Skip to main content

Reality Winner is a former Air Force language specialist who was working for an NSA contractor when she stole a single document and sent it to The Intercept. The document described supposed Russian attempts to ‘hack the US election’ and so this one act of whistleblowing or espionage, however you want to see it, fits into multiple convenient political narratives. For some, she is a dangerous leaker. For others she is a hero defending the US against those dastardly Russians. In this month’s subscriber-only podcast we take a closer look at Reality Winner in light of a newly-available transcript of her first interview with the FBI. Was she as politically motivated as some have made out? Was she a naive young women who made one stupid mistake?