Baltimore
On Tuesday, Golden opened a text from a friend telling him to look up Winner online. He learned that his 25-year-old former student had been charged with giving reporters a top-secret National Security Agency file about Russian attempts to interfere in last year’s election.
Winner, an NSA contractor and Air Force veteran who recently was stationed in Maryland, is the third 20-something intelligence community professional with ties to Maryland accused in recent years of leaking classified documents to the media.
The case, like those of Edward Snowden and the former Bradley Manning before it, could offer a glimpse at what some analysts say is an emerging problem for the intelligence community: Young workers who are granted security clearances, discover classified information they find objectionable and take their concerns to the public.
Kalev Leetaru, a scholar at the George Washington University described a culture clash between a world of spies laboring on secret information in anonymity and that of the young, accustomed to oversharing on social media.
Winner, who worked for the NSA in Georgia as an employee of the private contractor Pluribus International, held a top-secret clearance but was active online, where she apparently shared posts supportive of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and critical of President Donald Trump.
The risk for the intelligence community, Leetaru said, is “a young person starting off sees something they don’t like, and they don’t have the same respect and believe in the notion of secrecy and classification.”
“I think that is something we’re going to see more in the future,” he said.
Winner’s motivations are unclear. She was being held in a federal facility in Georgia on Tuesday. Her lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Elizabeth Goitein, a national security researcher at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, warned against drawing neat conclusions about leak cases.
“We have this notion that anyone who leaks information is a traitor or a hero,” she said. In reality, she said, people have a range of reasons for spilling secrets.
A Facebook page in her name includes posts indicating concern about Russia’s suspected meddling in the presidential election — “On a positive note, this Tuesday when we become the United States of the Russian Federation, Olympic lifting will be the national sport,” one post reads — but they’re scattered among messages about cats, workouts and trips to Ellicott City.
Golden, her former yoga instructor, said he is convinced Winner’s motives were pure.
“I think Reality would only do what is right for human beings in general,” he said. “I’m disappointed that the story has been about leaks and Trump and Russia when it should be about this young woman who is definitely not a bad person in any way, who is sitting in a jail cell over this.”
Winner and Golden didn’t discuss politics, he said, but Winner emailed him during the 2015 riots in Baltimore and expressed what he called “compassionate concerns.”
Golden said Winner was also outspoken about the Islamic State.
“One of her main purposes in life was being a part of the fight against ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the terrorist group.
Winner has been charged under the Espionage Act, a law Goitein said was written to outlaw passing information to enemies but has been applied far more broadly.
Goitein said you can debate whether Winner’s alleged leak was sensible, but “to put her on par with Aldrich Ames” — a CIA mole who aided Russia in the 1980s and ’90s — “seems clearly wrongheaded.”
The document Winner is accused of leaking was published on Monday by The Intercept. The online news site also worked closely with Snowden, the NSA contractor who revealed details of the Fort Meade-based agency’s surveillance programs.
The file that Winner allegedly leaked provides new insight into what the NSA concluded were attempts by Russian to meddle in the United States’ election infrastructure.