not a make-up artist, by any means.
I had to learn in prison,
making shit up as I went along.
I'm sure there's a bazillion tutorials on YouTube.
There's a disproportionate number
of trans women in the military.
You know? Like something...
Something about, like, our twenties,
and I was, like, running away from, you know...
...this... this weird problem
that, like, we're cross-dressing and stuff.
Like, I was trying to, like, man up and...
I... I think I'm not alone in that.
There's a lot of social pressure,
especially for people in, like, the South
and people in the Southwest, and the West.
Um...
Yeah, I think there's a pressure to...conform,
and what better conformity environment
than the military?
So...
I saw it as kind of like going cold turkey from, like...
a drug addiction or something,
or, like, trying to quit cigarettes or something.
But, obviously, you can't stop being who you are.
So, that was always... never gonna happen.
And this is a fantastic shade of lipstick.
I could hear the river from...
prison, on a non-windy day.
Because there was the Missouri River...
...right outside the uh...
right outside the prison itself.
Through the tree...
If you go beyond the treeline of the prison,
there's the river...um...
And...so, but...
I haven't heard a stream like this.
This is just... It's nice.
It's nice to have a stream.
It's nice to have leaves, you know?
What story?
Uh... That's a good question.
♪ brooding instrumental music ♪
I grew up in a small town: Crescent, Oklahoma.
I had a...complicated relationship with my father.
You know, like, he would just...
take his anger out, from being...
...angry at work, and just...
My mother, she would drink pretty heavily.
My father drank very heavily.
And they finally split up when I was 13.
My father had a new wife.
She didn't like the fact that I even existed.
She saw that, you know, I was dating boys and...
...eventually she had me removed from the house...
...and I was homeless.
All Americans know that the stakes in Iraq are enormous.
On television every night,
you'd see images of the Iraq surge.
It was chaos.
I am saying we must significantly increase...
That realization that I was on thin ice
and that I didn't know who I was,
and that I needed meaning.
I understand the consequence of committing people into war.
So, I enlisted in the Army.
I did it kind of on a whim.
They needed people, I signed the paperwork.
And a few days later, I was in basic training.
Oh, shit!
Where the fuck did you come from?
Shit.
Yep.
What's up?
Lisa just says, "Great photo."
You know, I'm just making sure...
Disconcerting amount of boobage there.
Like, my eye is drawn to it, so I'm just, like...
...super aware of the fact
that dresses expose a lot more skin
and it's uh...
I don't know if my body movements are trained yet
for this kind of thing.
You're moving around a lot and you're not used to it.
There's always the possibility of, "Oop, there you go."
The whole world could see.
And I had that in prison, too.
You know, I was definitely scrutinized by...
prison staff, you know...
inmates, visitors, you know?
Because even though I wore a loose-fitting uniform,
you could tell... you know, they could tell.
And they... I could sense the judgment.
Guards would walk in on me sometimes
while I'm doing... You know, while I was changing my shirt
or, like, taking my bra off or putting it on, or whatever.
So, you know, stuff happened and people would go...
And then there are strip searches, so...
Their reactions could sometimes be...
...you know...
...complicated.
Human.
I remember it was a really hot and muggy day.
The lawyers advised against coming out
in the middle of a court martial.
They thought it would be misinterpreted
as some kind of stunt or something.
But I came to the conclusion that I needed to just
come out publicly.
As I transition into this next phase of my life,
I want everyone to know the real me.
I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female.
I'm confused, Bill.
I don't care if you call him a he or a she.
He's a traitor. She's a traitor.
You had these rumors.
"What does it mean that Manning is really a woman
or is claiming to be a woman?"
"Did she leak the documents because she's transgender?"
This is late January, 2010.
I came back from Iraq, on leave.
And I came to an empty house.
It was...surreal.
I had this sense of disconnect.
People were living normal lives
while we were killing or being killed.
Thank you for calling the New York Times.
..for calling the Washington Post.
News outlets, they didn't care.
- It wasn't newsworthy to them.
The notion of the Iraq War
has left the consciousness.
I'm trying to do something different.
I have all these documents and I have the data
and I need to do something with it.
We have no reason to doubt
the reliability of these documents.
It is up to a court to decide...
...clearly, whether something is, in the end, a crime.
That said, prima facie,
there does appear to be
evidence of war crimes in this material.
We also have one individual,
uh...appears to be wounded, trying to crawl away.
Come on, buddy.
All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.
They're taking him!
Bushmaster, Crazy Horse 1-8.
Come on, let us shoot.
This is Bushmaster 7. Go ahead.
Roger, we have a black SUV, uh, Bongo truck
picking up the bodies.
Request permission to engage.
Bushmaster 7. Roger.
This is Bushmaster 7. Roger. Engage.
1-8. Okay. Clear.
- Come on.
- Clear.
- We're engaging.
- Come around. Clear. - Roger.
Hacker Adrian Lamo, who turned him in,
says that he contacted the Army
after a series of very intense email exchanges
with the Army specialist in late May.
Adrian Lamo claims that Manning was unhappy
with some policies in the military.
He said that there was an ideology problem,
that he had leaked other information
to the website WikiLeaks.
Now, among the charges, of course, the most serious one
for Private Bradley Manning, that of aiding the enemy.
In a way, it's the sheer scale of it
that's hurt America's image.
That a vast volume of sensitive documents
was so easily available to a private soldier
with some hacking skills.
The United States Of America is on trial today.
Let him go!
Manning stood up as an American soldier,
put himself in harm's way,
and he should be free.
No, ma'am.
You've been invisible for so long...
Yeah. - ...people have already...
formed their own opinions of who you are.
I feel pressure to correct that and to, like,
clear that up.
I was an unknown before.
It's a little bit nerve-racking.
I'm not... I'm not ashamed of anything.
I'm not ashamed of being trans.
I'm not ashamed of what happened.
Everything happened and, like...
I'm okay with that.
Yeah? And...
The main thing that I had to do was just let go...
of other people's expectations.
And that was tough.
It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do
because I had built my life
around other people's expectations.
And I'm not gonna fucking do that any more.
It does feel a little bit like a calm before a storm.
We know how fragile she is.
What I worry about is that she'll be a big name
and there'll be all this press that'll happen,
and then all of a sudden, it'll be over
and she'll just be out there on her own.
We make these in the wood shop,
but we don't paint ours.
We put oil on ours.
We made Adirondack chairs at the prison.
Yeah.
Oh, it'll be like that for a few weeks, I'm sure.
God, I missed trying to do this.
- I feel old.
- Feel old? - Yeah.
I lost...
I've lost seven years of my life already.
That's unfair.
Last time I walked down these streets,
down the streets of this city,
Lady Gaga had just become big
and the Iraq War was still going on.
It just feels like I've been through a time machine.
Time warp.
An inmate at a military correctional complex...
- ...Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Where do you think he got that idea?
All I was trying to get at
was this whole idea of personal responsibility
that you seem to feel, even though, of course,
you...didn't have any...
...direct... Absolutely.
You didn't pull the trigger.
♪ suspenseful music ♪
It's hard for me now,
just because I know you and love you
and I hate the idea of you being in prison.
And so, for me, it's easy to wonder
if it was worth it.
It was just me and Lisa against the world.
We actually hadn't met before I went to prison.
But she wrote to me, you know,
this really sweet, kind, thoughtful letter.
It'll be the first time I've ever seen her in person.
You know, helping her get released,
it really was sort of like my life's work.
It's really been...
There was a point when we were just trying to keep her alive.
Oh, shit.
Alright?
You look fantastic.
Thanks.
- It's one thing that... - Your pictures...
Your pictures do you justice but, I mean, like,
in real life, wow.
- Look at you. - Look at you.
- How different do I look?
If you do a side-by-side comparison,
you can tell, right?
I don't know if I would say that.
Okay.
You don't look anything like your old picture.
- No. - Not even a little.
And your cheekbones and stuff.
I mean, it's really... It's amazing to me.
I didn't realize that...
that hormones changed that much
of, like...bone structure?
No, it doesn't change the bone structure.
Well, it changed... It changed something.
It changes how the skin, like...
how the skin wraps around the bones a little bit.
Okay. It's just so much different.
- It's really different. - Yeah.
Yeah.
Lisa was everything.
She's family.
Chelsea?
Hello?
Um...
Shit.
Even I didn't realize how much you were hurting, Chelsea.
Even I didn't know.
You... You... You weren't really telling me.
And... And... I want you to...
Very good at...?
You know, she watched the firework celebration
from her window...
and then she took the shoestrings
that were, you know, on her boots,
attached them to a vent hanging from the ceiling,
put a pillowcase over her head...
bound her hands and her legs,
and then the next thing that she remembers, actually,
is being on the floor.
She was unconscious...
...and it could have very well worked.
I wouldn't say that I've ever seen Chelsea...
...be happy.
I've seen her smile, I've seen her laugh.
I've seen her crack jokes.
But, honestly, I don't know that I've ever seen her
be happy.
♪ contemplative music ♪
When I was a teenager...
...I was completely helpless
and I didn't have anybody to protect me,
and I didn't have anybody to tell me that...
it's okay for me to be who I am.
I've built up these defense mechanisms.
I have these walls and...
...I had to go through hell to get to that point.
I can get through this.
This is just a few weeks of chaos.
Like I said, it'll be a one-hour interview.
They'll pick us up here at 10:30.
- Yeah. We'll bring the outfit. - Exactly.
Bring the outfit, and there'll be hair and make-up.
- Cool. - Yeah.
The main things is...
the decision-making process
in choosing to disclose the documents.
So, let's say that Juju asks you a question.
Um...
So, you'd looked at the documents,
and you made the judgment
that they wouldn't harm any individuals
before you disclosed them?
It's not possible to read every single line
of every single document.
But I knew exactly what was in these documents.
I knew the specific types of information
in these documents.
And I carefully considered it and, no, I don't believe...
I did not believe that any harm would come
from these documents.
Some of these questions are really hard,
so practice helps a little bit
in being able to navigate.
I'm not somebody who's going on TV
for the sake of being on TV.
I... I-I-I... There is an underlying...
We're in a moment of history, where this stuff is important
and I don't want to screw it up for somebody else.
One of the things that's nice
is, like, when you have a historical figure like this,
is there is something that's um...
...that's quite powerful about being so up close.
But there's also something very powerful about seeing
her entire body, like, head to toe.
She's, like...the entire figure is present on this cover.
I love how she just totally...
uh...seems at ease.
I like this one because it has...
It feels to me enormous power,
the kind of power that she must have
to be the person she is.
There's something about the atmosphere of that picture,
like, there's a sense of narrative to this one...
Yeah.
There's also, like, some vague suggestion
of, like, an interrogation, or something like that,
sitting in the chair,
in a kind of, like, stripped-down room.
And for her first time, sort of, sitting down
and telling her story, I think that works.
Alright. You ready to go on the record?
About how many weeks into the second deployment
did you get in touch with WikiLeaks?
It was all one deployment, but after, it was...
It was uh... It was during leave...
It was during my leave that I...
that I started using the site.
It was never about being caught.
I...wanted the information out.
Uh...
I was eventually going to go public.
- You were? - Yes.
I just didn't know how to do that.
Yes, I was worried that being trans would be...
would take over everything else.
Right. I was worried it would...
It would be used against me.
I wanted people to know then the things I was seeing.
Life was cheap in Iraq.
And it made me realize
that... how precious life actually is.
How precious everyone's life is.
♪ tense music ♪
That's right.
This is a war that resulted in the deaths
of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis,
four and a half thousand American soldiers...
It was also a war that we sped into
in no small part because of government secrecy.
How can a nation function
if we don't know what we've done?
And the finale of this war,
that started under cover of secrecy and lies,
ends with the prosecution and court martial
of someone who got the truth out.
Mm.
He was good.
Oh...
So sorry, sweetheart. Um...
Ch-Ch-Chelsea. I'm getting used to it now.
Slowly.
It's tough. Tough.
He was always my baby.
He was always my...
...Bradley. Hm.
He had the box room, where he slept in.
And he had how many computers?
I think it was... one, two, three...
Three computers set up.
And he had this desk chair,
on rollers.
Ah.
And... Oh! And it was locked.
There was a bolt.
I used to say, "That's one room I don't have to clean."
I can't remember.
Quant... Quant-something.
That's it.
It was a cinder block, cinder block,
and just two chairs.
I-I didn't say a lot because...
...I don't know.
He's, like...
I couldn't touch, couldn't hug.
He was, like...
Oh.
Sorry. But I do love you.
And if I could hug you,
I'd give you the biggest hug you ever had.
It's ten o'clock.
Twitter's quite addictive.
They're seeing me push back from, you know...
In a reasonable way for the first time.
"I don't agree with what Chelsea Manning did.
There are appropriate channels to go through.
Our national security is important."
And I just... I responded to that
and said, "Ever actually try those channels?"
And that's it.
And, like, people went nuts after that.
So...
"She Will"
♪ Oh... ♪
♪ You've got to get used to it♪
♪ And give your heart a little kick ♪
♪ She will, she will, she will, she will ♪
♪ She will, she will, she will, she will... ♪
I was trans before I started taking hormones.
I'm the same person as I was.
I just am presenting myself differently.
People don't understand
how young the people are who are in the military.
I'm uniquely situated to have been the person
that probably interacted with Chelsea face to face the most
over the last several years now.
However many years it's been. I don't even know.
And I have my own sense of who she is as a person, right?
It doesn't always line up and match
what the public perception of Chelsea is.
And I think that she's aware
of that journey ahead of her.
And I think she also recognizes that she can't...
You can't really dictate...
She can't dictate for herself
which path that's gonna go, right?
Because she's been prevented for the last ten years
of having the kinds of experiences that we had
that helped shape us.
And then that becomes very overwhelming for people.
But particularly for somebody like Chelsea,
who's still trying to be her.
You know, she's still trying to be who she is.
So as she's finally able to be who she is,
I just can't wait to see what she turns into.
Ahh...
Mm...
You are now an icon to many people
who believe that the government needs to be more transparent,
not just in war but in general.
If someone,
let's say a young programmer,
comes to you
who wants to work for more government transparency,
what would you suggest?
Make your own decisions, make your own choices,
make your own judgment...
Are there specific things that they could do
to further that particular cause?
No. I mean, you have to pay attention.
You have to pay attention.
How did the turmoil that you were going through
in terms of thinking about transitioning...
How did that affect your disclosures later on...
- I don't... - ...as your attorney says?
I don't think it did. You know,
it was this endless, straight, like, you know, like...
They're not connected.
I don't think they're connected.
I see the, like, endless stream
of violence and death and destruction
as being the primary motivator.
Okay.
Now, WikiLeaks, it's gone a whole road since back then.
What did you know about WikiLeaks in 2010?
What did you... It was much more obscure.
Well, I mean... Yeah, it was, it was.
I wasn't really a part of, like, you know...
It was, like... I was, like...
I was running out of time and decisions
and they just had the tools available.
They knew how to use them. That was it.
That's all it boiled own to.
It's like, I... I was running out of time.
- Because you had to go to Iraq. - I had to go back to Iraq.
And, you know...
There was no way I was gonna be able to upload it from Iraq.
You know, it's a policy of newspapers to redact names
to protect the identities of people who might be in danger
and the head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange,
believes in much more complete transparency
and he believes that it would contaminate the evidence,
to use his phrase,
if you did redact those names.
And so he did not, in some cases,
which potentially endangered informants,
particularly in Afghanistan.
We strongly dispute those facts.
Okay.
We strongly dispute those facts.
The government was not able to show any indication of that.
- Yes, yes. - Zero.
Did you not fear sending out these things
that you didn't know what was in them?
I did know. I worked with this information every day.
Did you not fear that it might hurt someone
- if you didn't know exactly... - Absolutely not.
It was historical data.
There's no sources. There's no methods.
There's no intelligence information in here.
It's not there. It's people dying and people getting killed
and people suffering
and on a massive, incredible scale.
As a result... I'm going to skip ahead a little bit...
It must be a difficult position
because you're an important public figure for many people
and yet I can understand
how you want to just get on with a new life as well
and these things keep coming back.
How do you deal with that?
I don't know.
I haven't figured that out yet.
How did you survive in solitary confinement?
I just remember, you know, whenever I was in Kuwait,
that I died.
I was alive but I was dead.
And I've been dead ever since.
Sort of... If that makes any sense.
Like, somehow I'm, like, in this visceral, like, purgatory
between...the two.
And that time.
And then I wake up for a while.
I just want to forget it ever happened.
I just want to not be reminded
that it ever happened to me ever.
I think that the moments that I've enjoyed,
you know, in the years since,
have been whenever I've completely forgotten.
People want me to relive it and I can't.
I'm just trying to find some closure
and some peace to all this.
I live in a state of, you know, uncertainty
and I feel like every step I take
is a step on thin ice.
I mean, I'm just, you know,
I'm just another one of us that's scared.
You know. I just... I find myself backed in a corner
and there's no other way to go
other than to fight back
and I'm certainly not going to wait for somebody to save me.
Or save any of us.
I'm certainly not going to wait for anybody to save any of us
because, chances are... nobody's coming.
Go ahead.
These are not the people that made our country great.
But we're gonna make it great again.
These are the people that are destroying our country.
The Trump administration's ban
on military service
by transgender people
was announced via Tweet.
What happens to transgender service members now?
Are they immediately thrown out of the military?
- Hey.
- How are ya? - I'm doing okay.
I just wanted to check in 'cause I know I've been super busy.
Yeah. It's nice to hear your voice.
It's like everything's just falling apart
and getting worse and becoming a disaster again.
- Mm-hm. - My safe is coming.
And my surveillance cameras are... I have them installed.
I just need to wire them.
Good. You do what needs to be done.
Yeah.
As soon as I started to see...
As soon as Charlottesville happened,
I was, like, I need security.
For the last six months, the alt-right,
they've been, like, mobilized,
and emboldened by the fact that,
you know, they have an administration
that appears to be favorable to them.
Can you explain what we're doing?
For somebody like me, like a trans person,
or somebody who's black or brown in this country,
or Jewish in this country... this is an existential threat.
You know, today it might not be an existential threat.
But five years from now, it's an absolute existential threat.
We can be afraid to say something sometimes.
And I'm not as afraid any more as I used to be
of saying the thing that needs to be said.
What are they gonna do?
Throw me in prison?
Or kill me?
They're gonna do that anyway.
If we let them, you know...
If we let them take the reins of our society.
You know, like, they're gonna do that anyway.
So I'd rather go down fighting.
♪ dramatic instrumental music ♪
Here I am.
- Chelsea! - Whoo!
I was told not to come here by numerous people.
Fuck 'em! - Yeah.
For so long, I wasn't able to even be seen
or be out on the streets.
I've been in prison for seven years.
It was being silenced that made me so afraid and so...
You're a hero!
When I first got out, I did not think I was gonna be
jumping straight back into activism.
I feel embattled.
I've seen what an occupied country is.
And I've seen what local suppression looks like.
And I'm seeing all of this right here
in a place that I want to call home.
- Good? Good? - Yes.
Good? Good?
- Consensus. - Consensus.
Tweet.
♪ dramatic music ♪
We need to stop expecting
that our systems will somehow fix themselves.
We need to actually take the reins of power from them.
We need to fix this.
USA! USA!
Damn right we got this.
Whistle-blower Chelsea Manning
surprised the political world this week
by announcing she was running for the US Senate.
Manning is challenging Democratic incumbent Ben Cardin
in the upcoming June primaries.
You are on the air. Go ahead, please.
My question is, so, Chelsea,
you had some suicide attempts in prison.
For someone who's had those kind of issues,
what makes you the candidate
to represent the people of Maryland?
Are you suggesting that someone
who has suffered from clinical depression
is not qualified to run for office?
No, that's not what I'm suggesting.
Okay.
He's asking, are you mentally stable now
given all the horrific...? I think that's what he's asking.
Given discussions about the President
and his mental stability,
I think that should be something
we ask about all candidates.
I strongly disagree.
You know, we shouldn't be stigmatizing anybody
for any mental health issues.
You know. But um...
Like, I'm more than willing to admit I'm in therapy.
As a senator, would you release confidential information
that was being held by Senate panel?
No, but I would certainly move to push for as much transparency
in government as possible.
You're challenging the Democratic incumbent
in the primary.
Your platform includes closing prisons,
free college, universal healthcare...
Hi, I'm Chelsea Manning. I'm running for US Senate.
And I get asked this a lot by reporters, you know.
"Why are you running for Senate?"
If you look around and you look at everything that's going on,
whether it's the immigration debate,
healthcare or police, police brutality,
and mass surveillance...
Like, why the hell wouldn't I be running?
You know, in this environment,
in this toxic environment that we live in,
where's our say?
We're just trying to excite people.
And... And...
Yeah, we know it's an uphill battle.
We know...
words like "Cinderella story",
"long shot", "underdog",
words like that are going to be applied.
Is it stressful? Oh, yeah.
This is very stressful.
But we also know that
at the end of it all
we're going to be so happy that we tried.
Changing the world isn't easy.
It's not. I mean...
Chelsea knows.
If you're an intelligence analyst,
you really have to understand your opponent.
And you have to think like your opponent.
A certain amount of empathy is a requirement
to being effective.
Whenever I've protested
against the alt-right,
I realized that Cassandra Fairbanks
was there.
She was a supporter in my campaign
to get me out of prison.
I decided to use that connection
to try to see what information we could glean
from that particular flavor of the alt-right.
It's called rapport-building in intelligence work.
I didn't really know what the fuck I was getting myself into.
I finally hit the jackpot.
She invited me to an event.
All of alt-right Twitter in the same fucking room.
USA! USA!
Manning...
We're never coming down.
We took America back.
America's ours now.
We're never coming down.
- Never! - Never!
- Never coming down.
- We're never coming down. - We're coming to get you
if you try and take our firearms!
America's back!
- That's what's up! - You piece of filth!
Everybody keeps getting mad at me.
Every time I open my phone, people are mad at me.
Every time they fucking talk to me, I have to break shit up.
They're fucking...
And guess what, they're gonna counter-attack for months, okay?
Every time we do something,
they're going to fucking respond.
- Shh. - We're not going to.
Chelsea, I'm not mad.
- I'm not mad. - Yeah, you are.
You might not think you're mad but you're mad.
Do you realize, this is like a scene in the movie
when all the good guys realize
that the enemies are manipulating them
and dividing them against each other.
We are a roomful of allies.
We're all on the same team in here and we're fighting.
- This is old fucking news. - Okay.
Seven days old now.
I'm tired of fucking hearing about this.
I am too. We all are.
This is driving us into the fucking ground.
We've said so much to your supporters,
so much to people who were upset.
We can't say any more to smooth it over.
Nothing we say will change anyone's minds.
No matter what we do, people's minds are set.
This week was fucking traumatic.
And I am over it. I'm so over it.
You don't fucking...
You don't do that. You don't play their game.
Yeah, don't play their game. Thank you.
I messed this up.
♪ brooding violin music ♪
I knew I'd fucked up.
I immediately knew that it was indefensible.
It was wrong.
I don't know what people are expecting out of me.
I mean, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
I just got out of prison.
You know. And here we are.
We're right next to Quantico, by the way.
Where we are.
So... About a mile and a half
from where I was held in solitary confinement.
I was never gonna be a... a mouthpiece.
I'm not a hero.
I'm just somebody who...
...you know...
I've always been somebody
willing to, like, jump in and do something.
I've spoken through other family members to her
but it's very difficult to reach her.
You know, and she's not well.
She had a stroke. Yeah.
I try to not get them involved
in all the craziness that happens around me.
I heard from my father but... we don't talk much.
Our...
Our positions on life are so divergent
that I don't know if we can reconcile.
I don't know if we can reconcile.
He cared less about me being gay.
I think he's kind of in denial about my trans-ness.
I think...
I think he doesn't know who I am.
Suspicions undoubtedly have been raised
that this happened to Chelsea Manning.
The police raid her home with guns drawn
in this so-called "Wellness Check".
She's a candidate for the US Senate
who is known for participating
in political protests.
Come on, Janice.
Hey, I have the final statement
if you want me to read it.
Uh-huh.
"Last year, when I was released from prison,
I emerged into a world of hate and injustice.
I wondered if I should spend
my first year of freedom recovering.
But I couldn't sit still.
I tried to use my platform as a public figure
to send a message.
Every one of us has power.
Over the past several months it has become clear
that my experiences have taken an enormous toll
on my physical and emotional health.
I stepped back from campaigning
to prioritize my own well-being.
I found the space and the treatment I need to heal.
I'm not giving up.
I'm grateful for everyone who believes in me.
Together we got this."
- Does that sound good?
Chelsea?
It's harder to do the right thing
than it is to go within the process.
And so I think everybody has to make their own call
as to what they're willing to do.
Being trans, being queer as a kid...
...being unwanted
and being unloved...
being not cared about...
...I've always felt a close connection
with the people who are hurting the most.
If I wasn't exposed to that,
maybe I could ignore it or not see it.
But I can't.
I think Chelsea will always be
looking over her shoulder...
♪ foreboding music ♪
...for the rest of her life.
In this country, once you've been marked
as an enemy of the state,
I think you'll always be an enemy of the state
and you'll always have to worry
that they'll find some other reason.
There is this sense of impending doom
that just never dissipates and never goes away.
Chelsea Manning is back behind bars
after refusing to testify
in an investigation into WikiLeaks.
Manning can be held for a maximum of 18 months
for refusing to testify.
Her attorney says they'll likely appeal.
As everybody knows, Chelsea has tremendous courage.
Our primary concern at this point is her health
- while she is confined.
Julian Assange's arrest in London on Thursday,
inside Ecuador's embassy, was done by British police
under a warrant from the United States for extradition.
This is the charge that he faces. Conspiracy.
Specifically related to hacking a government computer
and his relationship to Chelsea Manning.
It was a perjury trap.
Oh, it is a perjury trap.
How do you think she's holding up? Do you have any idea?
I'm worried and I think other people are worried about her.
I'm really concerned now about the...
that they're holding her in solitary.
The grand jury can go for what? About 18 months.
And then they can start all over again.
- They could. - They can go forever.
She's gonna have to do something to...
motivate herself to go through this.
♪ tense music ♪
It's never gonna stop.
They're not gonna stop.
It's not gonna stop until we stop them.
"Deep Space Probe"
♪ I used to be silent ♪
♪ Now I am ready ♪
♪ To let it all ♪
♪ Let it all out ♪
♪ There's a sadness in me ♪
♪ I cannot control ♪
♪ I let it all ♪
♪ Let it all out ♪
♪ Out on the streets ♪
♪ On the stupid and the weak ♪
♪ You can hold me now ♪
♪ Let it all ♪