An US government contractor has been charged with mishandling classified information, with authorities charging her with providing a top-secret NSA document to a news organisation.
Reality Leigh Winner, 25, was arrested on Saturday and the charge was laid on Monday. It said she had gathered, transmitted, or lost defence information.
The charge was made known soon after The Intercept posted a story based on a partly redacted NSA document that claimed Russia had interfered in the US election process last year.
While neither The Intercept nor the document was identified in court documents filed in Georgia, the Washington Post said someone who was aware of the details had confirmed these.
{loadposition sam08}Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein said the investigators’ fast work “allowed us quickly to identify and arrest the defendant. Releasing classified material without authorisation threatens our nation’s security and undermines public faith in government.
"People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation."
Court documents said Winner had a top-security clearance as a member of the Air Force on active duty from January 2013 until February 2017 when she began a stint with Pluribus International Corporation, a government contractor, in Georgia.
She is in jail pending a detention hearing later this week, according to her lawyer, Titus Nichols who expected that the government would seek to keep her behind bars pending trial.
Winner was questioned by the FBI at her home in Augusta on 3 June during which she allegedly admitted “intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue", according to the affidavit.
She also allegedly admitted “removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it from Augusta, Georgia, to the news outlet, which she knew was not authorised to receive or possess the documents".
The affidavit also said Winner allegedly acknowledged that “she knew the contents of the reporting could be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation".