This is an odd thing. Cue up the conspiracy theories. On a strange and bazaar note, why did the contractor she worked for just since Feb 2017, for the most part only hire ex military women in their 20’s? Interesting to note also that she gave the info to The Intercept who is run by the same guy that Snowden gave stuff to. Maybe Chelsea Manning can explain it. Better yet, in just four short months she just happened to come upon and leak the story that The Intercept published about Russia’s so called interference in last year’s presidential election. Her bailiwick was Afghanistan intelligence. Just two cute by twice. So let’s take my ride down the rabbit hole. This is the first in a series on this gal:
An NSA document purporting to show Russian military hacker attempts to access a Florida company which makes voter registration software is sent anonymously to The Intercept. A low-level NSA contractor, Reality Winner, above, is arrested almost immediately. What’s wrong with this picture? A lot.
What Happened is… Curious and Curiouser…
Now let’s look at what we know so far about how this happened.
A 25-year-old improbably-named Reality Winner leaves behind a trail long and wide on social media of anti-Trump stuff, including proclaiming herself a member of The Resistance. Never mind, she takes her Top Secret clearance with her out of the Air Force (she had been stationed with the military’s 94th Intelligence Squadron out of Fort Meade, Maryland, co-located with the NSA’s headquarters) and scores a job with an NSA contractor. Despite the lessons of too-much-access the Snowden episode should have taught the NSA, Winner apparently enjoys all sorts of classified documents – her Air Force expertise was in Afghan matters, so it is unclear why she would have access to info on Russia hacking of U.S. domestic companies.
Within only about 90 days of starting her new job, she prints out the one (and only one apparently, why not more?) document in question and mails it to The Intercept. She also uses her work computer inside an NSA facility to write to the Intercept twice about this same time.
Winner has a clearance. She was trained as a Dari, Pashto, and Farsi linguist by the Air Force. She knows how classified stuff works. She has been told repeatedly, as all persons with a clearance are, that her computer, email, printing, and phone are monitored. She mailed the document from Augusta, Georgia, the city where she lives and where the NSA facility is located. She practiced no tradecraft, did nothing to hide her actions and many things to call attention to them. It is very, very unclear why she took the actions she did under those circumstances. We will look at the “maybe” why on Monday. More at Antiwar.com
See the two additional posts that follow:
BUNKERVILLE | God, Guns and Guts Comrades! 