Reality Winner Served More Than Four Years in Prison for Leaking a Single Document on 2016 Russian Election Interference

This Is Why She Did It



The whistleblower shares a detailed account of her motivations—from military PTSD to Donald Trump’s misinformation—for the first time, in this exclusive excerpt from her memoir, I Am Not Your Enemy.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/reality-winner

https://archive.ph/X1208



At the outset of 2017, I was 25 years old, living in Georgia, and excited about a new career. The year ended with me in handcuffs and shackles. I would receive the longest federal prison sentence ever imposed on an American citizen for releasing government information to the media. That wasn’t quite my plan.

There is no typical whistle-blower. Sometimes people like to group me with other individuals who have leaked classified national security information to the media: Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, and Chelsea Manning are the best known. I have spoken with Ellsberg, Drake, Manning, and other whistle-blowers at various points in my post-leak life. I have come to believe that far more separates us than unites us. The leakers I have spoken with have different personality types and come from radically diverse backgrounds. There are only two things we have in common. The first is that we revealed secrets, but we have plenty of company in that. The other thing uniting us, which is far less common, is that we got caught.



I deeply believed in America’s national security system; I never wanted to destroy it. Following six years in the military, I received the Air Force Commendation Medal for “provid[ing] over 1,900 hours of enemy intelligence exploitation and assist[ing] in geolocating 120 enemy combatants during 734 airborne sorties [air missions].” Exactly what I did to earn that commendation is something I am unable to reveal for legal reasons. I can only quote this NSA-approved Commendation Medal certificate and leave the rest to interpretation. My commendation goes on to say: “She facilitated 816 intelligence missions, 3,236 time sensitive reports, and removing more than 100 enemies from the battlefield. Furthermore, while deployed to support Combatant Commander’s requirements, Airman Winner was appointed as the lead deployment language analyst, producing 2,500 reports, aiding in 650 enemy captures, 600 enemies killed in action and identifying 900 high value targets.”

That’s a lot of military-speak, so I’ll translate: I helped kill a lot of human beings. Hundreds, possibly thousands. I developed post-traumatic stress disorder doing it. As a child and young adult, I dreamed of receiving awards for helping people, or saving them. But that wasn’t how it turned out. I helped the United States government kill people. I was good at it. So good that they gave me an award for it. But then I shared some information with the American people, and the US government felt that was a much worse thing to do. They decided I was an enemy of the country. My Pokémon-loving, yoga-practicing, vegetable-subsisting complex personality got erased. To quote my mother’s sardonic comment to a reporter about the chasm separating who I really am from the traitor the government claimed I was: “The world’s biggest terrorist has a Pikachu bedspread.”

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