{"id":12518,"date":"2018-08-23T17:23:03","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T17:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12518"},"modified":"2018-08-23T17:23:03","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T17:23:03","slug":"us-woman-gets-five-years-in-prison-for-leaking-nsa-document","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12518","title":{"rendered":"US woman gets five years in prison for leaking NSA document"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A former US government contractor who pleaded guilty to mailing a classified\u00a0report to a news organisation has been sentenced to more than five years in prison as part of a deal with prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Reality Winner, 26, pleaded guilty in June to a single count of transmitting national security information.<\/p>\n

The former Air Force translator worked as a contractor at a National Security Agency’s (NSA<\/a>) office in Augusta, Georgia, when she printed a classified report and left the building with it. Winner told the FBI<\/a> she mailed the document to an online news outlet.<\/p>\n

In court on Thursday, Winner apologised and acknowledged that what she did was wrong, taking responsibility for “an undeniable mistake that I made”.<\/p>\n

“I would like to apologise profusely for my actions,” she told the judge. “My actions were a cruel betrayal of my nation’s trust in me.”<\/p>\n

Authorities never identified the news organisation.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department announced Winner’s June 2017 arrest the same day The Intercept reported on a secret NSA document.<\/p>\n

It detailed Russian government efforts to penetrate a Florida-based supplier of voting software and the accounts of election officials ahead of the 2016 US presidential election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The NSA report was dated May 5, the same as the document Winner had leaked.<\/p>\n

US intelligence agencies later confirmed Russian meddling.<\/p>\n

Longest sentence ever imposed<\/h2>\n

The judge’s sentence was in line with a plea agreement between Winner’s defence team and prosecutors, who recommended she serve five years and three months behind bars.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said in a court filing that punishment would amount to “the longest sentence served by a federal defendant for an unauthorised disclosure to the media”.<\/p>\n

Among other leak cases cited by prosecutors in court documents, the stiffest prior sentence was three years and seven months in prison given to former FBI explosives expert Donald Sachtleben.<\/p>\n

Secret information he leaked<\/a> included intelligence he gave to The Associated Press news agency for a story about a US operation in Yemen<\/a> in 2012.<\/p>\n

Winner spent a year in jail before reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors.<\/p>\n

Her lawyers had argued for Winner to be released on bond, noting she had no criminal record and had served honourably in the military.<\/p>\n

The judge sided with prosecutors who said Winner posed a potential flight risk and may have stolen other classified documents.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors also used Winner’s own words against her, including a Facebook chat in which she once wrote to her sister: “Look, I only say I hate America like 3 times a day.”<\/p>\n

Despite prosecutors’ warnings that Winner may have stolen other US secrets, she was never charged with any additional crimes.<\/p>\n

Winner grew up in Kingsville, Texas, and enlisted in the Air Force after graduating from high school. Her parents said she became a linguist, speaking Arabic and Farsi, and spent four years assigned to the NSA at Fort Mead, Maryland. During that time, Winner provided real-time translation to Americans conducting field missions.<\/p>\n

After leaving the military, Winner moved to Augusta to become a civilian contractor for the NSA.<\/p>\n

Court records say Winner translated documents from Farsi to English for the agency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former US government contractor who pleaded guilty to mailing a classified\u00a0report to a news organisation has been sentenced to more than five years in prison as part of a deal with prosecutors. Reality Winner, 26, pleaded guilty in June to a single count of transmitting national security information. The former Air Force translator worked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}