LEAKERS OF CLASSIFIED material and national security journalists alike know that publishing government secrets carries risks. But rarely have the revelation of a bombshell leak and the criminal charges against its source come in such quick succession—in the latest exposé of Russian election hacking, not much more than an hour apart.
The Department of Justice on Monday afternoon released a criminal complaint against Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old intelligence contractor, accusing her of violating her top-secret security clearance to print and mail a classified document to the media early last month. That classified document appears to be the one published by the Intercept just hours earlier Monday.
In its complaint against Winner, an employee of a contractor firm called Pluribus assigned to an Augusta, Georgia government facility, the Justice Department writes that Winner removed the NSA report from her workplace on May 9, and mailed it to a news outlet. In its story Monday, the Intercept notes that it received the top-secret report on Russian election hacking from an anonymous source. Intercept reporters then shared the report, in some form, with intelligence officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA prior to publication to discuss redacting any details that might be damaging to national security.
https://www.wired.com/2017/06/feds-charge-alleged-nsa-leaker-exposed-russian-election-hacking/