In 2017, Winner leaked a report that said that prior to the 2016 U.S. election, the Russian military “executed cyber espionage” against “122…local government organizations,” “targeting officials involved in the management of voter registration systems.” https://t.co/DQ3COh0VTm
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) December 6, 2021
60 Minutes originally ran Scott Pelley’s story last December. They re-ran it on Sunday, and posted the entire transcript online:
… In 2018, at the age of 26, Winner pleaded guilty. The judge said he would make an example of her—she served four years behind bars, plus three, now, answering to a probation officer. She still can’t talk about the case.
Reality Winner: 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. Because I’m still stained by them 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.
She served her sentence during prison lockdowns for COVID and the unrest after the police murder of George Floyd. In a cell with two companions — depression and bulimia — she became self destructive.
Reality Winner: You know, every time that I had to give in to my illness, I put it on my body. I cut myself. Everywhere. I couldn’t leave my cell. I couldn’t work out. And all I could do was ask why and ask why. And a chaplain walked by. And I asked him why they were doing this to us and that same chaplain that I had seen for two years looked me in my face and said, “Nobody gives a f**k about y’all in here.” I started getting high that day. Everyone knows there’s drugs in prison. I was reduced to bingeing and purging. Getting high every day. And cutting myself.
Scott Pelley: Have you been able to get clean?
Reality Winner: I have. I just am ashamed to say how hard it is.
It’s worth noting how inconsistent the government is in these cases.
In 2008, Gregg Bergersen, a Pentagon employee, was convicted of selling secrets to the Chinese. He was seen in FBI surveillance getting his pocket stuffed with cash. His sentence was six months shorter than Reality Winner’s. In 2012, former Army general and CIA Director David Petraeus gave notebooks of top secret information to an author who was his mistress. He was charged with misdemeanor mishandling of classified information and never spent a minute in jail.
Scott Pelley: Was it worth it?
Reality Winner: I try so hard not to frame things as being worth it or not worth it. What I know is that I’m home with my parents. And we take our lives every day moving forward as being richer in knowing what to be grateful for…
Last month, Reality Winner and her attorney asked President Biden for a pardon.
"Two former officials told us, Reality Winner helped secure the 2018 midterm election.” https://t.co/JKt69ei78z
— Alice Liddell (@aliceliddelliam) July 25, 2022
still here
still strong
still fightingnever silent
— Reality Winner (@reazlepuff) July 24, 2022
WaterGirl
I don’t see that she has been granted a pardon, though. Is that right?
coin operated
I have a hard time with Winner’s case. She could have gone the legal route and been protected. She didn’t, and paid the price. That said…I do support a full pardon after the fact…
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Last I heard, she was granted a reprieve from part of her sentence.
japa21
@coin operated: Pretty much sums up my feelings. Of course, IIRC, she also made the mistake of trusting GG.
Baud
Is that a Nike ad asking for the pardon?
sab
Did she get a Covid release?
Adam Silverman did a post years ago about there are safe ways to leak/whistleblow (through an extremely experienced DC law firm that understands security). I wish this thinking was more publicized so that the next Reality Winner trying to save democracy in our country knows where to go and doesn’t go to some traitorous creep at The Intercept. She got punished so severely because they couldn’t get their claws into Snowden, who deserves to live the rest of his life in Putin’s Russia.
Also too, I very much hope I am not mischaracterizing what Adam said.
WaterGirl
PSA: raffle ticket sales end at midnight tonight. See the posts in the sidebar for more information.
Also copied here for convenience for mobile peeps:
Ukraine Quilt Raffle
Tickets for “Sale” thru Tuesday
Raffle Tickets Available!
Individual Blocks are Available
Gvg
Well in some ways…she comes across as not the brightest person. It can be hard for someone who isn’t really smart to know how to go the legal route which doesn’t seem that straight forward or intuitively obvious. How does someone who isn’t that bright end up with that kind of information anyway?
I also have a kind of pity for someone with that kind of name. Did her parents name her that? It just seems like she never had some basic clue.
Ohio Mom
Winner was just 25 when she mailed that document to Greenwald. As we discussed in the thread about Nikolas Cruz, the frontal lobe of the brain, the part that processes higher order thinking (such as having good judgement) isn’t quite finishing developing until the mid-twenties. Winner was just on the cusp, not that there is an absolute line, it’s a transitional time. Certainly trusting Greenwald was a bad call.
I think she did the right thing in the wrong manner.
I hope Biden pardons her but I don’t expect him to do it until he’s about to leave the Presidency.
Baud
I was wrong. She was released early but it was not a reprieve.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/reality-winner-prison-release-biden-b1865677.html
ETA: I miss the link shortening thingamajig.
sab
@Gvg: I think she is really bright, just not sensible. She learned a bunch of the most difficult languages in the world. That was her usefulness to us, she could learn those languages as an adult.
Ohio Mom
When you think about the larger story, there’s an issue that got overshadowed by Winner’s arrest and prison sentence.
The NSA collected important information, that Russia was interfering with our elections — and they just sat on it. Filed it away.
Why are they collecting information if it’s not going to be acted upon? Why are we paying them?
The whole time I’ve been typing, I’m seeing the last scene of The Raiders of the Lost Ark play in my mind’s eye.
geg6
@sab:
I agree. She was naive and idealistic. She should get a pardon.
guachi
She deserves no pardon. She knowingly and intentionally accessed information she had no business accessing and then completely ignored every possible avenue to do anything legal with the information and instead sent it to Greenwald.
I have a TS/SCI clearance. I work at the base she worked at. I’ve worked with hundreds of people younger than she was at the time. None of them were ever stupid enough to steal information and give it to a member of the press.
Chief Oshkosh
@guachi:
Possibly none of them were ever smart enough to realize that the information wouldn’t get out there any other way. I don’t necessarily believe that, but after all, we’re all still writing about it and the impact of the interference coming to light. From what’s been posted in this thread, there was solid benefit done in increasing the security of our votes, at least in 2018.
japa21
@Ohio Mom: What makes you think they sat on it. Remember that Obama was aware of Russian interference and wanted a bipartisan announcement of it. Basically, McConnell (R-Putinland) blackmailed Obama into not making a big deal of it. There were some small leaks. But I think the administration was aware.
Ohio Mom
@japa21: Yes, of course, I forgot about Obama wanting to act and McConnell blocking it.
I was basing my comment on the quote in the post that “former elections officials told us (60 minutes) Reality Winner helped secure the 2018 midterm election.”
Gin & Tonic
@sab: I know Americans think learning any other language is hard, and I’m not necessarily trying to minimize her skills, but she learned three very closely-related Indo-European languages over two years of study. That’s not climbing Mt. Everest.
sab
@Gin & Tonic: Okay. My sister is fluent in Mandarin and I can barely cope in French. Or in Latin. So I am no expert.
Slavic languages are hard for English speakers. Declensions of nouns make no sense if you haven’t grown up around them. That’s what prepositions are for..
Leto
@Gin & Tonic: Do you know the requirements for graduating DIL? No? She did climb Everest. One of the best parts of this site is people talking out of their ass about shit they’re entirely clueless about.
Steve in the ATL
@Leto:
You rang?
guachi
@Leto: I know since I’ve done it. Persian, what Winner was trained in, is a Cat 3 language. Cat 4 languages are Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Cat 3 are Russian, Persian, Hebrew.
Wikipedia says Winner knew Persian-Farsi, Dari, and Pashto. Persian is Indo-European but (obviously) written in Arabic script with lots of Arabic loan words. Dari is close enough to Persian-Farsi that you can pass the test without having studied any Dari whatsoever. Pashto is harder so I assume Winner received formal training in it.
School is 47 weeks for Persian. I’ve heard that fail rates are currently quite high (over 50%) though when I went for Arabic almost everyone passed. Maybe we just had excellent teachers.
Old Man Shadow
The real traitors sit in comfort in Florida plotting more treason.
Parfigliano
Id forgotten about Petraeus. That prick belongs in a dungeon
SpaceUnit
Ms. Winner followed her moral compass at great personal risk, as opposed to someone who would simply defer to orders, procedures regarding classified material, chain of command, etc. so that they might one day safely retire and collect a pension. I don’t know if what she did was right. It’s easy to conclude that it wasn’t smart. But I’m convinced that she meant to do right.
I’m inclined to like her.
Also, fuck Glenn Greenwald up the nose.
Leto
@guachi: yeah, one of my good friends from high school went through for Russian, then learned a few Arabic languages, enough to be classified as a polyglot and have that nice extra pay bump. Then when I was an instructor, we had kids cross train into us after having failed out of the school and they came from various training weeks; some fairly early on (a few months) and some were much later (18 months was the longest one I personally saw).
I’ll say that variances in both teachers and students will account for a graduating rate. Depends on who rotates in to teach, and what the students do to excel. And as you know, that’s on top of the military shit you need to keep on top of. Most people get the luxury of being able to study this on their own, or in a regular classroom setting. DLI ain’t that.
sab
@Steve in the ATL: Gawd I love you.
stinger
@guachi: When I went through DLI (’77), Arabic was an 11-month course (for enlisted in intelligence/security). Officers (who would be stationed in an Arabic-speaking area) only took “conversational” training; seems like theirs was a 4-month course but I could be wrong. Ours, at least, was intensive, day-long language training. Russian was the only other language that ran 11 months. Everything else was shorter.
Chetan Murthy
@guachi: With respect, our Executive Branch was led by a traitor. Just exactly how was she supposed to raise her concerns “in channels”? I can think of only one way: go to the Democratic Congressional leadership. But would that have gone anywhere? Look at all the classified information that Congress sat on, instead of telling the American people.
She did what she did, just like anybody who commits an act of civil disobedience: you do it to tell the world, to tell your countrymen, of a grave injustice. In her case, to tell us of grave crimes. She deserves a pardon.
Either that, or we need put a cap in TFG’s goddamn ass. Justice needs to be proportionate.
James E Powell
@Ohio Mom:
McConnell didn’t block. Obama decided not to do without McConnell making it a joint thing. Bad move. Wonder if he would like to have that one back.
lowtechcyclist
@japa21:
Obama wasn’t President anymore, Trump was. Lotta good it would have done for that traitor’s Administration to be aware of this.