NSA leaker who mailed doc outlining Russian hacking gets 5 years in prison

Reality Winner, the intelligence contractor who leaked to The Intercept and was quickly caught in June 2017 thanks to microdot printing, was sentenced to 63 months in prison on Thursday.

She had pleaded guilty on June 21 to a single count of unlawful retention and transmission of national defense information.

The information that Winner provided to The Intercept resulted in this June 5, 2017 news story: "Top-Secret NSA Report details Russian hacking effort days before 2016 election."

Winner had been a contractor for Pluribus International Corporation, a company that provides analytical, translation, and cyberwarfare development services to the intelligence community. A veteran of the Air Force, Winner held a TOP SECRET//SCI security clearance.

In a statement, The Intercept said that its story "played a crucial role in alerting local election officials who had been in the dark about the cyberattack—a public service that was implicitly acknowledged in a recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee."

Winner’s lawyers characterized her not as someone who was a foreign spy, instead they noted in a sentencing memorandum: "Reality was a dedicated public servant and veteran who made a poor decision on this one occasion and she has taken full responsibility for that unfortunate decision."