WASHINGTON – Chelsea Manning, the transgender service member who served seven years in military prison for leaking classified data, said in her first interview since being released that she felt she had a “responsibility to the public” and didn’t think her actions would jeopardize national security.

In excerpts of an interview aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday, Manning said that she was prompted to give a trove of military and State Department documents to WikiLeaks to spark public debate over the “just death, destruction, mayhem” that she has witnessed as an intelligence officer in Iraq.

“We’re filtering it all through facts, statistics, reports, dates, times, locations, and eventually, you just stop,” she said. “I stopped seeing just statistics and information, and I started seeing people.”

Manning, formerly Private First Class Bradley Manning, said she had not relayed her concerns up the chain of command instead because the “the channels are there, but they don’t work.” She said that she takes full responsibility for her actions.

“Anything I’ve done, it’s me. There’s no one else,” she said. “No one told me to do this. Nobody directed me to do this. This is me. It’s on me.”

She said that she maintains “nothing but utmost respect for the military.”

“The military is diverse, and large, and it’s public, it serves a public function, it serves a public duty,” Manning said. “And the people who are in the military work very hard, often for not much money, to make their country better and to protect their country. I have nothing but respect for that. And that’s why I signed up.”

Manning was released from the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on May 17 after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence. Former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence shortly before leaving office in January, stating at the time that he thought “justice has been served.”

Manning said that she has not spoken to Obama since leaving prison, but if she could she would tell him how grateful she is.

“I’ve been given a chance,” she said. “That’s all I asked for was a chance. That’s it, and now this is my chance.”

Manning, now 29, was a 22-year-old junior intelligence officer at a forward operating base in Iraq when she was arrested in May 2010, for illegally copying U.S. military field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, battlefield videos and diplomatic cables. She later admitted to uploading more than 700,000 documents and other materials to WikiLeaks in what was the biggest breach of classified data in the history of the U.S. Much of the material was published in batches by WikiLeaks and traditional news organizations.

Manning was convicted by court martial in 2013, including on Espionage Act violations. She was later acquitted of the most serious charge against her, aiding the enemy.

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

Manning told ABC News that hormone therapy is “literally what keeps me alive.”

“[It] keeps me from feeling like I’m in the wrong body,” she said. “I used to get these horrible feelings like I just wanted to rip my body apart and I don’t want to have to go through that experience again. It’s really, really awful.”