Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document

JUN 5 2017, 6:37 PM ET
Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document
by PETE WILLIAMS, KEN DILANIAN and TOM WINTER

Barely an hour after a news organization published an article about a Top Secret National Security Agency document on Russian hacking, the Justice Department announced charges against a 25-year-old government contractor who a senior federal official says was the leaker of the document.

The May 5, 2017 intelligence document published by The Intercept, an online news organization, describes new details about Russian efforts to hack voting systems in the U.S a week prior to the 2016 presidential election. While the document doesn’t say the hacking changed any votes, it “raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results.”

Even as the document was ricocheting around Washington, the Justice Department announced that a criminal complaint was filed in the Southern District of Georgia charging Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor, with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.

via Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document – NBC News