Reality Winner, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a classified report confirming Russian interference in the 2016 election, defended her actions and explained the rationale behind them in an interview released on Sunday.
Winner, 30, was arrested in June 2017 as the first successful classified leak prosecution by the Trump administration, just after the Intercept published a story saying that “a top-secret National Security Agency report details a monthslong Russian hacking effort against the U.S. election infrastructure.” Winner had mailed the NSA document to the outlet in May 2017, and the outlet reached out to the NSA to confirm its authenticity. The FBI and NSA quickly figured out the information had been disclosed by Winner. She spoke to CBS’s 60 Minutes for a rare interview in December, and the network released a second part on Sunday’s program.
NSA LEAKER REALITY WINNER RELEASED FROM PRISON, ATTORNEY SAYS
“I am not a traitor. I am not a spy,” Winner told anchor Scott Pelley. “I am somebody who only acted out of love for what this country stands for.”
The ex-NSA contractor said she became concerned that “the truth wasn’t true anymore” in early 2017 as the nation was consumed with the news that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. Then-President Donald Trump had been raising doubts about whether Russia was responsible for the series of coordinated cyberattacks, regularly questioning in public if the effort was led instead by China or Iran.
Winner knew it was Russia, having seen proof in a classified report on an in-house newsfeed used by the agency.
“I just kept thinking, ‘My God, somebody needs to step forward and put this right — somebody,'” she said, telling the network that she wanted the country to know what she did about Russian interference.
Pressed by Pelley about knowing that the report was labeled ‘top secret’ and the implications of publicizing such a document, Winner replied: “I knew that. I knew it was secret. But I also knew that I had pledged service to the American people. And at that point in time, it felt like they were being led astray.”
“I’ve had four years of just trying to say I’m not a terrorist. I can’t even begin to talk about my actual espionage indictment or have a sense of accomplishment in having survived prison,” she said. “I’m still stained by [prosecutors] accusing me of being the same groups that I enlisted in the Air Force to fight against. So I don’t let myself feel anything regarding the actual act or the charge until I can let it be known that I’m not what they said I was.”
Winner was sentenced to five years and three months in prison in August 2018 after pleading guilty to one count of unlawfully retaining and transmitting national defense information. The former Air Force veteran was imprisoned at the Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth, Texas. She was released in June 2021.
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Related to Winner’s leak, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a July 2019 report that “Russian government-affiliated cyber actors conducted an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure in the run-up to the 2016” election but found “no evidence” that vote tallies were altered or that voter registry files were deleted or modified by the Russian actors.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation concluded the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”
