Chelsea Manning: Seeing Victims of U.S. War as ‘People’ — Not ‘Statistics’ — Compelled Leaks

By Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams

U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has given her first interview since being released from prison last month in which she explains her motivations for making public thousands of military documents.

Excerpts of her interview with ABC’s “Nightline” co-anchor Juju Chang aired Friday on the network’s “Good Morning America.”

Asked about why she leaked the trove of documents, she says, “I have a responsibility to the public … we all have a responsibility.”

“We’re getting all this information from all these different sources and it’s just death, destruction, mayhem.”

“We’re filtering it all through facts, statistics, reports, dates, times, locations, and eventually, you just stop,” she continued. “I stopped seeing just statistics and information, and I started seeing people.”

Asked by Hing what she would tell President Obama, Manning, choking up, says, “I’ve been given a chance,” she says. “That’s all I asked for was a chance.”

Watch excerpts from the interview in the video above.