NSA leaker Reality Winner is rebuilding her life and looking back at her past

"In May 2017, amid allegations of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) leaked a classified document to the press. The document revealed that Russia had launched two cyber attacks prior to the election, one against a company that sold software related to voter registration, and another against 122 local election officials. The contractor, an Air Force veteran named Reality Winner, sent the document to The Intercept, a journalism site specializing in reporting leaks."

"The security agency easily identified Winner, a crypto linguist, as the source of the leak. Looking back now, Winner says her timing could not have been worse; the Trump administration had been combatting a string of leaks. FBI director James Comey and the president "were both saying that they were going to nail the next leaker to the wall," she says. "And then I just happened to be the very next name popping up.""

"Winner was tried under the Espionage Act of 1917 and received the longest sentence to that point for leaking classified information to a media outlet. She accepted a plea deal, lowering her sentence of 10 years to five. She was released from prison in 2021. Winner's story has been told in a 2021 documentary Reality Winner, the 2023 film Reality, and in the play Is This A Room, in which actors reenacted the transcript of the FBI interrogation of her."

Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran and NSA contractor, leaked a classified NSA document in May 2017 revealing two Russian cyberattacks: one targeting a voter-registration software vendor and another targeting 122 local election officials. Winner sent the document to The Intercept. Reporters fact-checking the document forwarded it to the FBI, which alerted the NSA and allowed the agency to identify Winner as the source. The leak occurred amid a Trump administration crackdown on leaks. Winner was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, accepted a plea reducing a 10-year sentence to five years, and was released in 2021. Her story has appeared in multiple film and theater portrayals and she later wrote a memoir titled I Am Not Your Enemy.

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