Report: Chelsea Manning Hospitalized After Attempted Suicide at Fort Leavenworth Prison
TMZ is reporting that Army private and WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning was hospitalized yesterday after prison officials at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, discovered Manning attempting to kill herself. An unnamed prison official told TMZ that Manning is being “monitored.” An unnamed source also told the site that Manning “tried to hang herself.”
A Fort Leavenworth spokesperson declined to comment on TMZ’s report, telling Gawker in an email: “Medical treatment of inmates at the United States Disciplinary Barracks is protected under the Health Information Protection Privacy Act (HIPPA). [sic] No information regarding their individual treatment can be released without their consent.” However, a CNN reporter named Shimon Prokupecz published a tweet prior to TMZ’s report that appeared to corroborate most of the site’s account:
Chelsea Manning suspected of attempting suicide. Was taken to a hospital Tuesday from Fort Leavenworth, CNN.
— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) July 6, 2016
Manning, who is currently serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, was arrested in 2010 after a former hacker named Adrian Lamo turned her in to U.S. officials after Manning admitted in a private online chat that she had leaked hundreds of thousands of files, including sensitive State Department cables as well as cockpit footage from a July 2007 airstrike in occupied Baghdad, to WikiLeaks. Manning was later convicted of 21 charges, including several for espionage.
While in prison, Manning, who was born as Bradley Edward Manning in 1987, announced that she had begun to identify as a woman. She began hormone replacement therapy in early 2015, after suing the U.S. Army for the right to do so.
Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, did not immediately return a request for comment.