"All of these actions I did willfully, meaning I did them of my own free will," Winner told the court. Part of her plea agreement included that she admit, in her own words, what she had done. While still awaiting sentencing, her plea will place her behind bars for the next five years and three months, after which she'll be on supervised release for another three years.
After a year in prison awaiting trial, Winner has apparently developed an eating disorder and depression, noted Shadowproof co-founder Kevin Gosztola, who sat in court as Winner, a former linguist for the US Air Force, pleaded guilty. Winner was also attacked by another inmate in jail and injured her knee when she was being transported to a court hearing after she fell face-first on the ground because her feet were shackled and her hands were cuffed.
In a letter to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she said she couldn't describe "how it felt to have a government prosecutor say to the world that I was… I don't even know, a jihad sympathizer? I can't even spell that right, ha."
— Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) June 26, 2018
Winner provided the national security-focused media outlet The Intercept with a top secret NSA document she printed from a work computer. The outlet, famous for its continuing publications of documents provided to editor Glenn Greenwald in May 2013 by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, has been widely derided for ‘burning' their source.
That is because when an NSA employee prints a document, microscopic markings indicate which specific employee printed it, something "every journalist who purports to be a specialist in national security ought to know," CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou noted in June 2017 in an article for Reader Supported News.
— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) May 5, 2018
Two Intercept journalists, Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito, contacted a person in the NSA on May 30 to verify the documents by sending them in full. When they did, the NSA employee alerted the FBI, having used the microscopic printer marks to pin the blame on Winner. She was paid a visit by the FBI and arrested on June 3. On June 5, within hours of the publication of The Intercept's report, the US justice Department announced charges against Winner under the Espionage Act. Neither Cole nor Esposito have issued any tweets about Winner.
After Winner pleaded guilty Tuesday, WikiLeaks publicly called for the firing of "those staffers involved in outing her."
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 26, 2018
The document Winner provided to The Intercept detailed the NSA's assessment of alleged Russian hacking efforts into US voting infrastructure days before the 2016 election. Winner leaked it amid a national hysteria over "Russian meddling" said to have swayed the vote over to the Republican candidate — no doubt a leak Winner considered to be in the public's interest.
The document did not indicate that the alleged hacking touched any votes. But, according to The Intercept, it "raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results."
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 26, 2018
Cole and Esposito have previously played roles in the burning of sources. One day after a 2007 report aired by Esposito and ABC journalist Brian Ross, in which CIA officer Kiriakou was the first to confirm the use of waterboarding on terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, a Justice Department official confirmed to the pair that a federal investigation into Kiriakou's comment was launched, which the pair reported.
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) June 9, 2017
Kiriakou's relationship to Cole was "far more sordid," the former said. Cole had been badgering him for information about CIA officers involved in the torture program, or extraordinary rendition, under the guise of writing a book on the subject. After a third attempt, Kiriakou let slip one's name.
But Cole wasn't really pursuing a book on CIA torture, he was working as an investigator for defense attorneys working for Guantanamo terror suspects, to whom he sent the name Kiriakou provided. After the lawyers tried to petition the judge to interview the named CIA officer, who Kiriakou had mistakenly believed to be retired, the judge alerted the FBI. Eventually, Cole either told the FBI of his source — Kiriakou — or complied with their subpoena, the whistleblower wrote in Reader Supported News.
— #FreeAssange! (tweets by campaign)⌛ (@JulianAssange) June 6, 2017
While in jail awaiting trial, Winner gained the backing of some unlikely friends — and also some unlikely adversaries.
WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange immediately went to bat for her. Assange, it should be noted, has borne much of the brunt of the "Russian meddling" narrative since the 2016 election after having published emails belonging to high-level workers at the Democratic National Committee. When The Intercept's story ran — and the Justice Department announcement of charges against Winner — on June 5, WikiLeaks put out a $10,000 bounty for information leading to the "exposure and termination" of the reporter who failed to protect her as a source. He also tweeted, "Alleged NSA whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner must be supported. She is a young women accused of courage in trying to help us know (sic)," and "Reality Leight Winner is no Clapper or Petraeus with ‘elite immunity'. She's a young woman against the wall for talking to the press."
Meanwhile, US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, staunch proponent of the "Russian interference" line and stalwart supporter of special counsel Robert Mueller's collusion probe, told USA Today the following day that while he didn't believe the Russians had "got into changing actual voting outcomes," the extent of the attacks were "much broader than has been reported so far."
He added that he was pushing the intelligence community to declassify more information about the alleged intrusion. Nonetheless, he called for the prosecution of Winner under "the full extent of the law."
