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Monday, June 25, 2018
On Friday, former contractor for the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) Reality Leigh Winner plead guilty to espionage in an Augusta, Georgia courtroom for leaking classified documents regarding alleged Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential election cycle to a online media outlet. 25-year-old Winner was arrested and charged under the 1971 Espionage Act whenWhen exactly in the timeframe? she allegedly removed classified documents from a secure facility and sought the publication through The Intercept, which carries up to a ten-year sentence.
Reporters from The Intercept request a statement from the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence prior to the article’s publication on June 5, 2017, prompting an investigation into the security breach. According to The Intercept, the source was anonymous but the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) quickly suspecting Winner, suggesting the reporters disclosed Winner as the source yet still remains unproven. As part of her duties, Winner obtained and maintained a Top Secret security clearance which requires her to understand the strict rules when handling such information. FBI Special Agent Justin C. Garrick claims in an affidavit, Winner printed, without authorization, the documents around May 9, 2017, removing them from an unknown secure facility in Georgia.
During an interrogation with Winner, Special Agent Garrick acknowledges Winner confessed to obtaining and distributing sensitive intelligence. A statement by Winner claimed, “I wasn’t trying to be a Snowden or anything”, referring to the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden releasing information about NSA data collection and analysis programs like PRISM and ECHELON. However, the FBI has Facebook messages originating from Winner’s account to her sister’s account with sympathetic statements towards Snowden and Julian Assange. No communication has ever been discovered directly connecting Snowden or Assange to Winner. However, Assange did announce a US$10,000 bounty for the reporter responsible for allegedly ousting Winner to the FBI. All of the documents Winner eventually made it to Assange’s WikiLeaks site, with the origin unknown due to the operation of the site.
According to a follow-up report by The Intercept earlier this month, the FBI has made unsubstantiated claims Winner also had a thumb-drive with more compromising information and claims Winner is being punished inconsistent of other notable leakers. Since her arrest, leakers of sensitive intelligence information have been arrested and released on bail, whilst Winner remained incarcerated.
Winner enlisted in the U.S. Air Force for six years before being honourably discharged, then joined the intelligence contractor Pluribus International Corp. During her enlistment, she acted as a linguist competent in Pashto, Farsi, and Dari, highly coveted skills by the intelligence community. After separating with the Air Force, she became a bodybuilder and instructor at a yoga studio in Augusta, alongside her work as a contractor. She was held on US$1 million for the last year, at the Lincoln County Jail in Augusta, GA[[|Avoid ambiguous acronyms]].