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