Chelsea Manning told a crowd at a “creative thinkers” conference in Nantucket that she’s not a traitor as her critics have claimed and she did what she thought was the right thing to do.
Manning is attending the annual conference for The Nantucket Project on Sunday in Massachusetts. The Nantucket Project is a venture founded to bring together creative thinkers to uncover the ideas that matter most. Organizers say about 600 people are attending.
This is only Manning’s second public appearance since being released from a military prison in May.
“I believe I did the best I could in my circumstances to make an ethical decision,” she told the crowd when they asked if she was a traitor.
The 29-year-old Manning is a transgender woman who was known as Bradley Manning when she was convicted in 2013 of leaking a trove of classified documents. She was released from a military