Re-examining the Chelsea Manning Saga as Prison Term Ends

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“In an ideal world, governments, corporations, and other large institutions would be transparent by default. Unfortunately, the world is not ideal. Many institutions begin a slow creep toward being opaque and we need people who recognize that.” — Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning will be released from Ft. Leavenworth prison today after her 35-year, maximum-security sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama before he left office in January.

In 2010, Private Manning, then known as Bradley, leaked over 700,000 documents to Wikileaks, including classified diplomatic cables, Army reports, and videos while stationed in Iraq as an Army intelligence analyst.

The Manning disclosures are one of the largest classified document leaks in US history, in league with the Edward Snowden disclosures and Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers. Some credit the Manning leak as an important catalyst for the Arab Spring.

Wikileaks released many of the documents in an unredacted form to the Internet, gaining both condemnation and praise for the organization and its founder, Julian Assange. The Manning leaks put Wikileaks in the mainstream consciousness, where it continues to remain.

The most sensational documents revealed wrongdoing by the US government, and its attempts to cover them up. For instance, documents show that the US was well aware of torture and prisoner abuse perpetrated by Iraqi Security Forces, and did nothing about it.    

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