25-Year-Old Contractor with Top Secret Clearance Charged With Deliberately Leaking Classified National Security Information to Media

Does this herald a Reckoning?

A criminal complaint was filed in the Southern District of Georgia today charging Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor from Augusta, Georgia, with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 793(e).

Winner was arrested by the FBI at her home on Saturday, June 3, and appeared in federal court in Augusta this afternoon.

"Exceptional law enforcement efforts allowed us quickly to identify and arrest the defendant," said Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein....

The "exceptional law enforcement" consisted mainly of noticing that someone with Top Secret clearance was named "Reality Winner."

Yeah.

According to the allegations contained in the criminal complaint:

Winner is a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation assigned to a U.S. government agency facility in Georgia. She has been employed at the facility since on or about February 13, and has held a Top Secret clearance during that time. On or about May 9, Winner printed and improperly removed classified intelligence reporting, which contained classified national defense information from an intelligence community agency, and unlawfully retained it. Approximately a few days later, Winner unlawfully transmitted by mail the intelligence reporting to an online news outlet.

Another Update: Oh my.

Update: This doesn't seem to herald a reckoning -- many are pointing out that the national-secrets leaker seems to have been caught only due to very sloppy spycraft:

The outlet leaked to is being named as the Intercept by some, though that's not in the charges, so I don't know if it's true or not.

So I wouldn't take this as evidence that there's a move against the Deep State leakers. Just seems to be bad spycraft by a would-be spy.

posted by Ace at 05:20 PM

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