The saga of the perfectly named federal criminal has reached its conclusion. Reality Leigh Winner, the 26-year old former Air Force linguist and NSA contractor who provided classified documents to online outlet The Intercept, received a 63-month sentence in a Georgia court on Thursday. Winner, was arrested last June and charged with transmitting defense information in violation of section 793 of chapter 18 of the United States Code. The charges carried a potential maximum sentence of 10 years plus an unspecified fine.
Reality Winner Counted on “Being Pretty, White and Cute”
Winner pleaded guilty on June 26 to the one-count indictment. But she had initially arrogantly bragged that she’d plead not guilty and play up her looks in her defense. “I’m going to play that card being pretty, white and cute, braid my hair and cry and all,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said Winner told her sister during a jailhouse phone call.
Here’s a helpful hint: if you are ever stupid enough to pass classified information to someone who isn’t entitled to it, don’t discuss your harebrained defense strategy on the public telephone in the detention facility. Just as the government is watching you when you log onto government computers (especially on the SIPRNet and JWICS classified systems) so, too, are they listening on those phone calls. Unless you’re talking to your lawyer, anything you say, as we all know from television, can and will be used against you.
Revealing information to the Russians
Winner was a contractor working for the National Security Agency at, according to her indictment, a “facility in Georgia.” One presumes, since she lived in Augusta, this facility was Fort Gordon, home to the Army’s Signal Corps. The Signal Corps handles all Army communications systems, including computer networks.
She started her job there on Feb. 13. The government says she “schemed to take and disclose classified information she had sworn to protect – and then did so almost as soon as she had the chance.” On May 9, she printed a report on Russian attempts to infiltrate U.S. elections systems, removed it from the secure facility where she worked, and took it home so she could send it to The Intercept.
If her intent was to expose Russian hacking attempts, she chose a strange place to send the information. While The Intercept has a reputation as a left-wing publication, its chief, Glenn Greenwald, is one of the only voices on the left who agrees with President Donald Trump’s description of the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt.” His site has been an outspoken supporter of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange, widely believed to be a Russian puppet, and also published the documents stolen by another NSA contractor, Edward Snowden. Snowden, you will recall, is a fugitive from justice living under the protection of Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Reality Winner’s Sources and Methods revealed
What made the documents Winner stole so damaging – and worth more than five years in prison – is that they did not just reveal what the U.S. intelligence community knows about those hacking attempts, they reveal how we know that. The “sources and methods” part of any intelligence report is the most closely guarded. Normally, that information is not even shared with our allies who are otherwise eligible to receive the intelligence itself.
Revealing sources and methods tells our adversaries a lot. In the case of human intelligence, it tells them where to look, if not exactly who to look for, in their mole hunt, possibly even resulting in the death of an American agent. In the case of technical methods, it tells them how we penetrated their systems, telling them how to erect countermeasures to prevent further intrusions. In either case, it burns a previously valuable source of information.
Is The Intercept in Cahoots With the Russians?
One wonders if the editors at The Intercept knew that by asking the NSA about the authenticity of the document, they’d “accidentally” reveal their source. It kills two birds with one stone: the Russians get the counterintelligence information they need to plug their own leaks, while ensuring that an anti-Russian cleared contractor goes to jail and cannot publicly reveal any more of their activities.
I know that sounds a bit far-fetched. But it’s no more far-fetched than the idea that Donald Trump has been working as an agent of Russia since before he decided to run for president – and there are plenty of people who seem to believe that readily.
For its part, The Intercept continues to cling to the absurd fantasy that Winner is somehow a whistleblower. It has published an article by the “co-founder of the Stand With Reality campaign” which argues against the idea “that the executive branch has the sole authority to decide when information should be secret.” Regular Daily Intel readers will recall we covered that just a few days ago. (Psst! It does!)
The author claims the stolen document doesn’t say what the government says it does. Unfortunately, I can’t dispel his claims. As cleared professionals know, just because a document makes its way into the public doesn’t mean it isn’t still classified. If I read it on my computer, I am in violation of a number of statutes and regulations, and have allowed classified information to spill onto my unclassified laptop. So you’ll pardon me if I take the government’s word here.
What was she thinking?
Winner held a Top Secret clearance, with access to special compartmented information. The document she stole was marked TS/SCI. She had to know that what she saw was only part of the bigger picture. I cannot think of a public interest served by releasing the information she did. I assume she thought that the Trump administration wasn’t adequately responding to the threats to the electoral system.
But she likely had no way of knowing what American response had been, what it might be in the future, or how we might be working to harden our cyber infrastructure while monitoring for future intrusion attempts. That information surely exists in a separate compartment. But to someone like Winner, Russia is bad and Trump is bad and that’s enough.
Lucky for everyone involved, Winner will have 63 months to contemplate the implications of handing the Russians what they needed.
