Justice Department charges 25-year-old NSA contractor with leaking classified material to media

A good start. Now get the rest of them.

, --June 6, 2017

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Pro tip: If you work as a contractor to the National Security Agency, and you're trusted with access to classified information, that means you don't share it with anyone. It certainly means you don't mail it to the media. That's what the law says. It hasn't been what anyone in Washington has bothered to do for a very long time, but it remains the law. And the best news of the day is that we apparently now have an administration that, much to the horror of the Beltway Crowd and the permament governing class, has decided to enforce the law. Too bad so sad for a 25-year-old beautifully named Reality Leigh Winner:
A federal contractor was arrested over the weekend and accused of leaking a classified report containing "Top Secret level" information on Russian hacking efforts during the 2016 presidential election.
Reality Leigh Winner, 25, appeared in U.S. District Court in Augusta, Ga., to face one charge of removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet, the Justice Department said Monday. Winner's arrest was announced shortly after the Intercept website published a story detailing how Russian hackers attacked at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent so-called "spear-phishing" emails to more than 100 local election officials at the end of October or beginning of November. The Justice Department did not specify that Winner was being charged in connection with the Intercept's report. However, the site noted that the National Security Agency (NSA) report cited in its story was dated May 5 of this year. An affidavit supporting Winner's arrest also said that the report was dated "on or about" May 5. The Intercept contacted the NSA and the national intelligence director's office about the document and both agencies asked that it not be published. U.S. intelligence officials then asked The Intercept to redact certain sections. The Intercept said some material was withheld at U.S. intelligence agencies' request because it wasn't "clearly in the public interest."
The report said Russian military intelligence "executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016 evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions, according to information that became available in April 2017."

An unusually brazen and conniving 25-year-old

I'm sure this is all terrifying to Ms. Winner, who could very well be going to prison. That's one hell of an eye-opener for a 25-year-old clearly just getting started in any sort of career involving national security. But: If you want to work in national security and you intend to mail top secret information to the media, maybe you should understand that you won't have your national security career or your freedom for very long. But here's the thing: What gave Winner the idea, at the age of 25, that this was OK to do? If she wasn't influenced by anyone then she is an unusually brazen and conniving 25-year-old. More likely, she observed that it was going on all around her and no one thought it was much of a big deal. Indeed, she surely has more senior people who serve as her superiors, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that someone of higher rank than her either knew what she was doing or even directed her to do it.

Well. That's one way to drain a swamp

It is the Beltway culture to leak to the media like a faucet, and it has been for a very long time - long before the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency ever reared its head. George W. Bush used to complain long and hard about leaks, and talked of cracking down but never did so to this degree. Barack Obama used to occasionally give lip service to the scourge of leaking, but the truth is most of the leaks were from his supporters and were intended to benefit him. So it's no wonder he did little but talk about it, and didn't even do that very often. If Ms. Winner leaked because she really didn't understand it would be treated as a serious matter, well that's a shame. But why is the NSA contracting with companies that employ people who fail to understand something that basic? Official Washington is freaking out today because, if Ms. Winner is only the first of many leakers who might be prosecuted, there may not be many people left in the capital who feel safe. Well. That's one way to drain a swamp.

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Dan Calabrese——

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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