Federal contractor charged with leaking classified NSA information

A federal contractor has been charged with leaking a classified National Security Agency document on Russian hacking before the 2016 presidential election to an online media outlet, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

Reality Leigh Winner, 25, of Pluribus International Corporation in Georgia, admitted to purposely leaking the information, prosecutors said, and she was arrested on June 3. "Releasing classified material without authorization threatens our nation's security and undermines public faith in government," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a statement Monday. "People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation."

Winner had top secret security clearance, and an internal audit found that she was one of just six people who printed the leaked document, and the sole person to have made contact via email with a news outlet. While the Department of Justice did not say who she leaked the document to, several people with knowledge of the situation told CNN the information she leaked was the basis for an article The Intercept published on Monday regarding a cyberattack by Russian military intelligence against a U.S. voting software supplier before last year's election.

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