NSA Contractor arrested in Leak Case

An employee of a National Security Agency contractor in Augusta, Ga., was charged under the Espionage Act (NYT) in the first criminal case the Trump administration has brought for leaking classified information to the press. A criminal complaint says Reality Leigh Winner, 25, unlawfully removed and transmitted "classified national defense information" (Justice.gov PDF) to an online news outlet and says Winner confessed her actions. News of her Saturday arrest came on the same day the online news outlet Intercept published a leaked NSA document charging that Russian military intelligence carried out an August 2016 cyberattack in an apparent effort to access voting technology. An unnamed U.S. official said the Intercept’s source was Winner (WSJ), whose mother said she had been a linguist for the Air Force (Guardian) before taking a job with the defense contractor Pluribus International Corporation.