#11: Chelsea Manning (December 17, 1987 – Present)
Chelsea Manning served as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Iraq before releasing hundreds of thousands of classified military reports and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks in 2010. The files included information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as U.S. diplomatic communications around the world. Federal prosecutors argued the disclosures endangered national security, while supporters believed the public deserved to know what the documents revealed. Manning received a 35-year prison sentence in 2013, though President Barack Obama commuted most of it before she was released in 2017.
