Reality Winner was the FBI’s ‘head on a pike’ for Trump. It’s time to set her free. …My column, pegged to a new documentary that makes her mistreatment painfully clear https://t.co/rH1M3sY9Ru
— ?? Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) May 12, 2021
Margaret Sullivan, at the Washington Post:
At 25, Reality Leigh Winner was a remarkable young woman. Fluent in Farsi and other languages spoken in Iraq and Afghanistan, she was, in 2017, a decorated Air Force veteran working as a contractor for the National Security Agency.
She was more than smart enough to see something significant, and alarming, in a classified document on Russia’s efforts to hack into election-related websites and voter-registration databases in the United States. She thought it was something the public should know about.
But she also made some unwise decisions.
She anonymously mailed a copy of a single document to the investigative news organization the Intercept. But despite that outlet’s reputation for taking top-secret information and turning it into news stories, its staffers didn’t take all the precautions that might have protected their source. Then, when a fleet of FBI agents showed up at her home, Winner didn’t insist on first consulting a lawyer.
Soon, she was indicted under the Espionage Act and eventually pleaded guilty to one felony count of transmission of national defense information. No one has ever received a longer sentence, more than five years, for leaking classified information to a media outlet.
A heartbreaking — and infuriating — new documentary about how the Trump Justice Department went after her reinforced my long-held belief that, although her prison term is due to end in November, it’s high time for our government to set Winner free.
The centerpiece of “United States vs. Reality Winner” is an appalling audio recording that the filmmakers obtained through a Freedom of Information request. We hear the voices of the FBI agents who blindsided her, failing to inform her of her Miranda rights. This was in the wake of James B. Comey’s promise to President Donald Trump that he’d pursue those who gave inside information to the media, according to the former FBI director’s own memo about a February 2017 meeting in the Oval Office…
President Biden could send her home a few months early. That wouldn’t make things right — but it would help.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
C’mon.
I’m no fan of FBI, especially after their 2016 coup. But It wasn’t Elliot Ness and Sean Connery busting through the door to arrest her, it was The Intercept who ratted her out.
This was The Intercept putting her head on a pike for daring to question Dear Leader Putin’s role in rigging the 2016 election.
Chetan Murthy
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: As Toby Farquarson III says over at LG&M, beware of false choices. They both bear blame, they both used her as a sacrificial lamb, and now, yeah, Biden should pardon her. Or at least commute her sentence.
ETA: But also needs to be noted, the real blame lies with TFG.
EmanG
I’ve long thought that a rallying cry of the former guy’s years should be “Free Reality!”
Mike in NC
Trump always took a sadistic delight in hurting and humiliating people. The ultimate in punching down.
MomSense
Fuck Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept.
Luther Siler
I am 100% convinced that part of the issue is that this person is actually named “Reality Winner.” Her name is so Goddamned ridiculous that it throws actual barriers up to people taking what’s happened to her seriously.
Baud
I don’t have much of a dog in this fight, but people who want her to get a pardon better be ready to push back hard when the usual suspects demand that Biden must give Snowden one too.
Anne Laurie
I get the impression that the Biden administration knows enough about Snowden’s backstory not to fall for that one.
Besides, the usual suspects seem to have dropped Snowden to focus on FREE ASSANGE…
Another Scott
@Baud: +1
Cui bono? is a really good question, here. Her career is destroyed. The people screaming for Biden to do something will be strengthened if he is railroaded into doing something for her before her sentence is complete. They will no-doubt try to use that power for Snowden.
She probably had good intentions. But she violated her oath and broke the law. If she wanted to be a whistle-blower, there are legal ways to do so (though I admit some of them may not have applied to her (being a contractor, etc.) at the time).
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ohio Mom
I’ve always thought there was a large dash of misogyny at work here, on tne part of TFG and the jerks at the Intercept.
It will be interesting to see what Winner does next with her life.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott:
*Did* she violate her oath? Our government was in thrall to our adversaries, and she tried to warn us of this. Whereas Snowden did nothing of the kind. Even if one grants that Snowden wasn’t a Russian agent (which I do not grant), his actions were directly harmful to our national strength. Whereas, that’s not the case at all with Winner. At least, unless we grant that Trump was a legitimate President, which I. Do. Not.
Ohio Mom
I have to admit I did not follow this story all that closely — why, of all her options, did she go to the Intercept, instead of say, the nearest Inspector General or a more mainstream media outlet (if the NYT and Washington Post were good enough for Ellsberg…)?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
It’s telling how the Dude-Bros were clamoring for a pardon for Snowden and Assange, but not for Winner.
Hmm, I wonder what could be the difference.
Chief Oshkosh
@Another Scott: Which oath did she violate?
Chetan Murthy
@Ohio Mom: Heh. Back in the day, there were still a lot of people who thought Glenzilla was one of the good guys. I think it’s that simple. She was deceived by that aura of “we fight the good fight”. Ah, well, the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
Chief Oshkosh
@Ohio Mom: Who was in power? How had chain-of-command gone for others? Who, STILL TO THIS DAY, has paid no price for selling out his country? And remember, he installed people everywhere in the government, and arguably in the military (Joint Chiefs), based solely on fealty to him.
Chetan Murthy
@Chief Oshkosh: Indeed:
I just wish she’d camped out in some Dem Senator’s office and refused to leave until they listened to her story.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: Wikipedia:
SF-312 (2 page .pdf) has a whole bunch of things one agrees to as part of the process of getting a security clearance from the US Government. “Oath” may have been the wrong word in my comment above.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott:
Yeah, by that point, I can imagine she was just plea-bargaining. The truth is, the bolded text is false: the contents of the reporting, if made public, could only be to the salvation of the United States, and to the injury of our chief foreign adversary. Ah, well.
guachi
I’m stationed at the same base Winner was doing the same job just for the Navy. My response is, “No. She can serve her sentence”. My sympathy for her is exactly zero.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Ohio Mom: She went to “the
interceptinformants” because she was a reader and she was concerned they would look inept by insisting there was no evidence of Russian interference, so she sent them classified data to alert them they were on the wrong track. For her troubles they turned her into the Okhrana.Chetan Murthy
@guachi:
So you’re saying that if Trump wins in 2024 and orders the military to enforce martial law, soldiers who refuse should be prosecuted and imprisoned in any subsequent restoration of democratic rule?
Honus
@Baud: snowden’s not in jail and hasn’t been even for a minute. His Russian runners made sure of that. There’s no comparison
guachi
@Chetan Murthy: Huh? She broke the law. We get drilled into us over and over and over not to leak classified information.
What you wrote, while it’s a grammatically correct sentence, has no relation to what Winner did.
Chetan Murthy
@guachi: Implicit in what you write, is that Trump was a legitimate President. He. Wasn’t.
Chetan Murthy
@guachi: Let me put it differently. Suppose you’re in the armed forces and Trump takes over. And he orders *you* to implement martial law. To (say) round up me and other LG&M commenters here in SF. Are you gonna do it? Or are you gonna “disobey a lawful command” as they say.
lee
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
This. This. This.
It was one of those which cannot be named here who got butt-hurt because it proved him either wrong or a Russian stooge.
Villago Delenda Est
If a head must be on a pike, let it be TFG’s.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: The point is, as in Snowden’s case, it wasn’t her decision to make. There are systems in place to handle classified information. She was told about the limits and agreed to them, but broke the rules anyway.
Snowden hoovered up everything he could get his hands on, stuff that he had no way of interpreting to know whether it was somehow indicative of lawbreaking by the US or not, and fled the country.
Winner took one classified document and released it.
The scale was different, the motives were different, but in both cases they decided on their own that the system didn’t apply to them. As 20-somethings they decided they knew better what should be done with the information – better than those above them who actually decided that it should be classified and why.
Yes, there’s likely a few exabytes of stuff that’s classified that shouldn’t be. But we don’t let some computer jock contractor or some language prodigy contractor decide those things on their own. There have to be processes.
There are mechanisms and procedures for reporting wrongdoing. Whistleblower procedures and protections for contractors. (Those may be different than when she acted – I don’t know.)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
dww44
I’m sorry. I always believed she was railroaded. She was also naive. At the time I knew she was not going to receive a fair trial in Augusta which is an ultra conservative part of the state. And that bleeds over to nearby Ft. Gordon.
As long as the Trumps, the Manaforts, the Stones, the Hawleys and the Cruzes walk free, she should be released now..
Villago Delenda Est
@MomSense: Hear, hear. Greenwald is at best, an FSB/GRU stooge.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott:
This is so wrong it HURTS. Your position and that of @guachi are that the Waffen-SS troopers [who murdered Jewish people in ditches] were just following orders, and they had no choice. I mean, you can’t disobey a lawful order.
She was and is a patriot. If somebody had fucking shot that fucker Trump, they also would be a patriot. And that neither of those acts is lawful, changes nothing. Changes. Nothing.
ETA: a little exercised here. lotta spelling errors. sorry.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott:
Surely you can’t be serious. After four years, we know now that none of them worked. None of them. Almost everything we know, we know because of leaks. And nobody actually got prosecuted and paid any sort of price. The “institutions” failed us.
guachi
@Chetan Murthy: The President doesn’t really order me to do anything. My CO may order me to do something or my DH or DCPO or my LPO. But if it’s an unlawful order I don’t have to obey it. If it’s a lawful order and I disobey it I can go to mast.
But not doing a lawful thing is far less of a problem than doing an illegal thing, especially when that illegal thing involves intentionally releasing classified information. My sympathy for people who release classified information is basically zero.
Also, to @dww44 Augusta (Richmond County) isn’t an ultra-conservative part of the state. It’s very Democratic. 68-31 for Biden. Neighboring Columbia County was 62-36 Trump, but there are fewer people.
The Dangerman
In other incarceration (well, potential) related news. I read Red State (I was vaccinated) and they are losing their shit over you know who being indicted in NY. Something about it being politically inspired.
Im sure the same assholes were chanting lock her up in 2016.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: I guess we’re talking past each other.
She had a path to report her concerns and be protected from prosecution or retribution. Everyone with a security clearance has similar paths. She didn’t take that path.
As it was, she broke the law and released classified information without proper authorization. She was found guilty and sentenced. She will be released when her sentence is complete.
End of story.
What impact did her actions have in constraining TFG or his henchmen? None that I can see. She threw her career away.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott: This is the point of view that “if you tear up the law in your haste to attack the Devil, then when he comes at you, you will have nothing to defend yourself”.
But it turns out, the Devil can *always* hire better lawyers than you can. *Always*. She did what she thought she had to, to protect our country and our Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yeah: she failed.
That you can’t honor her sacrifice, is on you.
Gin & Tonic
@Chetan Murthy: Surely you’re familiar with Godwin’s Law?
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: Anarchy is not the solution to TFG and his henchmen trying to break the federal government.
What standard would you apply going forward?
Cletus McCletus believed that it was essential for the nuclear football codes be released because American hegemony is a threat to humanity. Do we just say, Ok, he was sincere in his beliefs, so no probs?
If people break the law for what they view as a greater cause, then they should be willing to accept the punishment. Gandhi did; Parks did; King did. As far as I can see, she has done so too. Their power came (at least partially) from accepting the punishment. I think she also recognized that she made a big mistake…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I haven’t followed this story but I’ll scroll through the thread and see what people thi…
Okay, never mind
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chetan Murthy: There’s a difference between not obeying an illegal order and taking an affirmative action.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: How did her releasing that document save the world from TFG?
How is anything different as a result of her actions?
The Intercept story and her arrest were in June 2017.
Wikipedia:
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
But a really smart stooge. Just ask him.
Dopey-o
You have all become tiresome.
Does the punishment fit the crime?
No.
SATSQ
MisterForkbeard
@The Dangerman: ..did someone get indicted in NY?
Another Scott
@The Dangerman: nycsouthpaw is pretty well plugged-in to legal stuff and is NY. I don’t see anything obvious on his Twitter thing.
Dunno.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack (phone)
Read it if you dare! “The Left Is Anticipating President Trump’s Indictment in New York but They Haven’t Thought About What That Means to Everyone.”
opiejeanne
@MisterForkbeard: Not yet. NY may indict TFG on tax evasion, and Palm Beach County in Florida is trying to figure out how not to extradite him (a constitutional duty), but he’ll probably be in New Jersey by the time the indictment comes down so it may not matter what Florida does.
I had an amusing but fleeting image of a shootout at Mar a Lago.
opiejeanne
@Steeplejack (phone): I see that article includes the idiocy going on in Palm Beach County.
I’ve never read Red State before, and what a pit it is!
Kay
That would be the brother of the former US Secretary of Education.
Seems like they have much bigger problems than Reality Winner. Any leads on the pipe bomber who created a distraction to slow law enforcement response to the insurrection?
Villago Delenda Est
@Steeplejack (phone): ZOMG, a criminal facing the consequences of his criminal acts? Are they clutching their pearls at the Vichy Times?
Kay
I think we may have stumbled on some criminals. I just hope they didn’t leak anything while running a spy operation targeting critics of Donald Trump. That line they may not cross.
Steve in the ATL
Where is everyone tonight? I am missing a Baud campaign rally or an Omnes benefit concert or something?
Amir Khalid
i@Steeplejack (phone):
I dared, and I read it. Any indictment of Trump would obviously be a purely criminal matter, yet somehow all RedState sees is a partisan political move. It’s as if the Manhattan DA and the state AG hadn’t each spent years building a case against him.
It’s also remarkable that RedState believes that, should Trump go to jail, the next Republican POTUS (God forbid) must retaliate and have Democrats prosecuted. Do they not understand what the criminal justice system does, or how it operates?
Annoyed-Aussie
@Another Scott: if you’re not white, I think you have a different framework for interpreting ‘it’s the law’ or ‘he / she should have followed the law’ in terms of whether they are compelling as arguments. Maybe you are not familiar with the history of civil disobedience and non-violent protest, or maybe you are but haven’t internalized it on an emotional level. When the law is wrong, following it doesn’t make you the good guy, not following it doesn’t make you the bad guy. My 0.02.
Amir Khalid
@Steve in the ATL:
I’m here.
Ken
Oh, you must not have upgraded to Balloon Juice platinum membership.
Captain C
@opiejeanne:
A slow-speed chase with him in a high school prom-looking limo and the cops looking like Florida versions of the ones from the end of Bad Santa, with a coked up Junior driving and on some interminable paranoid rant, while in the back seat Lucrezia tries to talk TFG out of detouring for a Big Mac. Beavis is nowhere to be found.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: I thought surely you’d be playing at the benefit concert
@Ken: it’s hard to find here, like gasoline
The Dangerman
@Amir Khalid:
No.
I like the easy questions.
Amir Khalid
@Steve in the ATL:
I couldn’t make the gig. Malaysia is back in Covid-19 lockdown, and non-essential outbound travel is still not allowed. Maybe next time.
L85NJGT
@Steve in the ATL:
I’m totally uniformed on the current subject matter, and this is not an open thread.
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: I’m curious. I know most Malaysians do not follow American politics as closely as you do. But how do the news media and your countrymen perceive President Biden? What are they saying?
Mallard Filmore
@Kay:
Does this mean private hunny traps that target FBI personnel are illegal?
Amir Khalid
@Geminid:
We’ve got a lot on our plate right now, actually, and I don’t see much attention here being focused on Biden. That said, people here will be keen to know where he stands on the current Israel/Palestinian conflict, if he will be as reflexively partial to Israel as Malaysians think POTUSes tend to be.
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: Malaysians sound somewhat like a lot of Americans. Most are not very concerned about our neighbors, much less people on the other side of the world. It sounds like your countrymen are very concerned about the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. I’m not sure how much a majority of Americans care.
I think President Biden cares, but at least in public he takes Israel’s side. The Jerusalem Post reported a few hours ago that the Egyptians are trying to negotiate a one-year truce with Hamas. I hope the two sides take it.
It sems like the Israelis kind of assumed that a coflict with Hamas was liable to happen anytime. What really has shocked them is the violence and unrest among Israel’s Arab citizens. Israelis blame Hamas for instigating this, but the Arab Israelis are very willing, and the Jewish Israelis are surprised at this.
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: And thank you for responding to my query.
burnspbesq
Pardon? Nuh-uh.
Commutation of sentence? Maybe.
Fifteen minutes alone in a locked room with Greenwald? There ya go!
Winston
Jim Wright
1tSpoSnsd8ogrfedfh ·
A number of you have written, asking my opinion regarding the group of alleged “120 Retired Generals and Admirals” who wrote an open letter to President Biden.
This group of alleged flag officers spent two pages hysterically ranting about debunked conspiracy theories and questioning Biden’s mental acuity given his … age.
And then spent another two pages signing their names like they were John Hancock or something.
Yeah.
I’ll tell you, I spent two and half decades in the US Navy and I recognize exactly ONE of those admirals.
And he was an asshole.
He “retired” rather than face legal actions for sexual harassment. So that’ll tell you what sort of company you’re looking at here. But don’t take my word for it, note how many female flag officers there on that list. Or officers who aren’t white.
Most of these guys have been retired for DECADES — putting many of them into their 70s and 80s. Making their question regarding Biden’s competence due to age fairly hilarious. Ironically speaking.
Now, some of these guys have retired fairly recently, but most are of a certain group. And if you start pulling the thread on it, you’ll find these are the guys who bailed out of the service — or got put out — when the country they work for finally got sick of their racism and misogyny and good old boy bullshit and decided to change things. Many of these guys were pilots, or members of some exclusive specialty, insulated from the rest of the military — the ones who almost always think their shit don’t stink and think they are better than everyone else in uniform. These are the same guys, name for name, who spent pages of ink bemoaning the destruction of military discipline and morale when we started allowing women and LGBT people into the ranks.
And man, when the military not only wasn’t destroyed by those changes, but actually become more professional and competent and kept right on going about its job, well, let’s just say *nothing* chapped their manly white asses more.
These are the same sad old sons of bitches who now spend every waking minute sitting in the base Exchange food court bitching bitterly and loudly about how the military of today isn’t like it was “back when we served. Boy oh boy, men were men and women were livestock and everybody else knew their place back then, you bet!”
The absolutely hilarious part is where their letter complains of socialism and government.
These guys, these alleged flag officers, the vast majority of them all went to college — typically some service academy — on the taxpayer dime, then spent 20 to 30 years in the military collecting government pay, then retired to some Defense Contractor or GSE job working for the government while collecting a government retirement check, shopping at the military commissary and exchange, and getting their healthcare via Tricare and the VA.
These guys are the poster children for socialism.
They are less than 2% of all retired flag officers, nothing but the disappointed dregs, bitter because after the service their lives have been one long anticlimax and nobody salutes them anymore. These miserable old entitled bastards screw on their MAGA hats every day and wander down to the base Exchange wearing shirts with a draft dodging coward’s face displayed on the front, spouting conspiracy theories, and sneering at the young men and women in uniform for not giving them the respect they think they deserve.
They’re not scared of any socialism.
They just terrified Joe Biden is going to take away their base golf privileges.
lowtechcyclist
@Luther Siler:
“What’s this about a race horse?” has been my frequent reaction. So yeah.
evodevo
@Geminid: Not surprised…Arab Israeli sentiment was similar when I was in Israel on an archaeological dig in June of 2000…a few months before the intifada broke out. The signs were there if you wanted to see them…”Let him who has ears, hear…”
evodevo
@Winston:
LOVED this…especially the part about the letter writers being poster boys for socialism…Mr. Evodevo have been saying this for years, about my career military right winger BIL and my “libertarian” ex-Navy DOD contractor nephew-in-law AND my AF pilot son, whose life history includes a failed attempt at factory work and trying to sell some MLM ripoff products, and an MBA life outlook ….. their excuse is that the work they do is (potentially) dangerous and they are serving their country and so deserve it, unlike all those moochers who live under a bridge…
Geminid
@evodevo: I think Jewish Israelis thought that Palestinian Israeli citizens had moved to a more accepting view of the Israeli state. Much was made of the way Jewish politicians, even Netanyahu, wood the Arab vote. In the event, many Palestinians did not come out even for the Arab parties. The steep drop in Arab voting was probably a warning sign.
One factor in the Arab unrest has been incessant provocations by racist Jewish groups like Lahena, and politicians like Mr. Gvir. The chief of the National Police, Mr. Shabtai, says that as soon as his forces get a town halfway settled down, Gvir shows up to pour fuel on the fire. Now Gvir, a new member of the Knesset, and Shabtai are having a bitter war of words.