This weekend,<\/u> \u201c60 Minutes\u201d aired the first TV interview given by Reality Winner since she was released from prison this summer. In 2017, Winner leaked a top-secret National Security Agency analysis of Russia\u2019s attempt to penetrate U.S. election systems around the country; she ended up serving the longest sentence ever doled out to a civilian whistleblower. She pleaded guilty at trial and was sentenced to five years and three months in prison.<\/p>\n
Winner\u2019s case is unique, and because of how tribal our politics have become, she\u2019s a person without a political home. Despite the sacrifices she made, she largely gets ignored as a result.<\/p>\n
Of course, from a Trumpworld perspective, which fully rejected any claims of Russian interference, what she leaked was too inconvenient to discuss. The left, for its part, was heavily critical of the Democratic focus on the Trump-Russia scandal, arguing that it was an effort by establishment Democrats to escape necessary responsibility, so did not rally to her cause. Among resistance liberals, Winner had a hard time gaining traction. At the time of her arrest, mainline Democrats were closely allied with the public faces of the intelligence world who were avidly fueling Trump-Russia theories, but by leaking, Winner had betrayed the intelligence community, and the deep-state talking heads had no interest in taking up her cause on CNN or MSNBC.<\/p>\n
The document she leaked didn\u2019t contain evidence of collusion between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia. It said that Russia had penetrated our election system but not that\u00a0it had done anything to manipulate the voter rolls or the votes. The\u00a0leak exposed flaws in the system while showing that Russia was keeping its options for meddling open \u2014 just as they\u2019ve done in other countries, and just as we\u2019ve done in almost every country on the planet.<\/p>\n
The Intercept published the document in question along with a story\u00a0about its significance on June 5, 2017. The Press Freedom Defense Fund, which is part of First Look Institute, The Intercept\u2019s parent company, supported Winner\u2019s legal defense<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n At the time of her arrest, Winner, an Air Force veteran, was serving as a contractor for the NSA. While Winner is now out of prison, she\u2019s still on supervised release for the next three years, with onerous conditions. In the interview<\/a>, she talks about her motivation for the leak and the psychological impact of the government\u2019s assault on her. As she explains, she felt like she was seeing double, watching Trump publicly claim that Russia had behaved entirely innocently throughout the 2016 election while knowing that his own intelligence service had concluded differently.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew it was secret, but I also knew that I had pledged service to the American people, and at that point in time, it felt like they were being led astray,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Even the federal commission in charge of election security had no idea what had happened. \u201cWhat prosecutors called \u2018grave damage\u2019 was a bombshell of truth to the federal Election Assistance Commission, which helps secure the vote,\u201d Scott Pelley reported on \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d adding that election officials took significant actions in response to Winner\u2019s revelations. Two sources told CBS that Winner\u2019s leak helped make the 2018 election more secure, confirming previous Intercept reporting<\/a>.<\/p>\n