Chelsea Manning, who served seven years for one of the largest dumps of classified documents in US history, has thanked Barack Obama for clemency. Picture: AFP.

In excerpts of an interview aired on ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday, Ms Manning said she had not spoken to Mr Obama since he commuted her sentence five months ago, but that if she could, she would tell him how grateful she was. “I was given a chance, that’s all I wanted,” Ms Manning told ABC’s co-anchor Juju Chang, her voice choked with emotion.

Chelsea Manning talks about leaks and life after prison in her ABC interview. Picture: ABC.Source:Supplied

“That’s all I asked for was a chance, that’s it.” Ms Manning, 29, was released in May from a US military prison in Kansas where she had been serving time for passing secrets to the WikiLeaks website in the biggest breach of classified data in the history of the United States. She had been working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

This undated file photo courtesy of the US Army shows a photo of Bradley Manning in wig and make-up. Picture: US Army.Source:AFP

She was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offences for furnishing more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, an international organisation that publishes information from anonymous sources.

Ms Manning came out as transgender shortly after her sentencing, but the military denied her request for hormone therapy treatment while behind bars. She was placed in solitary confinement after attempting suicide twice.

After seven years behind bars, Chelsea Manning walked out of the security gates of the Fort Leavenworth military prison. Picture: AFP.Source:AFP

Ms Manning continued to fight for the treatment, and the authorities ultimately relented. In her ABC interview, she said the hormone therapy was essential. “It’s literally what keeps me alive. It keeps me from feeling like I’m in the wrong body,” Ms Manning said. “I used to get these horrible feelings like I just wanted to rip my body apart.”