Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central, Manning, Welcome to the Daily Show.
Speaker 1: It is going well, and you know your book is
Speaker 1: one of those books that's strangely enough, I felt like
Speaker 1: I had read because of how much you had been
Speaker 1: in the news, because of how how big your story
Speaker 1: has been in not just American media, but in you
Speaker 1: know that the telling of America's military operation. Let's let's
Speaker 1: start with I guess the inception of the idea to
Speaker 1: write a book after pulling off one of the largest
Speaker 1: intelligence leaks in American history. You were vilified, you served time,
Speaker 1: you were labeled as a traitor, and it felt like
Speaker 1: the story tapered off over time. And now you've come
Speaker 1: back and you've reignited many of the conversations with this book.
Speaker 1: My question to you is why why UM? I think
Speaker 1: that it's the fact that my own version of the story,
Speaker 1: my first draft of history, if you will, UM, hasn't
Speaker 1: been talked about as much. I feel like there's been
Speaker 1: all the discussion of things that have happened around me
Speaker 1: and involving the military, involving other personalities like like President Obama,
Speaker 1: who commuted by sentence. But I feel like my like
Speaker 1: my story, my coming of age story really, um, you know,
Speaker 1: for just trying to tell the story of how I
Speaker 1: became who I am today, UM has been kind of
Speaker 1: left out of the picture. And so I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell that story. And in many ways, you became a
Speaker 1: lightning rod and an idea because what you did shook
Speaker 1: the world. You know, you came out as a whistle
Speaker 1: blow up and you just I mean to name a
Speaker 1: few of the leaks and you'll add to them. I mean,
Speaker 1: it leaks about murders that the American military had committed
Speaker 1: and not told anybody about. You know, you had told
Speaker 1: the world about collateral damage and how you know this
Speaker 1: wasn't what we thought it was and there were way
Speaker 1: more deaths than than had been previously reported. As I
Speaker 1: put at the true face the true reality of asymmetric
Speaker 1: century warfare, which is basically like how an occupation, how
Speaker 1: holding territory with a large occupying playing army during an
Speaker 1: insurgency actually plays out. It's it's not surgical, it's very
Speaker 1: very messy. What did you hope to achieve by by
Speaker 1: leaking the information? In form? I wanted another person like
Speaker 1: me to feel as as informed as I did. Finally
Speaker 1: about the true reality. I mean, that's why I call
Speaker 1: it remade dot text, because that is the document. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what I said. And did you hope it would
Speaker 1: change what the U. S Military was doing in the
Speaker 1: Middle East? Or did you did you think it would
Speaker 1: shift public perception? The public discourse, I feel like is
Speaker 1: what I really wanted to impact. I feel like, at
Speaker 1: least if the public is informed, then at least, you know,
Speaker 1: like like being a dot, like being a doct like
Speaker 1: having conversation with your doctor, you have informed consent. I
Speaker 1: I just always assumed that you went straight two WEEKI leaks.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how hard you tried to get American
Speaker 1: media outlets to look at the information and why do
Speaker 1: you think they said no? And why do you think
Speaker 1: nobody got back to you? It was very difficult. So
Speaker 1: it's the technical difficulties. You know, we didn't have the
Speaker 1: tools like signal encryption wasn't widely adopted by traditional media outlets,
Speaker 1: um and you know, trying to and I didn't trust
Speaker 1: the telephone system right, and it didn't trust email and
Speaker 1: I had my reasons for that. UM So I you know,
Speaker 1: trying to avoid that, but also trying to do a
Speaker 1: physical thing while I only have a limited amount of
Speaker 1: time and there was a blizzard. It was just very
Speaker 1: logistically difficult. And if any one thing as a you know,
Speaker 1: somebody asked me earlier today, like if any one thing
Speaker 1: had changed, like, yeah, this would have never happened. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So you were trying to maintain I mean there was
Speaker 1: a point in the book where I talked about how
Speaker 1: um I you know, or I was sitting at Starbucks
Speaker 1: and uploading the stuff and it wasn't working, and because
Speaker 1: of Starbucks Internet, it almost didn't happen. I'm will say
Speaker 1: that there are parts of the book that are almost
Speaker 1: comical unintentionally because you talk about copying what is seven
Speaker 1: under fifty thousand government files onto CDs and then you
Speaker 1: just labeled them. You just wrote band names, right, Taylor Swift,
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga. So I wanted to know when I was
Speaker 1: reading this, like did you write those artists because you
Speaker 1: assumed that military personnel would be like, oh that's that's
Speaker 1: there's no harm pretty much, okay, So you think there
Speaker 1: were some answers where would have been like I want
Speaker 1: to listen to what's on that CD? Is that way okay?
Speaker 1: Because it's really interesting you have these CDs, you go
Speaker 1: to the Starbucks, you start uploading all of this. Was
Speaker 1: there ever a part of you that was afraid that
Speaker 1: you would compromise the US more than you would help it.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And I say that because I
Speaker 1: knew this information. I worked with it every day. I mean,
Speaker 1: and when you know, and I think about like, you know,
Speaker 1: senior public officials, whenever they have access to this information,
Speaker 1: they don't understand it. I mean, it's our job to
Speaker 1: tell them. But you know, it's it's a question as
Speaker 1: to whether they love not the list or not. So
Speaker 1: you're basically explaining it to them, and then they're working
Speaker 1: off what you've told them. Maybe wow, it depends on
Speaker 1: how they interpret it. I couldn't help reading through the
Speaker 1: book and wondering how much of your life has informed
Speaker 1: the latter part of your journey. You know, you weren't
Speaker 1: just famous for being one of the biggest whistle blows
Speaker 1: in American history. You also then became famous as somebody
Speaker 1: who transitioned at a time when the conversation was was
Speaker 1: really really you even speak about it in the book.
Speaker 1: Was there not a part of you that thought, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with my gender. I'm I'm dealing with a
Speaker 1: world that doesn't accept me the way I am. Why
Speaker 1: get involved in leaking military secrets? Maybe deal with one
Speaker 1: thing at a time. I didn't think of it like that.
Speaker 1: I thought, uh, you know, this, this despite my background,
Speaker 1: despite everything else. It was just it was just so
Speaker 1: clear to me, Like it was just it was crystal
Speaker 1: clear that something had to be done. And um, and
Speaker 1: I just I you know, I, I mean, I was
Speaker 1: very young. Uh, and I didn't And I think it's
Speaker 1: also important to remember that the consequences for this weren't clear. Right.
Speaker 1: I thought I was gonna lose my job, which was
Speaker 1: a big deal. You can think you'd be sentenced to
Speaker 1: three decades, right, Uh, nobody had ever gone to prison
Speaker 1: before me. Do you think the American military is more
Speaker 1: honest now in its operations? Do you think you've shifted
Speaker 1: the paradigm even slightly? I think that obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: the context has changed. I mean, I look at the
Speaker 1: war in Ukraine, and I've always found it fascinating that
Speaker 1: as the Russians invaded Ukraine, I knew more about what's happened,
Speaker 1: what was happening in the Uh, you know, from my
Speaker 1: laptop at home than I would have known about what
Speaker 1: was going on in Iraq while I was actually deployed there.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting. Intelligence Center, like this is just the
Speaker 1: sheer fire hose of information that we received from every
Speaker 1: single different angle. And I actually think that it's shifted
Speaker 1: from not having access to information to having access to
Speaker 1: so much information that you can't filter out accurate from
Speaker 1: inact current misinformation from disinformation and uh, and that this
Speaker 1: is going to be the main struggle that we have
Speaker 1: moving forward. And now I was I was really just
Speaker 1: like joy poured out of me for you when I
Speaker 1: found out that you now DJing as well. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: like a coin journey to be on. Yeah, I'm DJ
Speaker 1: and my own I'm DJ and my own release party.
Speaker 1: What do you play? What do I play? Electronic dance music? Hyper? Oh?
Speaker 1: I love that? Okay, So it's not tay this with
Speaker 1: God God like, no, do you that's my old That's okay,
Speaker 1: you do Blakey to Era. I like that. Well, congratulations
Speaker 1: on your journey. Thank you so much for journey on
Speaker 1: the show. And it's a really fun book. Thank you
Speaker 1: to be Chelsea Matting. Everybody watch The Daily Show weeknight
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