Contractor faces criminal charge over leak

She sent NSA report on Russian hacking to news outlet, Justice Department says

WASHINGTON -- An intelligence contractor was charged with sending a classified report to the news media, the Justice Department announced Monday, the first criminal leak case under President Donald Trump.

Trump has called for the department to crack down on leaks, complaining that they are undermining his administration. His grievances have contributed to a sometimes tense relationship with the intelligence agencies he oversees.

The Justice Department announced the case against the contractor, Reality Leigh Winner, 25, about an hour after online national-security news outlet The Intercept published a May 5 intelligence report from the National Security Agency.

The report described two cyberattacks by Russia's military intelligence unit, the GRU -- one in August against a company that sells voter registration-related software and another, a few days before the election, against 122 local election officials.

The Intercept said the NSA report had been submitted to it anonymously. Shortly after the article was published, the Justice Department said the FBI had arrested Winner at her house in Augusta, Ga., on Saturday. It also said she had confessed to an agent that she had printed out a May 5 intelligence file and mailed it to an online news outlet.

Winner's attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, declined to confirm whether she is accused of leaking the NSA report received by The Intercept. He also declined to name the federal agency for which Winner worked.

"My client has no [criminal] history, so it's not as if she has a pattern of having done anything like this before," Nichols said in a phone interview Monday. "She is a very good person. All this craziness has happened all of a sudden."

An accompanying FBI affidavit said she has worked for Pluribus International Corp. at a government facility in Georgia since Feb. 13. While it did not identify the agency or the facility, the NSA uses Pluribus contractors and opened a branch facility in the suburbs outside Augusta in 2012.

In the affidavit, FBI agent Justin Garrick said the government was notified of the leaked report by the news outlet that received it. He said the agency that housed the report determined tjat only six employees had made physical copies. Winner was one of them. Garrick said investigators found Winner had exchanged email with the news outlet using her work computer.

Garrick's affidavit said he interviewed Winner at her home Saturday and she "admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue" and mailing it to the news outlet.

Asked if Winner had confessed, Nichols said, "If there is a confession, the government has not shown it to me."

In a statement, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, praised the operation.

"Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nation's security and undermines public faith in government," he said. "People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation."

Information for this article was contributed by of Charlie Savage of The New York Times; and by Deb Riechmann and Russ Bynum of The Associated Press.

A Section on 06/06/2017

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