This scholarly discourse comes nine years after U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was arrested at her duty station in Iraq for stealing and leaking 734,885 Department of Defense and State Department files. Although deeply sympathetic to the dishonorably discharged soldier, it may anger Manning's fanbase because author Lida Maxwell challenges to the quick some of their core beliefs.
One of these is Manning's status as a classic whistleblower. Maxwell refuses to shoehorn Manning into the traditional whistleblower model, and faults defenders such as Daniel Ellsberg and Glenn Greenwald for maintaining that she was motivated solely to serve the public good. As Maxwell sees it, the mantle of immaculate altruism is used to cloak Manning because "if her personal struggles influenced, or were linked with, her whistleblowing in any way, then the act of truth-telling appears no longer as an act that simply renders facts visible that were being kept hidden—on behalf of the public good—but as a possibly biased attempt to (mis)use facts on behalf of private interest."
In contrast to whistleblowers, who are by definition insiders, Maxwell describes Manning as "an outsider who tells an insurgent truth." (In 2017, Manning herself called the word whistleblower "outdated and outmoded," and added, "I've never embraced that term.")
This disavowal of branding prized by loyalists would be irksome enough, but Maxwell goes a step farther, arguing that the whistleblower label "blocks from view a story implicit in Manning's self-representation; a story about how supposedly 'private' aspects of Manning's motivations to leak documents may themselves have been formed by Manning's public experiences of failing to fit into public norms of gender comportment in the Army."
It is here that Lida Maxwell ventures onto radioactive terrain. In 2017, MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid was vilified after tweeting, "Isn't it arguable that if she'd had access to [gender] reassignment she'd have been less volatile & vulnerable? There's zero evidence that being trans prompted Manning to download that info and hand it to Wikileaks. But wouldn't having a person feel supported by the institution reduce the chances that they'd act out in any way? Just a thought."
Those castigating Reid as a transphobe seemed to forget that this was the position taken consistently, before and after her transition, by Manning's own lawyers. In 2011, they argued that her "status as a gay soldier before the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' played an important role" in her actions. In 2016, they played the gender identity card more forthrightly. "Because PFC Manning could not live openly as a transgender woman," her attorneys wrote, "her mental and emotional condition deteriorated. Manning was in her early twenties when the disclosures occurred. She was battling depression, anxiety, and gender dysphoria in a combat environment, all of which affected her judgment and decision-making."
Less than four months out of prison, Manning was interviewed live onstage at the 2017 New Yorker Festival. As shown in the 2019 documentary XY Chelsea, journalist Larissa MacFarquhar asked, "How did the turmoil that you were going through in terms of thinking about transitioning, how did that affect your disclosures later on as your attorney says?"
"I don't think it did," Manning replied. "They're not connected. I don't think they're connected. I see the endless stream of violence and death and destruction as being the primary motivator."
Lida Maxwell, though, insists that Manning's "struggles with state secrecy were connected with her struggles with the mandated secrecy surrounding her sexual and gender identity." Maxwell suggests that "we read Manning's truth-telling precisely as a response to the techniques of secrecy—the public shaming, ostracism, ridicule, and discipline—that constructed her as an improper soldier and public person, unworthy of notice." Seen this way, Manning's leaks were "a rehearsal and performance of herself as a gender nonconforming person and as a person resistant to the Army's articulation of the national interest…." By thus undermining the whistleblower paradigm favored by Manning's supporters, Maxwell gives us a book in which the word "conscience" does not appear in the main text.
It's important to note, however, that the author frequently and at length strays from her nominal subject to discuss other historical figures, from the Greek mythological prophet Cassandra to Virginia Woolf, Bayard Rustin, and Audre Lorde. Manning is offstage more than on. It must also be mentioned that much of the material about her is not new, but was lifted from Maxwell's academic paper "Truth in Public: Chelsea Manning, Gender Identity, and the Politics of Truth-Telling" (2015). For readers pinching pennies who are interested only in Manning, that article is available free online and provides the gist of Maxwell's analysis.
Finally, a few fact checks. "Manning initiated an online chat with Adrian Lamo in May 2010," Maxwell writes about the hacker who would soon turn Manning in to the authorities. "The impetus for the chat was Manning's increasing emotional desperation following her physical assault on her commanding officer and her subsequent demotion in rank." Actually, Manning assaulted not her commanding officer but her immediate supervisor, a specialist SPC (E4)—the same enlisted rank as Manning, who was demoted to PFC 17 days later.
This minor mistake scarcely bears notice, but other lapses are more distracting. "On February 10, 2010," Maxwell relates, "Chelsea Manning leaked the footage of the July 2007 Apache incident to Wikileaks. About three months later, on April 5, 2010, Julian Assange held a press conference and released the decoded version to the public on the WikiLeaks website."
This is Chelsea Manning's signature leak, dwarfing in exposure the other nearly three-quarters of a million files she divulged. During her pretrial providence hearing on 28 Feb 2013, Manning testified under oath that she uploaded that video to WikiLeaks on "about 21 February 2010." For Lida Maxwell Ph.D. to get this date wrong shows surprising inattention to detail from an academician. And by whose calendar does April 5 fall about three months after February 10?
On balance, this may be a fine book. I honestly can't say because the author's feminist/queer theorizing is above my intellectual and educational level and her discussions of everyone except Chelsea Manning hold no interest for me. But I can say that as a purchaser I feel misled. With her name in the subtitle and her image tiled 28 times on its cover, I expected this book to be mostly about Manning, not 20% about her and 80% about other truth-telling outsiders. For that reason, I'm giving it four stars, not five.
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