Reality Winner— the former National Security Agency worker who spent more than four years in jail for leaking classified documents — has given herfirst interviewsince her prison release.
Winner, 30, was a contractor at Pluribus International Corp., who worked with the NSA. In 2018, she was charged with espionage after authorities alleged she accessed a classified memo and mailed it toThe Intercept.
“I am not a traitor. I am not a spy. I am somebody who only acted out of love for what this country stands for,” she told60 Minutes’Scott Pelley on Sunday.
Reality Winner.
Before she worked for the NSA, Winner was a linguist for the Air Force and received a commendation medal in 2016, for “600 enemies killed in action.”
“I was starting to see in the news that our mission had a very high civilian casualty rating,” she recalled, explaining that her guilt led her to leave the Air Force and join the NSA the next year.
There, though, she faced another moral dilemma when she saw the report confirming Russian interference in the election. At the time, it was a highly debated topic in the news — and one that then-PresidentDonald Trumprepeatedlydenied.
“I just kept thinking, ‘My God, somebody needs to step forward and put this right. Somebody,’ " she said on60 Minutes, later adding, “I 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.”
Winner went on to say that she “meant no harm” in leaking the document and “did not betray our sources and methods. Did not cause damage. Did not put lives on the line.”
“It only filled in a question mark that was tearing our country in half in May 2017,” she said.
She also opened up about the struggles she faced in prison, including depression, bulimia, drug use, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. “There would just be times when it almost wasn’t worth it to see the end of this,” Winner said.
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Winner said that she has since been able to get clean from the drugs, but is “ashamed to say how hard it is.”
Her mom, meanwhile, expressed pride in her daughter.
“What Reality did was not espionage,” Winner-Davis said. “What Reality did was patriotism. She actually stood up and worked for the American people to give us the truth about an attack on our vote, an attack on our democracy, an attack on our country. And I’m very proud of her for that.”
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go tosuicidepreventionlifeline.org.
source: people.com
