This absorbing memoir opens dramatically. Due for redeployment to Iraq and grappling with a crippling blizzard,Manning found a Baltimore bookstore and uploaded 720,000 classified military and diplomatic documents on a slow and unreliable internet. With only 30 minutes to spare,the Barnes&Noble Wi-Fi did its job. Soon,WikiLeaks and three media partners –The Guardian,The New York Times andDer Spiegel – were publishing disclosures that embarrassed US officials and intelligence agencies.
She wished to expose the dissonance between two versions of reality:the one she observed in Iraq and the one believed by Americans at home. “We were dying over posturing,over bullshit,” she writes. She was not a nut or a slut (the terms assigned by the army to whistleblowers) but utterly disenchanted with what she saw and experienced.
The memoir,which does not resolve the ethical dilemma between revealing truths and enabling unfiltered access to sensitive information,then arcs back to her troubled early life:a violent and abusive father,an alcoholic mother,homelessness and her ongoing struggle with sublimated gender dysphoria. It tells in sometimes heart-wrenching detail the inner story of what we only vaguely knew from extensive news reporting,of her courage,pain,and resilience.
Once arrested,Manning experienced “catastrophic terror and animal loneliness” for 59 days inside a small metal cage in Kuwait. She psychologically disintegrated and attempted suicide. Solitary confinement continued when relocated to Quantico,a military prison in Virginia. There she awaited the long-delayed court martial.
By now,she writes,“I was already dead”. After her conviction in 2013,she was transferred to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas where she organised a prison strike. She legally changed her name but was consistently denied (until 2015) gender-affirming hormone treatment. These three periods of incarceration are recounted with a rawness and honesty that is both vivid and discomforting to read.
The book contains two entwined stories:Manning’s inspirational fight to defend her right to transition,and the background and consequences of releasing military secrets. Although advocacy of trans women and advocacy of transparency were not directly related,as the homophobia and sexist bullying in her Baghdad workstation intensified,so too did her private outrage with the injustice of the Iraq war and her desire to publicly expose it.