WikiLeaks Informant Manning Is Now Officially Chelsea

Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley, is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., after the third day of her court martial on June 5, 2013.

Image: Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-04-23 17:04:41 UTC

A judge has granted a request from WikiLeaks' most famous informant, the soldier formerly known as Bradley Edward Manning, to have her name formally changed to Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.

The Leavenworth County District Judge David King allowed the name change in a one-minute long hearing, according to the Associated Press. Manning will now officially be known as Chelsea.

Manning formally requested her name to be changed last month, but she announced that she is female and wanted to be known as Chelsea last year, after being sentenced to spend 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks.

"Today is an exciting day," Manning wrote in an open letter published on the Chelsea Manning Support Network website. "Ive been working for months for this change, and waiting for years."

Manning added that she requested a name change "because its a far better, richer, and more honest reflection of who I am and always have been a woman named Chelsea."

The ruling is the first step toward a change in Manning's military records. But it won't change her confinement status, meaning she will remain in her current male-only prison facility and won't be transferred to a prison with a women's unit, according to the AP.

Manning also requested hormone therapy, and to live as a woman during her time in prison, and she has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or gender identity disorder. But the U.S. military prisons have no legal obligation to provide hormone therapy.

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WikiLeaks Informant Manning Is Now Officially Chelsea