AMY GOODMAN: So, you went to Arizona to train?
CHELSEA MANNING: I did. That was three or -- I barely remember that period. It was very fast-paced.
AMY GOODMAN: Fort Huachuca?
CHELSEA MANNING: Yes. It was very fast-paced. I went -- you know, I went through basic training, went to Fort Huachuca for intel school. And then, next thing I know, I'm doing this work.
AMY GOODMAN: In Iraq?
CHELSEA MANNING: I was stateside for a year, before Iraq. And a lot of that was pre-deployment preparation.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about your experience in Iraq then.
CHELSEA MANNING: Just a very -- you know, I came into this with a very--you know, I'm a problem solver. I'm a -- as an analyst, I solve math problems. You know, I took a statistical approach to my work. I did statistical predictive analysis, basically what people would now call AI, the sort of AI sector, you know, grew up working with big data. And I did this regularly.
But whenever I got to Iraq, I just like -- I was just this like data -- it was just this constant, you know, drinking-from-a-firehose sense of like all these things happening around me. And they were happening here, right in front of me, and so it was no longer a math problem. You know, these were real people in real places. You know, they weren't just dots on a map. They were lives. These are people's lives and emotions and all of the things that are attached with that. And we're in their home. You know, they live here. And we're doing all of this stuff, and we're just like viewing it as like an academic problem, as a math problem. And I couldn't -- you know, I couldn't separate my work from my emotions anymore. I became emotionally invested.
JUAN GONZÃ LEZ: I've always been fascinated by, given the enormous complexity of the American military machine and the data and the secrecy of the American military, that you, as a private, would have access to quite an enormous amount of documentation and records of the military. Could you talk about the level of security clearance that you went through, and also the unit that you were working with, in terms of how many other privates had access to this kind of information?
CHELSEA MANNING: I mean, there's this notion of like, you know, rank in the military is very important. But in the intelligence field, it's more about your ability. You know, they even, at times, discourage you from wearing rank, so that the command structure can take you more seriously, they're not blinded by rank. So, as an enlisted person, you're afforded more privileges as an analyst than -- you're kind of seen almost a peer to officers, but you're still -- you know, like you're in support of them.
And, you know, like I -- and I really took my job seriously. I tried to do the best work that I could. So I was afforded even more, you know, leeway and access than the average person, just based on what I'm doing. And there was always this phrase, like mission critical, mission critical. Everything you're doing is mission critical. So, it bumps you up to the top of the priority list. So I got training. I got access to databases. And I performed. You know, there's a focus on delivery and on results, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, etc.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about your decision to try to make the information you were seeing in Iraq public, something that we were not seeing here.
CHELSEA MANNING: That was the problem. It was this -- I went at home at night, and I'm over -- or not home, but to my housing unit at night, or daytime, because I worked the night shift. And I would -- I couldn't sleep. And I would look at the news. And, you know, it was almost like a glossing over of what had happened in Iraq. In 2010, it was less about what had happened and more about -- and more about this like -- it was almost like, "Oh, let's forget about all the bad things that have happened, because it's working out in the end." But like what I was seeing on the ground was not that. And I was very -- I was very worried about that and that disconnect.
AMY GOODMAN: So, in April 2010, WikiLeaks makes international headlines when it publishes a video that you had leaked. The chilling video footage is taken from a U.S. military helicopter. It shows U.S. forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqis in the New Baghdad neighborhood of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency, photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh. It became known as the "Collateral Murder" video. This is a clip.
U.S. SOLDIER 1: There, one o'clock. Haven't seen anything since then.
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