it's only week two of 2023 but it has been a pretty wet start. in actual fact across parts of wales and north—west we have already seen way above the monthly average rainfall totals and we are only halfway through that month. there is more to come as we head towards the weekend but things will get a little bit quieter through the night to night. the low pressure that brought the rain, that drifts off to the north sea, we see this ridge of high pressure building tomorrow before yet more wet and windy weather heading our direction friday night into saturday. into friday we will see that northerly wind driving in showers along the north—eastern coast, a weak weather front bringing showery rain out of northern ireland into south—west scotland but elsewhere it is fine and dry, little bit cooler but hopefully the sunshine will compensate, six to ii

sunshine will compensate, six to 11 degrees the high but as we go into friday night, here is that wet weather and in areas where we are already seeing those flood warnings out, so across parts of south—west england, wales, across the majority of england as that system drifts steadily east and behind it we will see a cost of shop showers continuing through the day. a wet start to saturday however you look at it and the rain eases away, plenty of showers, some wintry through the tops of higher ground in scotland, a breezy afternoon but milder in the south—east, i2 scotland, a breezy afternoon but milder in the south—east, 12 degrees but noticeably cooler into the far north of scotland. that is worth bearing in mind because once we have saturday out of the way, north—westerly wind takes over, look at this, blue tones and yes, those white blobs, any showers could turn wintry so be careful what you wish for because next week will turn colder, some night—time frosts around and yes, any precipitation

could start to turn to rain, sleet or snow. a lot of uncertainty for the details of that at the moment but certainly things will get much colder. and that's bbc news at ten on thursday the 12th of january. there's more analysis of the day's main stories on newsnight, which isjust getting under way on bbc two. ki rsty kirsty wark in sri special programme examining the crisis there. the news continues here on bbc one, as now it's time to join our colleagues across the nations and regions for the news where you are, but from the ten team it's goodnight. this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main news stories free of the top of the hours straight after this programme. welcome to hardtalk,

i'm stephen sackur. signing up for military service is a big deal. soldiers put their lives on the line for their country — no questions asked. but what if the soldier has questions, doubts, doesn't believe in the mission? should personal morality ever trump the military code? well, my guest today thought so. former us army intelligence analyst chelsea manning was responsible for one of the biggest leaks of classified information in history and spent seven years in prison as a result. is transparency a justification for spilling state secrets?

chelsea manning, welcome to hardtalk. good evening, thanks for having me. it's a great pleasure to have you. if i may, i want to begin with the decision that really changed, transformed your life. that is the decision to sign up to the us military. right. why did you do it? so in 2007, my father and i had a falling out and i was living in maryland and i had just been houseless for about a year. and i decided that, you know, working in various jobs and trying to go to school wasn't enough for me. and also, as a trans person, i was trying to figure out who i was so i had a lot of identity issues, all sort of happening at the same time, and wanting to rebuild my relationship with my father, who was in the navy and also this war being discussed continuously and ongoing.

it was a dinner—table conversation, the iraq war at the time, as well as afghanistan to a lesser extent being an ongoing thing, i decided, you know, based on my father sort of suggesting that i enlisted in the navy, i decided i wanted to be a little different and try to enlist the marine corps, but the recruiters weren't there on that day, so i ended up enlisting in the us army. even within that story, there are all sorts of red flags to me that suggest that you are actually perhaps one of the most unsuitable people i could possibly think of to actually go and serve in the us army in iraq. i mean, you talk about the wrestle with your identity, which we'll talk more about later, but also you clearly, you'd been homeless for a while, you were very lost mentally, your mental health was fragile, you had a poor relationship with your parents. on all of those bases, as well as being quite a rebellious person, the idea of going into uniform, accepting the authority of the us army seems like the last thing

you needed at that particular time. well, i mean, other people would make the suggestion that that's exactly what you need at that time. so then that was what my father was suggesting, and that's what the military itself was even suggesting. but were you just really trying to escape from the reality of your life as it was then? sure, i think that's why a lot of people at that age enlist in the military. in your memoir, it's a very candid memoir and you describe how you really struggled with basic training, with lots of different aspects of being in the military. right. and in fact, the military nearly threw you out long before you got to iraq, but you just about scraped through, and they recognised in you some skills, particularly some computing skills, data analysis skills. right. which they desperately needed at that particular time. do you think that they, in a sense, swallowed their major suspicions and reservations about you just because of the skills you brought to the table? sure, the us military at that timeframe, you know, was very short—staffed. it was you know, they were obviously

trying one of the one of the things that to try to encourage people to enlist in the military at the time was they were offering these gigantic bonuses. i mean, i think i was offered $20,000 and some of my other peers were offered $40,000 at the time in order to enlist. there were people who were leaving the military and being called back up and as a stop loss, to continue to have people in the office. many people in my position as well, you know, we're basically having issues looked at, you know, ignored or given a second chance or, you know, put into a slightly different role to sort of shake things up. right, because you were obviously destined to go to iraq to do data analysis, to work in intel in one form or another. right. you were warned, weren't you, about the dangers of leaking, of exposing information to the outside? you were also warned, i believe, about wikileaks, in particular? so, yeah, it was brought up in my... it was brought up by a contractor,

a civilian contractor who was training us. they mentioned it and it was just sort of the thing in passing. i do recall that happening. i didn't really dig into it at that point. it was like 2008, so... right, you didn't dig into it, and yet within weeks of arriving in iraq, you'd reached out to wikileaks and you'd clearly made a decision to cross the most fundamental line of all to actually reveal this confidential secret information. i don't think that comports with the timeline, necessarily. i think that i, i spent, you know, quite a bit of time in myjob and in my role. and obviously i was in various... well, i think by the end of november, you'd only arrived there a month or so earlier. by the end of november, you made the initial contact with wikileaks. that doesn't comport with my understanding of the events now. well, it's the timeline that was put into the court and that appears to be established by the computer records. that's not the timeline that i'm familiar with. so i recall the upload

coming up injanuary. but the first time that i ever, you know, uploaded anything or released anything was injanuary. right, well, yes, that's when you actually released things. i'm talking about the initial contact, but i don't know, quibble about a few weeks because it doesn't really actually matter that much. the point, the timeline. i think it matters because like i had some time to settle into my role, i had time to to to really learn things and experience things. so what was it that motivated you to cross that most fundamental line — in essence, to steal secrets and send them, notjust to anybody but to wikileaks, where you knew they would be exposed to the whole world? well, i mean, i tried to reach out to the new york times and the washington post as well, so this was a... one of the things that i envisioned was a sort of a physical handoff to, like, ajournalistand, like, a kind of a woodward and bernstein style handoff in parking garage or something along those lines, so that's why i came,

that's why i went to the us during my leave and tried to contact more conventionaljournalists. right, in the end, you use the computer in a book shop, i believe, to dispatch this information and we should say vast, vast amounts of information. well, the so called iraq war logs and the afghan war diaries amounted to hundreds of thousands of separate pieces of information. right, but i mean, like i worked with tens of millions of records every single day. so this is still even a fraction of the kinds of information that we were collecting and using. i don't doubt that, but what i'm getting to is the point that as these were hundreds of thousands of files, there is no way in the world that you had sifted them, filtered them, you just dumped them. no, i wouldn't characterise it as that. i the way that i view this is these are categorical types of information. so you have information... and this is this is obviously types of information that i'm very familiar with, that i have worked... ..that i was essentially one

of the most familiar with because we were the ones that really had to categorize this information, put it into subcategories, you know, direct where it flows, train an artificial intelligence algorithm to be able to make predictive analysis based on. so i think that my... i was very familiar and i certainly knew tens of thousands of types of information. yeah, you knew what types of information, and this was information going back five years to the engagements in afghanistan and iraq of the us military. you knew the categories. i think six years. you knew the types, the categories, but what i'm getting to is you didn't go through these files to look at the individual stories they told. you couldn't possibly, yhere were far too many. we know you didn't. and that gets to the heart of the ethics of this case. you just put this information out there, gave it to wikileaks, not having examined it yourself and not knowing that actually it did include some information which named individuals,

which compromised individuals. well, that was, you know, the us government wasn't able to show, they didn't show that in court. so they made this allegation in 2010 but it appears that in 2011, whenever the information review task force reviewed this information, that it was a different type of information that i had access to that they included, because they assumed that everything that i had access to was potentially leaked, but, you know... and i did have access to source identifying information, and i did have access to human intelligence reports, but those were not included in the records. right, but once it was out there — and wikileaks in the end dumped this information into the public domain — because, of course, you had no control over what wikileaks, julian assange and the rest of them were going to do with it. right. they chose, in the end, to dump this information. well, if they hadn't, then i would have done the same thing. would you? i would have posted it. i could have posted it to bittorrent or... and you say that now, knowing what we know? the media, for example, went through this information — this is back injuly of 2010

when you did the first big dump was put into the public domain. the times newspaper found the names of dozens of afghans credited with providing detailed intelligence to us forces. the taliban then went on the record saying, "we are analysing all of this data and we will take retribution against those individuals that we find in this reporting from wikileaks." right. amnesty international and the open society institute then said, "we have seen the negative, sometimes deadly ramifications for those afghans who have been identified." that was all your work. right, and, again, we went through a court martial process and those allegations didn't show up. you know, they made the allegation that, you know, obviously the taliban said that they were going to retribute against people, and then the government couldn't identify anybody who was held accountable or... so, as far as you and your conscience are concerned, the fact that you don't know of specific individuals who were killed... we weren't given a list of individuals who were placed at risk. this just didn't happen.

well, they clearly were placed at risk. whether or not retribution was eventually delivered to those people is another matter. but there wasn't. .. there's no list of names to, for us to to go through. we asked for it during our court martial. but the media found these names. i mean, it was quite plain... well, they didn't. it wasn't presented before the court. but even if it wasn't presented before the court — and i'm not answerable for what the prosecution did or didn't do — is it on your conscience that these names, you didn't sift the information? it turns out you did put names into the public domain. and i wonder now, having had many years to reflect on it, whether you regret that? well, no, i... i chose certain categories of information under the understanding of what is and shouldn't, should be in this kind of categories. categories. categories, yes. in a sense, you put an awful lot of trust into wikileaks and julian assange. do you regret that? i would... if they were not available, i would have uploaded this information separately. i would have.

i was in a position where if i didn't have a publisher of last resort — because i was struggling with the new york times, i was struggling with the washington post... the washington post was the one that i really wanted to get to and the one that i had the most, sort of, interaction with — then i was going to use some other tool like bittorrent or something like that, to post this information, which would have been... that would have been my even more of a last resort. that would have been my more desperate. right, you did the war logs and the war diaries dump. mm—hm. and then you then released all of these diplomatic cables... right. ..which had different kinds of information, secret confidential information involving the us government's contacts with individuals on the ground... yes. ..in a whole host of countries. just to take one small example, but not small to the individual involved, an ethiopianjournalist, reporter argaw ashine, was forced to flee the country because he was named in a us cable and he believed it put his life in immediate danger.

he had to flee, leave his homeland and, again, wouldn't have happened had you not taken your decision to leak. again, you know, you're talking about situations that i'm not familiar with, that weren't brought before a court martial. but that's the point. you weren't familiar with them because there's no way you could have gone through the information. you just, to use the word again, dumped it, and after all these years, i just... i'm fascinated to know whether there's a part of you that thinks you got it wrong. i mean, i don't think i got it wrong. i think that this information needed to be made public. i think that any method that was made available, i would have taken. there was nothing that was going to stop me. there was no... like, if i didn't have anyone to go to and i was running out of places, i would have done this completely on my own. in essence, are you saying you don't believe in the legitimacy of intelligence gathering, of secret government activity in the name of national security? because michael rubin, a former pentagon official, after all of this, particularly the diplomatic cables

which upset him so much, he said, "manning not only burned the sources of hundreds of diplomats around the world, she effectively dissuaded foreigners from ever trusting a future american official." well, on the other hand, you have robert gates who basically says that this is nothing. this is nothing burnt. this has no impact on the diplomatic relationship of the united states. this is the secretary of defense. it's not quite what he said. he said, "in the end, we will get over this." that outsiders, foreigners look at the us, they realize these things happen, but they're not going to stop talking to us, but, fundamentally, i'mjust asking you whether you believe or whether you care that you might have compromised important aspects of us national security and intelligence gathering, not least because... no. ..for example, one cable... well, for intelligence gathering, i don't think so. because the us intelligence apparatus is a large apparatus, it's one in which, you know, there are many sources and methods that haven't been made public, that aren't, that weren't even

available to me. just a final one on the cables, there was one list of the most important national security sites around the world listed by us diplomats. and you, of course — you didn't necessarily know you were doing it — but you inadvertently released that to the world, too. pj crowley, the state department spokesman at the time, said you were effectively giving a targeting list to al-qaeda. did that give you pause for thought? i mean, well, look, we live in the age of radical transparency already at this point. but what does that mean, radical transparency? what does that mean? it means to me... it doesn't mean you don't have a personal responsibility. and i'm asking you whether you feel it? i went through a court martial process. martial process where evidence was presented before the court. we were given evidence, we were given discovery, we went through this process. i've taken responsibility. i've taken full responsibility for all of my actions. i've gone through this process. you did, at the time of the court martial — let's get to that — you did say that you recognise the damage you had done. so to this day, do you recognise damage done?

look, i... myjob was essentially to make decisions in which i damaged people every single day. so, you know, among all of the decisions that i've ever made in my entire life, yes, i have caused some harm. i've killed civilians. i've been involved in the death of civilians because i've made mistakes. and this was just me doing myjob. i was never held accountable. well, the leaking clearly wasn't you doing yourjob because the military then decided... i'm talking about the job that i was doing, which i know in iraq, that was in intelligence. i did this every day. i understand that that was the job. there are dozens of people not alive today because of the job that i did. and do i regret that? i mean, ifeel that down in my bones, yes. let's let's talk about the way you were treated once you were apprehended, because to be honest, you didn't really cover your tracks very well. i'm not even sure you intended to. exactly, you kind of... no, i had a concern that my colleagues might get caught up in this and their careers

might be affected. so your tracks were not well covered. you spent three years pretty much in prison before you actually got convicted. it seems to me, and again, the memoir is very frank, they tried to break you. how close did they come to breaking you, particularly with the amount of time you spent in solitary confinement? break me how? mentally, to the point where you frankly were no longer capable of mounting any sort of defense of yourself. well, i was surprised. i was shocked. i didn't expect this experience or this treatment. i certainly felt because i certainly thought that the risk to me was that i could lose myjob, that i could be discharged, that i could lose my security clearance, which at that age and in fact... you were kept in a steel cage for a while in kuwait. and when you got to

the united states again, you spent many months in solitary confinement. in fact, you talked about breaking free and very, almost no. i mean, i've had no contact with my lawyers. i had no contact with the outside world. i didn't even know who won the world cup. a couple of points before your eventual release in 2017, you were so desperate you tried to take your own life. yes. that sounds like you were broken. imean... well, i don't know, because that time period isjust, it's blended together so much. i don't remember a whole lot about my time period in kuwait because ijust remember being in this hot steel enclosure with 2—3 navy personnel watching me at all times, telling me different bits of information if they did talk to me at all, feeding me and it being very hot and i have no... i don't know. i don't know that i'm facing charges. i have a lawyer

or that i'm facing any... that there's any end to this. and so it all started to blend together because i don't even know what time it is, because it's the same... it's the same lights every all day. like, i can't see the sun. i have no idea what's going on. well, i'll tell you what's so striking about this is you say you didn't know when, how the end would come, but you had the strength. despite all of this and despite, obviously, the mental trauma you were going through to fight not just the case, which we've gone into in some detail, but you also made a stand for your own identity. you demanded that the military this is after conviction, but you were facing a long prison sentence. you demanded that the military system and the government recognise you as transgender, give you hormone treatment. yes. and if they would not, you said i'm going on hunger strike. yes. to death. yes. and in fact, they bent, and you became the first ever prisoner in military custody to get hormone therapy. us military custody. yeah. is that more important to you in a way than this sort of advocacy for transparency that

you're involved in? imean, it's... i mean, they're different, obviously. i think it's more important for me personally that i be who i am and that i have some because after my court martial and after i faced responsibility or after i faced accountability and took responsibility for everything, and i had a sentence and i was given you know, numbers is sort of the phrase. let's face it, you were given 35 years. yeah, but it's numbers. it's a number that you can count down from. it's not life without parole, you know. so now it was a matter of improving the quality of life and ensuring that i can make it through and survive this. and i don't think it would be realistic of me for me to have survived and the 32 years not having access to the care that i needed at the time. the troubled mind you had as a young person seems to me you still have in a way, because, again, very candidly,

you told the guardian newspaper recently that you felt in some weird ways that the army and prison as well were places where you felt you fitted, in a way that you don't even feel you fit now that you're free and living that varied life in the united states of america, you know. it feels very unstable in the us is what i'm trying to get at. you know, the lack of knowing that you're going to have housing, knowing that you're going to have health care, knowing that you're going to have food, knowing that you're going to have knowing what tomorrow brings. i don't know what's what tomorrow. you feel a deep sense of insecurity? i do. you, chelsea manning feel that insecurity every day, even now. well, i mean, i'm feeling it less because i'm obviously establishing myself and having more of a more of an assertive role in my life. and now i'm sort of learning how credit systems work and how how to pay rent and do pay bills and things like that. so, like, ifeela bit more secure, but there's always...

there's always a sense of like i had more of this sense of belonging and security when i was with the inmate population in prison than than i do outside in this very alienating world where we're just constantly communicating with each other over phones or, like, interacting with it where everything feels like it's... everything feels like it's... every interaction feels like it's commodified and somehow like it's a product. and let's say and just with a thought about america, right? you signed up to serve america. as i said at the very beginning, you now live a civilian life in america. and you say that you wanted to show the world the conscience of individuals can make urgent change through bravery and determination. do you believe you've played a little part in changing america? you know, i think that america is changing and it's changing rapidly. whether or not i have been a part of that or not, i'm not sure about. i want to believe that people

as individuals can do that. and i encourage people to, not it doesn't have to necessarily be something as big or as ambitious as, you know, like the events of 2010 or anything like that. but i do believe that people in their own way, because like every every moment of your life is a decision like whether or not and when you're not doing something and whenever you are deciding not to participate in something, you are actively making a decision. not doing something is a decision. it is a political action. and i believe that we have some responsibility in order to act in these kinds of situations. and sometimes it's messy. chelsea manning, we have to end there, but thank you so much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you so much. thank you.

hello there. with a bit of luck, friday will be a slightly quieter story in comparison to the week we've seen so far. thursday's low pressure pulls away. this weather front here may well enhance some showery outbreaks of rain into northern ireland, southern scotland and north—west england for a time, and a northerly wind willjust drive in some showers on exposed north—facing coasts. but elsewhere, there will be some drier, brighter interludes, some sunshine coming through. the winds still blustery, but not as strong as thursday. and in terms of the feel of the weather, well, we're looking at highs generally between 6—11 celsius. there's more wet weather to come, however, through the latter stages of friday, into the early hours of saturday morning. and it's pushing in from south—west england, across wales and into northern england as we go

to the start of saturday. that rain will ease away to sunny spells and scattered showers for the start of the weekend.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines. classified materials . next to your corvette — what were you thinking? joe biden faces tough questions — and a special counsel investigation — after a second set of classified documents is found at his home. the nhs in england breaks new records for ambulance delays and waits in accident and emergency. building up to a white house meeting betweenjoe biden and fumio kishida, america praises japan's decision to increase its defence budget and military capabilities. and as more storms are forecast to hit california, we look at the human cost of the flooding.