WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.500 So I want you to picture a scene for just a moment. 00:00:03.580 --> 00:00:06.700 OK, let's set the stage. Right. So it is early 00:00:06.700 --> 00:00:12.140 2017. And you are in Augusta, Georgia, just walking 00:00:12.140 --> 00:00:16.480 into this local strip mall, CrossFit gym. Or 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:18.620 maybe it's a yoga studio. Just a totally normal, 00:00:18.859 --> 00:00:21.760 everyday suburban setting. Exactly. And the instructor 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:23.920 leading your class is this 25 -year -old woman. 00:00:23.980 --> 00:00:27.370 She spends her weekends fostering rescue animals. 00:00:27.410 --> 00:00:30.149 Oh, wow. Yeah, she's athletic, she's super community 00:00:30.149 --> 00:00:32.509 -focused, and she just blends perfectly into 00:00:32.509 --> 00:00:35.009 this quiet suburban life. But, I mean, looking 00:00:35.009 --> 00:00:36.969 at her, you would literally never guess what 00:00:36.969 --> 00:00:39.890 is actually on her resume. Not in a million years. 00:00:40.320 --> 00:00:43.240 because she was actually a highly decorated military 00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:46.079 veteran. She spent years operating right at the 00:00:46.079 --> 00:00:48.039 edge of global conflicts. Alright, intercepting 00:00:48.039 --> 00:00:49.780 and translating all these different Middle Eastern 00:00:49.780 --> 00:00:51.740 languages for the U .S. intelligence community. 00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:54.359 Yeah, and within just a matter of months, this 00:00:54.359 --> 00:00:57.539 local yoga instructor is going to be basically 00:00:57.539 --> 00:00:59.799 pulled right out of that gym and thrust into 00:00:59.799 --> 00:01:02.179 the absolute center of an international geopolitical 00:01:02.179 --> 00:01:04.620 storm. Which ultimately leads to her receiving 00:01:04.620 --> 00:01:07.340 the longest federal prison sentence ever handed 00:01:07.340 --> 00:01:10.420 down for the unauthorized disclosure of information 00:01:10.420 --> 00:01:13.219 to the media. It is just a staggering contrast. 00:01:13.719 --> 00:01:16.340 So welcome to this deep dive. Today, our mission 00:01:16.340 --> 00:01:19.579 is to really unpack the extraordinary biographical 00:01:19.579 --> 00:01:22.299 journey of reality Lee winner. Because to understand 00:01:22.299 --> 00:01:25.599 that massive headline, the leaked document, the 00:01:25.599 --> 00:01:29.040 FBI raid, the historic sentence, you really have 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:31.939 to understand the incredibly complex person behind 00:01:31.939 --> 00:01:33.980 all of it. We're looking at a whole stack of 00:01:33.980 --> 00:01:36.700 sources today to explore her life. And this isn't 00:01:36.700 --> 00:01:38.540 just about a leak, you know, it's a story about 00:01:38.540 --> 00:01:42.219 duty, media blunders and the digital footprint 00:01:42.219 --> 00:01:44.840 we all kind of leave behind. Absolutely. We're 00:01:44.840 --> 00:01:46.780 going to look at how a young woman from rural 00:01:46.780 --> 00:01:49.239 Texas navigated the highest levels of federal 00:01:49.239 --> 00:01:51.769 intelligence and how just a single piece of paper 00:01:51.769 --> 00:01:54.230 completely unraveled her life. So let's jump 00:01:54.230 --> 00:01:55.769 right in, because looking at her background, 00:01:56.049 --> 00:01:57.549 I think a lot of people would expect her to come 00:01:57.549 --> 00:02:00.329 from a family of Washington insiders or something. 00:02:00.689 --> 00:02:02.849 Oh, yeah. You'd think she grew up in the Bellway. 00:02:03.590 --> 00:02:07.109 But no. She was actually born in 1991 and raised 00:02:07.109 --> 00:02:09.949 in the really small town of Kingsville, Texas. 00:02:10.129 --> 00:02:13.599 Right. And her unusual first name, Reality. that 00:02:13.599 --> 00:02:15.860 was actually chosen by her father, Ronald, right? 00:02:15.919 --> 00:02:18.699 Yeah, Ronald was this massive influence on her 00:02:18.699 --> 00:02:21.460 early life. He really shaped her entire worldview 00:02:21.460 --> 00:02:24.479 when it came to history and politics and religion. 00:02:24.699 --> 00:02:28.240 Which is fascinating because where does a drive 00:02:28.240 --> 00:02:31.360 to engage with global geopolitics even come from 00:02:31.360 --> 00:02:33.620 when you're a kid in small town Texas? Well, 00:02:33.620 --> 00:02:35.759 according to the sources, it really started right 00:02:35.759 --> 00:02:37.919 in their living room. She and her dad would get 00:02:37.919 --> 00:02:41.080 into these intense, almost like college -level 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:43.800 debates. Wow, really? This is a kid? Yeah. And 00:02:43.800 --> 00:02:46.099 the major catalyst for her was the September 00:02:46.099 --> 00:02:48.340 11th attacks. I mean, she was very young when 00:02:48.340 --> 00:02:50.520 it happened, but as she grew into a teenager, 00:02:51.020 --> 00:02:53.520 those Middle Eastern conflicts were just dominating 00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:55.879 the news. And instead of just passively watching 00:02:55.879 --> 00:02:58.500 the news like most teenagers, she actually decided 00:02:58.500 --> 00:03:01.080 to engage directly with the culture. Exactly. 00:03:01.240 --> 00:03:03.219 She started teaching herself Arabic in her free 00:03:03.219 --> 00:03:05.550 time. Which, I just have to point out how wild 00:03:05.550 --> 00:03:09.590 that is. You have this teenager who is playing 00:03:09.590 --> 00:03:12.509 varsity soccer and tennis. She's studying Latin 00:03:12.509 --> 00:03:16.069 at school. And then she goes home to teach herself 00:03:16.069 --> 00:03:18.930 Arabic script. Completely on her own. It's incredibly 00:03:18.930 --> 00:03:22.210 difficult. It really highlights her brain. It's 00:03:22.210 --> 00:03:25.610 like someone casually downloading a highly complex 00:03:25.610 --> 00:03:28.069 operating system for global geopolitics while 00:03:28.069 --> 00:03:30.199 doing her homework. That is a great analogy. 00:03:30.759 --> 00:03:34.159 And that specific cognitive ability is exactly 00:03:34.159 --> 00:03:36.599 what military recruiters are desperate for. Right. 00:03:36.680 --> 00:03:38.860 The ability to synthesize all that complex data. 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:41.319 Yeah. So the US Air Force obviously recognized 00:03:41.319 --> 00:03:44.099 this potential, and she enlisted in 2010. OK. 00:03:44.099 --> 00:03:46.639 So she joins up, and they put her through some 00:03:46.639 --> 00:03:48.900 seriously intense language training. Some of 00:03:48.900 --> 00:03:51.319 the most rigorous pipelines they have. And she 00:03:51.319 --> 00:03:54.539 goes way beyond just Arabic. She eventually masters 00:03:54.539 --> 00:03:57.120 Persian, Dari, and Pashto. And Dari and Pashto 00:03:57.120 --> 00:04:00.120 are like, the primary languages in Afghanistan, 00:04:00.120 --> 00:04:02.919 right? Right. Which made her an incredibly valuable 00:04:02.919 --> 00:04:05.259 asset at that specific time in the military. 00:04:05.560 --> 00:04:07.500 So they don't just stick her at a desk translating 00:04:07.500 --> 00:04:09.840 old newspapers or something? Oh, not at all. 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:11.919 They stationed her at Fort Meade in Maryland, 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:14.580 and she was put right into the drone program. 00:04:14.719 --> 00:04:18.220 Her daily reality was literally putting on a 00:04:18.220 --> 00:04:20.660 headset and listening to intercepted foreign 00:04:20.660 --> 00:04:23.660 communications in real time. She was eavesdropping 00:04:23.660 --> 00:04:26.560 on active chatter to give immediate intel to 00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:28.550 U .S. forces. on the ground. You have to imagine 00:04:28.550 --> 00:04:30.589 the psychological weight of that. I mean, yeah, 00:04:30.649 --> 00:04:32.209 you're sitting in an air -conditioned room in 00:04:32.209 --> 00:04:34.670 Maryland, but your brain is fully immersed in 00:04:34.670 --> 00:04:36.910 an active war zone. And she was incredibly good 00:04:36.910 --> 00:04:39.629 at it. The sources note she earned the Air Force 00:04:39.629 --> 00:04:42.410 Commendation Medal. The metrics on her service 00:04:42.410 --> 00:04:45.110 record are just staggering for someone in their 00:04:45.110 --> 00:04:48.410 early 20s. She aided in hundreds of enemy captures. 00:04:48.730 --> 00:04:51.709 Hundreds. And she helped identify nearly 1 ,000 00:04:51.709 --> 00:04:54.110 high -value targets. Which makes her sudden pivot 00:04:54.110 --> 00:04:57.069 to civilian life feel super jarring, honestly. 00:04:57.370 --> 00:05:00.110 Yeah, in late 2016, she gets an honorable discharge 00:05:00.110 --> 00:05:02.230 and moves down to Augusta, Georgia. She's teaching 00:05:02.230 --> 00:05:04.790 yoga, doing CrossFit. But she actually wanted 00:05:04.790 --> 00:05:07.689 to deploy to Afghanistan with an NGO. Right? 00:05:07.889 --> 00:05:11.290 Like, doing humanitarian work. She did. She wanted 00:05:11.290 --> 00:05:14.629 to use her Pashto skills to help refugees. But 00:05:14.629 --> 00:05:17.209 she hit this totally bureaucratic roadblock. 00:05:17.449 --> 00:05:19.170 Let me guess. She didn't have the right piece 00:05:19.170 --> 00:05:21.670 of paper. Exactly. She didn't have a four -year 00:05:21.670 --> 00:05:24.470 college degree, which a lot of these international 00:05:24.470 --> 00:05:27.670 NGOs rigidly require, regardless of your actual 00:05:27.670 --> 00:05:30.829 skills. Even if you literally have military commendations 00:05:30.829 --> 00:05:33.009 for speaking the language, that is so frustrating. 00:05:33.050 --> 00:05:36.829 It is. But, um... She did have one extremely 00:05:36.829 --> 00:05:39.329 lucrative asset for the private sector. Right, 00:05:39.470 --> 00:05:42.050 her active top -secret security clearance. Yeah, 00:05:42.269 --> 00:05:45.149 TSSCI clearances are basically golden tickets 00:05:45.149 --> 00:05:47.930 for military contractors. They take so much time 00:05:47.930 --> 00:05:49.610 and money to get, so if you already have one, 00:05:49.750 --> 00:05:51.490 you are fast -tracked. So that's how she gets 00:05:51.490 --> 00:05:53.870 hired by Pluribus International Corporation in 00:05:53.870 --> 00:05:56.829 early 2017. They assign her to Fort Gordon in 00:05:56.829 --> 00:05:59.930 Georgia. And her specific job there was to translate 00:05:59.930 --> 00:06:03.370 Iranian aerospace documents from Farsi into English. 00:06:03.769 --> 00:06:05.550 OK, wait, let me push back on this for a second. 00:06:06.269 --> 00:06:08.689 Because if she was explicitly hired just to translate 00:06:08.689 --> 00:06:11.370 Iranian aerospace stuff, how does she find a 00:06:11.370 --> 00:06:14.410 document about Russia? Yes. How does she end 00:06:14.410 --> 00:06:17.699 up browsing top secret files about Russian election 00:06:17.699 --> 00:06:20.040 interference. Isn't that a huge security flaw? 00:06:20.339 --> 00:06:22.300 It sounds like one, but you have to understand 00:06:22.300 --> 00:06:24.519 how the intelligence community changed after 00:06:24.519 --> 00:06:27.519 9 -11. OK. Before 9 -11, everything was heavily 00:06:27.519 --> 00:06:31.480 siloed. The CIA, FBI, NSA, they all kept their 00:06:31.480 --> 00:06:33.879 intel in separate vaults. Right, the whole failure 00:06:33.879 --> 00:06:36.660 to connect the dots thing. Exactly. So they swung 00:06:36.660 --> 00:06:39.220 the pendulum the other way. They moved from a 00:06:39.220 --> 00:06:41.800 need -to -know system to a need -to -share system. 00:06:42.040 --> 00:06:44.579 So they basically built massive intranets where 00:06:44.579 --> 00:06:48.199 all the agencies pool their data. Yes, like the 00:06:48.199 --> 00:06:52.120 SIPRnet or JWICS. The philosophy is if you pass 00:06:52.120 --> 00:06:53.980 the polygraphs and have the clearance, you are 00:06:53.980 --> 00:06:55.779 trusted. So once you're inside the firewall, 00:06:56.019 --> 00:06:58.420 you can search broadly, even outside your specific 00:06:58.420 --> 00:07:00.720 link? Precisely. It's highly efficient for cross 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:03.439 -referencing, but it also creates the exact setup 00:07:03.439 --> 00:07:06.379 where a motivated insider can pivot from Iran 00:07:06.379 --> 00:07:09.060 to domestic election security with, like, two 00:07:09.060 --> 00:07:12.779 keystrokes. Wow. OK, so she's at work and she 00:07:12.779 --> 00:07:15.339 comes across this highly classified NSA report 00:07:15.339 --> 00:07:19.199 from May 2017. And this report detailed Russian 00:07:19.199 --> 00:07:22.000 military intelligence hacking a U .S. voting 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:24.300 software supplier. It also talked about them 00:07:24.300 --> 00:07:27.769 spear phishing local election officials. right 00:07:27.769 --> 00:07:30.509 before the November 2016 election. And we should 00:07:30.509 --> 00:07:32.889 probably clarify what spearfishing is here because 00:07:32.889 --> 00:07:35.649 it's not just like regular spam. Right. It's 00:07:35.649 --> 00:07:38.529 highly targeted. They research a specific person, 00:07:39.029 --> 00:07:41.290 craft an email to look exactly like a legitimate 00:07:41.290 --> 00:07:43.670 software vendor and try to trick them into clicking 00:07:43.670 --> 00:07:46.329 a bad link. Exactly. And she reads this report 00:07:46.329 --> 00:07:48.750 and she felt this massive disconnect between 00:07:48.750 --> 00:07:51.170 the classified truth she was seeing and what 00:07:51.170 --> 00:07:53.610 the public was being told at the time. She felt 00:07:53.610 --> 00:07:56.029 the American public was being intentionally misled. 00:07:56.319 --> 00:07:59.120 So she prints it out, folds it up, and drops 00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:01.560 it in a mailbox anonymously to the news outlet, 00:08:01.800 --> 00:08:03.899 The Intercept. But mailing it was just the catalyst. 00:08:04.379 --> 00:08:06.579 The real tragedy here, especially regarding source 00:08:06.579 --> 00:08:09.360 protection, is what happened next. The media's 00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:11.600 handling of this was just, it engineered her 00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:14.319 downfall so quickly. So The Intercept published 00:08:14.319 --> 00:08:17.279 the story in June 2017, but before they published, 00:08:17.300 --> 00:08:19.519 they usually verify the document with the government. 00:08:19.800 --> 00:08:23.060 Right, which is standard, but their huge blunder 00:08:23.060 --> 00:08:25.480 was how they verified it. They didn't just read 00:08:25.480 --> 00:08:27.480 parts of it over the phone. No, they gave the 00:08:27.480 --> 00:08:30.620 government high quality, unredacted copies of 00:08:30.620 --> 00:08:33.259 the physical pages she mailed them. Which is 00:08:33.259 --> 00:08:36.159 wild. It's like, OK, imagine a criminal wipes 00:08:36.159 --> 00:08:39.440 down a crime scene perfectly, but leaves a microscopic, 00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:41.700 invisible barcode on the evidence they mailed 00:08:41.700 --> 00:08:43.980 to the cops. That is essentially what happened 00:08:43.980 --> 00:08:47.740 physically, because providing the raw pages activated 00:08:47.740 --> 00:08:50.840 a digital forensic The tracking dots, right? 00:08:50.860 --> 00:08:53.580 Yeah, machine identification codes. Back in the 00:08:53.580 --> 00:08:56.100 90s, the Secret Service worked with printer companies 00:08:56.100 --> 00:08:59.159 to embed this hidden security feature. So every 00:08:59.159 --> 00:09:01.320 time you print a page in color, the printer leaves 00:09:01.320 --> 00:09:03.580 this nearly invisible pattern of yellow dots. 00:09:04.039 --> 00:09:06.720 Exactly. And if you decode that geometric pattern, 00:09:06.860 --> 00:09:09.059 it gives you the printer's exact serial number 00:09:09.059 --> 00:09:11.460 and the date and time it was printed. So the 00:09:11.460 --> 00:09:14.080 news outlet basically just handed the NSA this 00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:17.840 microscopic barcode. Plus, the FBI saw the pages 00:09:17.840 --> 00:09:23.159 were actually which tells them immediately this 00:09:23.159 --> 00:09:25.809 isn't a digital hacker. This is an insider who 00:09:25.809 --> 00:09:28.409 printed it and smuggled it out. So the NSA sees 00:09:28.409 --> 00:09:30.850 the dots, they check their hardware logs, and 00:09:30.850 --> 00:09:33.289 they find the exact printer in Georgia. And then 00:09:33.289 --> 00:09:35.549 they run an internal SharePoint audit to see 00:09:35.549 --> 00:09:38.110 who even searched for that specific report. And 00:09:38.110 --> 00:09:40.450 out of thousands of employees, only six people 00:09:40.450 --> 00:09:43.409 had accessed it. Six people. And when they checked 00:09:43.409 --> 00:09:46.070 the email logs for those six, Reality Winner 00:09:46.070 --> 00:09:48.330 was the only one who had emailed the intercept 00:09:48.330 --> 00:09:50.919 from her personal computer. It's just a perfectly 00:09:50.919 --> 00:09:53.720 illuminated digital footprint. So the FBI raids 00:09:53.720 --> 00:09:56.200 her home on June 3rd before the article is even 00:09:56.200 --> 00:09:58.940 published. Which is terrifying. Armed agents 00:09:58.940 --> 00:10:01.860 at your quiet suburban house. And she wasn't 00:10:01.860 --> 00:10:03.779 even read her Miranda rights right away, was 00:10:03.779 --> 00:10:07.080 she? No, they claimed she wasn't formally under 00:10:07.080 --> 00:10:10.139 arrest at that exact second, though she was clearly 00:10:10.139 --> 00:10:12.240 detained. Right, and she didn't ask for a lawyer. 00:10:12.620 --> 00:10:15.360 She just engaged in this voluntary interrogation. 00:10:15.519 --> 00:10:17.539 And during that, she flat out said she wasn't 00:10:17.539 --> 00:10:19.759 trying to be this massive whistleblower like 00:10:19.759 --> 00:10:22.139 Edward Snowden. She just felt the public needed 00:10:22.139 --> 00:10:24.779 the truth. The fallout in the journalism world 00:10:24.779 --> 00:10:28.220 was massive. I mean, Glenn Greenwald, one of 00:10:28.220 --> 00:10:30.799 the founders of The Intercept, he called it a 00:10:30.799 --> 00:10:33.399 deeply embarrassing newsroom failure. He blamed 00:10:33.399 --> 00:10:36.519 it on speed and recklessness. Julian Assange 00:10:36.519 --> 00:10:39.659 even offered a cash reward for info on the reporter 00:10:39.659 --> 00:10:42.120 who supposedly burned her as a source. Because 00:10:42.120 --> 00:10:45.279 she wasn't some high -level official with political 00:10:45.279 --> 00:10:47.919 protection. She was just a young source pushed 00:10:47.919 --> 00:10:51.059 to the wall. And a news organization's most sacred 00:10:51.059 --> 00:10:54.429 duty is protecting their source. Giving the FBI 00:10:54.429 --> 00:10:57.990 the raw, creased document was basically drawing 00:10:57.990 --> 00:11:00.389 a map right to her desk. So she gets arrested. 00:11:00.600 --> 00:11:02.759 And the full weight of the federal justice system 00:11:02.759 --> 00:11:05.019 just crushes down on her. She's charged under 00:11:05.019 --> 00:11:08.759 the Espionage Act. Specifically for willful retention 00:11:08.759 --> 00:11:11.240 and transmission of national defense information. 00:11:11.740 --> 00:11:14.740 And her first huge hurdle was bail. Yeah. She 00:11:14.740 --> 00:11:16.980 was denied bail twice. They often deny bail in 00:11:16.980 --> 00:11:19.440 Espionage Act cases by painting the person as 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:21.580 a massive threat to the state. And they use her 00:11:21.580 --> 00:11:23.580 personal diary entries to do that, right? Yeah. 00:11:23.700 --> 00:11:25.639 They found her private diary during the raid. 00:11:25.799 --> 00:11:28.279 In it, she had allegedly fantasized about burning 00:11:28.279 --> 00:11:30.200 down the White House. Oh, wow. And she wrote 00:11:30.200 --> 00:11:32.559 something about having a vision to support a 00:11:32.559 --> 00:11:35.539 fundamentalist Islamic state. Which, wait, so 00:11:35.539 --> 00:11:37.679 they use this to suggest she might be a terrorist 00:11:37.679 --> 00:11:40.340 sympathizer. The judge certainly leveraged it 00:11:40.340 --> 00:11:42.980 to suggest she was a flight risk or had dangerous 00:11:42.980 --> 00:11:45.700 sympathies. But the psychological whiplash there 00:11:45.700 --> 00:11:48.620 is crazy. She's this veteran who helped capture 00:11:48.620 --> 00:11:51.779 enemy combatants for years. And now her own government 00:11:51.779 --> 00:11:54.500 is calling her a terrorist threat over some venting 00:11:54.500 --> 00:11:57.059 in a private diary. And the craziest part is, 00:11:57.220 --> 00:11:59.960 the prosecutors openly admitted they didn't actually 00:11:59.960 --> 00:12:02.539 believe it. Wait, really? They admitted it on 00:12:02.539 --> 00:12:05.240 the record? Yes. They explicitly stated they 00:12:05.240 --> 00:12:08.059 were not suggesting she was a jihadist or a terrorist. 00:12:08.659 --> 00:12:11.460 But the legal mechanism allowed them to use those 00:12:11.460 --> 00:12:13.759 private writings to keep her in a county jail 00:12:13.759 --> 00:12:16.639 cell. That is just wild. And her defense team 00:12:16.639 --> 00:12:18.960 had to deal with absurd hurdles too, right? Because 00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:21.159 of the classification loss. It was a logistical 00:12:21.159 --> 00:12:23.750 nightmare. Because she was charged with leaking 00:12:23.750 --> 00:12:26.570 classified info, her lawyers couldn't even openly 00:12:26.570 --> 00:12:28.909 discuss the case details. Even though the document 00:12:28.909 --> 00:12:30.570 was already published on the Internet for the 00:12:30.570 --> 00:12:33.450 whole world to read? Exactly. The Espionage Act 00:12:33.450 --> 00:12:36.350 does not care about the public domain. Once it's 00:12:36.350 --> 00:12:39.350 stamped classified, it's a state secret. So they 00:12:39.350 --> 00:12:42.080 literally had to meet? in a SCIF, right? Yes, 00:12:42.080 --> 00:12:44.820 a sensitive, compartmented information facility. 00:12:44.960 --> 00:12:47.519 Which is basically this highly engineered, acoustic 00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:50.720 suppressed vault where you can't have any phones. 00:12:51.039 --> 00:12:53.659 They had to go into a vault to talk about a news 00:12:53.659 --> 00:12:55.360 article I could read on my phone on the subway. 00:12:55.639 --> 00:12:57.700 It's totally absurd, but those are the rules. 00:12:58.419 --> 00:13:00.580 And between that pressure and being locked up 00:13:00.580 --> 00:13:03.440 without bail, she realized a trial was impossible. 00:13:03.740 --> 00:13:07.529 So in June 2018, she pleads guilty. and she gets 00:13:07.529 --> 00:13:10.529 63 months in federal prison. Over five years. 00:13:10.669 --> 00:13:12.950 The longest sentence ever for leaking to the 00:13:12.950 --> 00:13:14.990 media. Okay, here's where it gets really interesting 00:13:14.990 --> 00:13:18.090 though. Can we unpack the absolute irony of the 00:13:18.090 --> 00:13:20.409 political twist that happened next? Oh, the paradox 00:13:20.409 --> 00:13:22.509 here is fascinating. Because the document she 00:13:22.509 --> 00:13:24.350 leaked was about interference that allegedly 00:13:24.350 --> 00:13:26.149 helped the administration currently in power 00:13:26.149 --> 00:13:28.470 at the time. Right. President Donald Trump had 00:13:28.470 --> 00:13:30.690 frequently downplayed the Russian interference 00:13:30.690 --> 00:13:33.370 stuff. But then suddenly... Trump tweets out 00:13:33.370 --> 00:13:36.289 support for her. He did. He called her punishment 00:13:36.289 --> 00:13:39.649 so unfair and compared it to how his political 00:13:39.649 --> 00:13:42.230 rivals were treated. He actually called her actions 00:13:42.230 --> 00:13:45.539 small potatoes. How does that even happen? the 00:13:45.539 --> 00:13:47.740 leader of the administration defending the person 00:13:47.740 --> 00:13:50.700 who went to jail to expose the interference that 00:13:50.700 --> 00:13:52.679 supposedly helped them. It really just exposes 00:13:52.679 --> 00:13:55.139 how hyper -partisanship works. Whistleblowers 00:13:55.139 --> 00:13:58.159 stop being people and just become pawns in these 00:13:58.159 --> 00:14:00.320 larger narratives. Right. The actual leak doesn't 00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:02.580 even matter anymore. Exactly. It's just about 00:14:02.580 --> 00:14:06.120 how the story can be weaponized. Trump used her 00:14:06.120 --> 00:14:08.980 severe sentence to argue that there was a deep 00:14:08.980 --> 00:14:11.159 state justice system with a double standard. 00:14:11.360 --> 00:14:13.820 And Winner, who is staring down five years in 00:14:13.820 --> 00:14:17.600 a cage, obviously grabs the lifeline. Of course 00:14:17.600 --> 00:14:20.179 she does. She publicly thanked him and told her 00:14:20.179 --> 00:14:22.779 lawyers to push for clemency based on his tweet. 00:14:22.879 --> 00:14:25.159 Because when you're locked up, ideological purity 00:14:25.159 --> 00:14:27.259 goes out the window. You take help from anywhere. 00:14:27.659 --> 00:14:29.659 Unfortunately, a pardon never came. She was sent 00:14:29.659 --> 00:14:32.299 to a federal medical facility in Texas. Tarzwell, 00:14:32.419 --> 00:14:34.500 right. Yeah, they sent her there so she could 00:14:34.500 --> 00:14:36.940 get specialized treatment for bulimia and to 00:14:36.940 --> 00:14:39.779 be closer to her family. But then the COVID -19 00:14:39.779 --> 00:14:42.679 pandemic hits. And being in a crowded prison 00:14:42.679 --> 00:14:45.419 during a pandemic is a nightmare. Her team filed 00:14:45.419 --> 00:14:47.899 an urgent petition for compassionate release 00:14:47.899 --> 00:14:51.139 in early 2020. They pointed out she had a history 00:14:51.139 --> 00:14:53.659 of respiratory illness and a compromised immune 00:14:53.659 --> 00:14:56.039 system. But the bureaucracy just rejected it. 00:14:56.110 --> 00:14:58.629 The judge said she hadn't exhausted her administrative 00:14:58.629 --> 00:15:00.750 options with the Bureau of Prisons first. And 00:15:00.750 --> 00:15:03.830 of course, the virus gets into the facility and 00:15:03.830 --> 00:15:06.590 she ends up testing positive for COVID -19 in 00:15:06.590 --> 00:15:09.669 July 2020. She recovered from the acute phase, 00:15:09.870 --> 00:15:13.009 but she had lingering respiratory issues for 00:15:13.009 --> 00:15:16.409 months. Man. So she survives the rest of her 00:15:16.409 --> 00:15:19.250 sentence. And in the summer of 2021, she finally 00:15:19.250 --> 00:15:21.610 gets transferred to a halfway house in San Antonio. 00:15:21.750 --> 00:15:23.409 And she was officially released from federal 00:15:23.409 --> 00:15:25.789 custody later that year. Which really shifts 00:15:25.789 --> 00:15:28.909 her story from this punitive legal nightmare 00:15:28.909 --> 00:15:31.710 into her becoming kind of a cultural touchstone. 00:15:31.789 --> 00:15:34.769 Her legacy is huge now. She wrote a memoir, there's 00:15:34.769 --> 00:15:37.250 a documentary about her, and the FBI interrogation 00:15:37.250 --> 00:15:39.629 transcript was actually turned into a stage play 00:15:39.629 --> 00:15:41.950 verbatim. I think there are feature films too, 00:15:42.090 --> 00:15:43.710 just trying to capture all the contradictions 00:15:43.710 --> 00:15:46.190 of who she is. She really became a symbol of 00:15:46.190 --> 00:15:48.970 the modern surveillance state. Going from a high 00:15:48.970 --> 00:15:52.210 school kid in Texas, to a drone operator, to 00:15:52.210 --> 00:15:55.629 federal inmate, to a cultural icon, it traces 00:15:55.629 --> 00:15:58.610 the whole arc of post -9 -11 America. It really 00:15:58.610 --> 00:16:01.009 does. But, you know, as we wrap up this deep 00:16:01.009 --> 00:16:03.830 dive, there is one final, really provocative 00:16:03.830 --> 00:16:06.669 thought I want you, the listener, to mull over. 00:16:06.990 --> 00:16:08.950 Because when you look at how she was caught, 00:16:09.149 --> 00:16:12.250 It wasn't some crazy spy counterintelligence 00:16:12.250 --> 00:16:14.990 sting. No, she was taken down by routine SharePoint 00:16:14.990 --> 00:16:17.789 logs and microscopic yellow dots from a standard 00:16:17.789 --> 00:16:20.570 office printer. Right. And it forces us to ask. 00:16:21.049 --> 00:16:24.289 In an era where need to share means every single 00:16:24.289 --> 00:16:26.789 click is logged and analog printers leave invisible 00:16:26.789 --> 00:16:29.309 barcodes on every page. Is the era of the truly 00:16:29.309 --> 00:16:32.250 anonymous whistleblower entirely dead? If the 00:16:32.250 --> 00:16:34.129 digital architecture basically guarantees you 00:16:34.129 --> 00:16:36.230 will be caught and the Espionage Act guarantees 00:16:36.230 --> 00:16:38.610 you will go to prison, who is going to be willing 00:16:38.610 --> 00:16:40.429 to step forward with the truth in the future? 00:16:40.830 --> 00:16:43.110 That is the chilling part. The system she was 00:16:43.110 --> 00:16:45.509 up against ensures there are no invisible messengers 00:16:45.509 --> 00:16:48.110 anymore. Yeah. Keep that in mind the next time 00:16:48.110 --> 00:16:48.649 you hit print.