The online news outlet that unwittingly outed the Georgia woman who has since admitted to providing them with classified National Security Agency documents may not be the dumbest entity in this story.
Reality Winner, 25, whose top-secret clearance gave her access to the now-leaked NSA information, has been coaching family members via jailhouse phone calls, which are monitored, on how to manipulate investigators and the press, according to prosecutors. Her plan, they said, is to portray herself as some sort of scared, doe-eyed neophyte.
For emphasis: Jailhouse phone calls are monitored. This is 100 percent normal, and it should come as a surprise to exactly no one.
If it’s true she has been openly discussing the PR angle with family members over monitored phone calls, it suggests she is a lot dimmer than originally estimated.
WSB-TV in Atlanta reported:
[Prosecutors] said in recorded jailhouse calls, she told her mother how to play her side of the story in the media— as someone who was scared she’d disappear from an interrogation room in her Augusta home after Saturday’s raid.
[…]
Prosecutors said a phone call to her sister expressed Winner’s confidence in how to play the court during her bond hearing.
“I’m pretty, white and cute,” she allegedly told her sister. Prosecutors said Winner told her sister she would braid her hair and cry in court.
As you grow old, there are all sorts of things you can do to maintain the “pretty and cute” parts of your identity.
But you can’t fix stupid. Stupid is forever.
Winner also allegedly told her mother that she would, “go nuclear to the press if I don’t get what I want” during her bail hearing.
She was denied bond this week after entering a not-guilty plea. She will remain behind bars until trial. Winner has not yet gone “nuclear to the press.”
Winner was arrested this week after the online news group the Intercept published NSA materials she provided to them. In the course of authenticating the information she leaked, the Intercept may have accidentally given away her identity to the federal sources they contacted for confirmation.
As boneheaded as all that seems, it still isn’t as ridiculous as openly discussing a phony PR strategy with family over monitored jailhouse phone calls.
Prosecutors said they could not grant Winner bond because it would free her up to being recruited by terrorist groups.
Though the bit about joining terrorist groups sounds crazy, the concern is reportedly based on evidence that investigators found in her home. Winner schemed about burning down the White House, fleeing to Afghanistan and joining the Taliban, according to prosecutors.
A federal grand jury indicted Winner this week on only one charge, but prosecutors are likely going to add several more to the list. And all of this on top of the fact that she already allegedly told investigators in reference to the leaked NSA documents, “I screwed up.”
Clever enough to secure a top-secret clearance, but apparently not clever enough to keep her mouth shut.
