In 2010, Chelsea Manning, working as
an intelligence analyst in the United States Army in Iraq, disclosed
720,000 classified military documents that she had smuggled out via
the memory card of her digital camera. In March 2011, the army
sentenced Manning to thirty-five years in military prison, charging
her with twenty-two counts relating to the unauthorized possession
and distribution of classified military documents. The day after her
conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began
to transition. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted her sentence
and she was released from prison.
In ReadMe.txt,
Manning recounts how her pleas for increased institutional
transparency and government accountability took place alongside a
fight to defend her rights as a trans woman. She reveals her
challenging childhood, her struggles as an adolescent, what led her
to join the military, and the fierce pride she took in her work. We
also learn the details of how and why she made the decision to send
classified military documents to WikiLeaks. This powerful, observant
memoir will stand as one of the definitive testaments of the digital
age.