Chelsea Manning is a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst and a crucial source for WikiLeaks’ 2010 releases, providing significant information about U.S. military activities.[1] John Kiriakou says Manning meets the legal definition of a whistleblower — what she revealed, in his view, was evidence of war crimes — though he says he personally would not have leaked every diplomatic cable the way she did.[2] After Manning’s document release, Kiriakou personally searched the leaked documents for his own social security number, a direct consequence of the scale of Manning’s disclosure.[3]
Sentence, torture, and clemency
Manning was originally sentenced to 35 years in prison for the leaks.[4] Kiriakou says he is “thrilled” by her eventual release and considers her a torture victim: she spent long stretches of her sentence in solitary confinement — a practice the United Nations has declared a form of torture — compounded by forced nudity intended purely to humiliate and control her.[5] He is emphatic that Obama did not pardon Manning, as is sometimes assumed: he commuted her sentence, meaning she remains a convicted felon.[6]
Refusing to testify against Assange
Kiriakou describes Manning’s later refusal to testify before a grand jury against Julian Assange, even after prosecutors offered her immunity. Rather than take the Fifth Amendment, she asserted the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments and refused to “rat out” Assange.[7] The prosecutors, he says, were seeking to have her repeat testimony she had given in her own 2012 court-martial at Fort Meade — a demand that risked false-statement or perjury charges if her memory of the earlier testimony differed even slightly.[8] Kiriakou describes Manning as roughly 5’4” and 120 pounds but “tougher than 99% of the men that I know,” someone who never blinked at a 35-year sentence and, facing renewed imprisonment, chose to say nothing rather than cooperate.[9] He notes it was hacker Adrian Lamo who originally turned Manning over to the FBI, and who tried to entrap her by suggesting she instead sell the leaked documents to Russia or China; Manning refused, telling him the leaks were not about money — she wanted the American people to know the truth.[10] She was eventually released, Kiriakou says, once the judge concluded she genuinely would not testify, and once prosecutors decided they no longer needed her testimony to bring further charges against Assange.[11]
Emergence as a whistleblower
Manning’s emergence as a whistleblower was a significant topic of discussion within secret spaces, and her actions were part of an ongoing campaign to smear Julian Assange — the same period John Kiriakou describes as his own introduction to WikiLeaks. [12]
Motivation is irrelevant
Kiriakou credits attorney Jesselyn Radack with teaching him that a whistleblower’s motivation does not affect their legal status — citing Manning’s anger at her commanding officer at the time of the leak as an example of a personal motive that doesn’t change the public value of what was disclosed.[13]
Declining to take it to the Supreme Court (Scott Horton, 2021)
John Kiriakou says Chelsea Manning was one of only two people with standing — the other being Jeffrey Sterling — to appeal an Espionage Act conviction to the Supreme Court and try to have the statute ruled unconstitutional. Manning, he says, “just couldn’t do it… she just didn’t have it in her to go all the way to the Supreme Court.”[14]