Reality Winner, whistleblower and American hero, deserves a pardon
The Trump administration tried to make an example of her and also to send a warning to other whistleblowers not to do it. President Joe Biden can make it right.
I want to point out at the start that this idea did not originate with me. Two days ago, former Washington Post and New York Times media critic and analyst Margaret Sullivan penned an Opinion piece in The Guardian, “Joe Biden should pardon Reality Winner for her actions as a whistleblower.” The subtitle says it all: “The leaker went to jail for a patriotic, if illegal, act. She has a lot to offer the world if she’s allowed to move on.”
Sullivan lays out a succinct but accurate description of what Winner did, why she did it, and why she was so severely punished for it:
“Because Donald Trump wanted to make an example of her, the US air force veteran and former National Security Agency (NSA) translator was hit with the longest prison sentence ever given for leaking government information to the media.
Her crime? She sent an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 elections to the investigative news organization the Intercept; the report indicated that Russian hackers had gained access to state-level voter information and apparently intended to use a “phishing” operation to hack it.
‘A public service’ was how the well-respected investigative reporter James Risen described what Winner did. After all, he noted, a US Senate report concluded that most state election officials found out about the Russian hacking threat from the press, not federal officials, ‘who didn’t bother to notify them’”
I had the great fortune, and also sadness, of seeing the play “This is a Room” in an off-Broadway performance a few years ago. Taken directly from FBI recordings of her arrest, it was a tragic portrayal of a woman who committed an act of conscience, slowly but surely realizing what the consequences of her courage were going to be.
It was “No good deed goes unpunished” on steroids.
This is also as good a time as any to say that I will never forgive the reporters and editors of The Intercept, to whom Winner leaked the document, for their stupidity and carelessness, which led to her being easily identified by authorities. Most beginning journalism students (I have taught many of them) would know better.
Biden can find precedent for pardoning Winner in his friend Barack Obama’s action in commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of similar leaking of (thousands more) documents critical to the American public’s understanding of U.S. actions during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But much as I applaud Sullivan’s call for a pardon in The Guardian, one does have to ask why it ended up in that publication rather than in the Times or the Post. It makes me wonder if she tried at those publications and was turned down, or if, being more optimistic, her piece will soon be republished in a mainstream U.S. media outlet.
I will try to ask her, and I hope others will as well.
Meanwhile, Biden has a number of weeks to do the right thing. Will he?
Perhaps if enough brave patriots like Reality Winner and astute journalists like Margaret Sullivan ask him to, he just might.
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