Chelsea Manning (born December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses after having disclosed to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents. Manning was released after nearly seven years of confinement, but was further detained in 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. A trans woman, Manning stated in 2013 that she had had a female gender identity since childhood.Photograph credit: Tim Travers Hawkins