Yet from the moment United States military prosecutors charged Ms. Manning with violating the Espionage Act in 2010, progressives have hailed her as a folk hero. She became an even more sympathetic figure when, shortly after her sentencing three years later, she announced she was transgender and wished to be known as Chelsea. The day of her discharge from prison this May following a commutation of her sentence by President Barack Obama, Laura Poitras, the activist filmmaker who assisted Edward Snowden in his leak of highly classified information, announced she would produce a film about Ms. Manning titled “XY Chelsea.” Amnesty International — an organization ostensibly committed to freeing political prisoners, not those who assist their jailers — gushed that “people power can triumph over injustice.”

More troubling than this fawning from avowed enemies of the American “security state” is Ms. Manning’s embrace by large swaths of the L.G.B.T. community. At the New York City Pride March in June, thousands cheered as Ms. Manning sat atop the American Civil Liberties Union float. While in prison, she had repeatedly been named honorary grand marshal of San Francisco’s gay pride celebration. She has also been the subject of constant, adulatory coverage in gay media.