Chelsea Manning, the transgender Army private imprisoned for exposing national security secrets, has joined Twitter with the help from a communications firm.

The company, Fitzgibbon Media, confirmed that it is handling Manning's account, @xychelsea, posting messages she dictates by phone and telling her about the responses.

Her introductory post went up Friday afternoon. She finished the day with seven more, thanking friends and supporters, expressing the effort it takes to Tweet by phone from prison, and promising "I don't want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation." By Friday evening she had more than 20,000 followers.

Manning revealed her gender identity as a transgender female while serving 35 years in the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks.

The former Army intelligence analyst has said disillusionment with an American foreign policy bent on "killing and capturing people" motivated the release of the documents, including battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, to the anti-secrecy site in 2010.

A court ruled in March that the Army must stop referring to her as Bradley Manning and must use feminine or gender neutral pronouns in court filings.

Emmanuelle Saliba

First published April 3 2015, 2:37 PM

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Chelsea Manning Joins Twitter From Prison - NBC News

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan., April 3 (UPI) -- Chelsea Manning, the former soldier convicted of giving classified military documents to Wikileaks, joined Twitter on Friday.

Manning mostly used the social media platform to thank her supporters and explain how she's able to tweet from prison. She is currently serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for violating the Espionage Act.

"I'm hoping to stay connected w/ this account as much as poss., but would rather tweet about more meaningful things than not #lessismore," she wrote in her second tweet.

Manning said she has to dictate what she wants to tweet over the phone to another party who is managing the Twitter account for her. Fitzgibbon Media is handling the account.

"It will be hard, but I don't want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation," Manning wrote.

"Starting with a shout out to the friends who have always stood by me @ggreenwald @amnesty @carwinb @savemanning and so many others #thankyou," she continued.

"That's all the tweets I have for today! Thank you all for your love and support. I hope you will continue to follow me in the future."

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Chelsea Manning joins Twitter from Leavenworth - UPI.com

This drawing of Chelsea Manning is her profile picture on her Twitter page @xychelsea. Photograph: http://www.chelseamanning.org

Chelsea Manning, the US soldier serving 35 years in military prison for leaking state secrets to WikiLeaks, has joined the social media site Twitter.

The army private has secured the handle @xychelsea and will begin posting tweets from noon ET on Friday. Given the conditions of her custody which do not extend to internet access she will dictate comments by phone to supporters who will then post on her behalf.

The new Twitter feed had by 5.30pm ET on Thursday already attracted more than 1,000 followers, even before the soldier had uttered a word or followed any other accounts. Her page includes a drawing of her as she would like to be seen, with long hair even though the military authorities have consistently refused to allow her to grow out her hair.

Manning was arrested at the Forward Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad in Iraq where she was working as an intelligence analyst. After a prolonged trial, she was convicted of charges arising from having passed a massive stash of US state secrets to the open-information organization WikiLeaks.

After she was convicted, Manning revealed that she wanted to transition from her male birth gender to begin living as a woman. After months of legal struggle, the US military agreed to approve her gender-reassignment hormone therapy the first such treatment ever approved for an active member of the armed forces.

Since being incarcerated, Manning has developed her voice as a perceptive and questioning observer of international affairs as a columnist for the Guardian. She has written on issues ranging from President Obamas war on whistleblowers to the CIAs torture techniques and transgender politics.

The Chelsea Manning support team are encouraging people to follow the soldier on Twitter through a #FF campaign. They promise that the tweets posted on her feed will be her own candid thoughts and comments.

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Chelsea Manning joins Twitter and gets over 1,000 ...

Pvt. Chelsea Manning, the Army soldier in prison for handing over a massive trove of classified documents to Wikileaks, has joined Twitter .

David Coombs, the lawyer for Pvt. Manning, confirmed the account is real in a brief email and said his client is dictating the tweets to people over the phone, who are then posting them to the social-media service. She is tweeting under the handle @xychelsea.

In 2013, Pfc Manning was acquitted of the most serious charges brought by the government but convicted of lesser charges related to the release of State Department cables and military records from Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Pfc. Manning was reduced in rank to private and sentenced to 35 years in prison, but will be eligible for parole after serving eight years. She is serving her sentence at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

After the conviction, Pvt. Manning, then know as Bradley Manning, asked to be referred to as female and announced she would seek hormone therapy. Last year a Kansas judge granted Pvt. Mannings request for a name change to Chelsea.

Pvt. Manning released four tweets in the initial postings on Friday, quickly gaining thousands of followers. There was little in the way of controversy in the comments.

Pvt. Manning said she would try to maintain a conversation with followers, but acknowledged the difficulty of doing that from prison, where there are sharp limits on conversations.

And she set expectations for the frequency of postings with the hashtag #lessismore.

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Chelsea Manning Starts Tweeting From Military Prison

Chelsea Manning, the U.S. soldier serving a 35-year sentence for leaking military secrets to the Web site Wikileaks, has joined Twitter, giving her a new way to communicate with the outside world from the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Mannings first message was posted at noon, and was followed by three more in quick succession. She said shed be dictating them by voice, and is using the handle @xychelsea. A spokesperson for the ACLU told Politico on Friday that it would not be tweeting on her behalf, but others in close contact with her would.

Manning, who joined the Army as a man named Bradley, uses a black-and-white image of herself with long hair on her Twitter profile.

[From military prison, Chelsea Manning offers punditry on Iraq]

Its not the first time shes offered punditry from behind bars: In September, she argued in an opinion piece published by The Guardian that Islamic State militants should be allowed to set up a caliphate and control their own territory because it would prove that they are unable to govern.

Manningserved in Iraq in 2009 and 2010andwas sentenced to 35 years of confinement in August 2013. In August 2014, her attorneys threatened to sue the U.S. government if it didnt grant her gender treatment. She identifies as female, and swapped names to Chelsea in 2013.

Dan Lamothe covers national security for The Washington Post and anchors its military blog, Checkpoint.

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Chelsea Manning, imprisoned for leaking secrets, to tweet from Fort Leavenworth

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan., April 3 (UPI) -- Chelsea Manning, the former soldier convicted of giving classified military documents to Wikileaks, joined Twitter on Friday.

Manning mostly used the social media platform to thank her supporters and explain how she's able to tweet from prison. She is currently serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for violating the Espionage Act.

"I'm hoping to stay connected w/ this account as much as poss., but would rather tweet about more meaningful things than not #lessismore," she wrote in her second tweet.

Manning said she has to dictate what she wants to tweet over the phone to another party who is managing the Twitter account for her. Fitzgibbon Media is handling the account.

"It will be hard, but I don't want this Twitter feed to be a one-way street/conversation," Manning wrote.

"Starting with a shout out to the friends who have always stood by me @ggreenwald @amnesty @carwinb @savemanning and so many others #thankyou," she continued.

"That's all the tweets I have for today! Thank you all for your love and support. I hope you will continue to follow me in the future."

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2015 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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Chelsea Manning joins Twitter from Leavenworth