BILLBOARD: "I think we can all agree that the result of Edward Snowden spending the last ten years, ten, fourteen years in Russia is not a success.

I think the flaw in the system is viewing the Intercept as having any capability of handling sensitive information.

I just was too young to see it at the time, but hopefully having three, four whistleblowers now, living in really dire conditions as a result of their, not even inability, but their interest in creating a scandal around personalities rather than journalism and protection of sources."

Francesca: Reality winner, welcome to Writer's Voice.

Reality Winner: Thank you so much for having me.

FR: You know, first, I just want to thank you for writing this book, and for what you did.

I read in your book that you regret leaking that document to the Intercept while working for an NSA contractor, and I can understand why, given all the terrible things you went through, but I want to tell you that as an American who cares deeply about this country, I am so grateful that you made that choice, because it really was the right thing for the country, even if it wasn't the right thing for you.

So, thank you.

RW: I really appreciate that.

FR: Your memoir, I Am Not Your Enemy, is a powerful book, not just about your experience, but also about what it says regarding the erosion of our democracy, the Espionage Act, our military policy, and of course government secrecy.

I'd like to start with what led you into this world, before we talk about the leak and the consequences and everything else.

So, you joined the Air Force right out of high school.

You said your motivation was humanitarian.

Tell us what you mean by humanitarian and what led to that decision.

RW: So, it really all began with 9-11.

As a millennial, that event happened right around the age that we all realized that there is a bigger world around us and we can actually start understanding, maybe not the news itself, but our parents' reaction to the news.

And that really hit me hard, especially when my father would talk about it, because he was not only a psychologist, but he was a theologist.

And he really wanted to break down the intersection of the psychology of why people do what they do and the faith that may motivate it or influence it.

So, as a 10-year-old, I was giving some pretty heavy discourse on 9-11 and his own speculations and theories as to why that took place.

And that was something that stayed with me throughout all of my formative years, my desire to learn Arabic.

And luckily, my older stepbrother had just joined the Air Force and he became a Russian linguist.

So, as I was approaching my senior year of high school, all my friends were picking out their colleges and I knew I wanted to be a linguist and I knew there was a school, the Defense Language Institute, that would fast-track me and I would get paid to go there as opposed to having to pay to go to college.

Because, of course, not only did we experience 9-11, but we also were in high school during the 2008 recession.

So, the mixture of having to make my own way in the world and to find a way to become educated in a world of limited financial resources is what led me into the military.

But also, I felt like the closest I could get to this conflict out of which 9-11 had come was to go to war, to be part of this conflict itself.

And I had always imagined myself jumping horizontally into another field of work, starting military but ending humanitarian, but getting as close to Afghanistan as I could as quickly as I could.

FR: And once you went to the Defense Language Institute, you know, I was really struck by your descriptions of the rampant incompetence in how the military operates in the book.

I mean, starting with that institute, your descriptions paint a picture of an institution that's deeply dysfunctional and did not even use you with the talents that you have.

I mean, you wanted to go to Afghanistan.

You learned Pashto.

There are very few people who even know how to speak that language, and yet the Air Force didn't use your talents to the best purpose.

RW: Yeah, I mean, I think about the Defense Language Institute fondly.

It was kind of like a real-world Hogwarts.

I know we don't reference Harry Potter that much anymore, but as something that I grew up reading, it was like there's four houses, there's four branches of the military, we're always competing, and then very much like the different professors in the Wizarding World, you had no idea how your instructor was going to come in and teach the language that day.

And definitely the biggest theme of the military is you feel like every single day they wake up and have to remember how to function.

It's never that smooth or efficient as you would imagine, but it was a wonderful place to spend my 19, 20, 21 years.

I will say that that is the harsh reality of the military, to be kicking and screaming for a particular job field.

And not even really being able to prove yourself to get into a job, it's they're putting bodies into positions, and if you don't excel, they're not really worried about it.

They'll find somebody else eventually or, you know, you'll move on to the next position.

It's really not where you are going to find your place to shine.

But, of course, I did.

I knew that I learned Farsi at the DLI and that I didn't want to work Iranian missions.

I wanted Afghanistan.

So the first chance I got to take this experimental Pashto course, you know, they condensed a 63-week course into 20 weeks, and I did it, and I got perfect scores, and I was immediately put on an Afghan mission.

Just every step of the way, I made something happen for myself.

There were just other realities happening as well.

Like I remember an intelligence school asking my instructors, how do I do human intelligence?

How can I be boots on the ground?

How can I go in with the raids and talk to these insurgents?

First of all, they said, you're in the wrong branch.

You should have joined the army.

Second of all, that's reserved for officers.

I was too young at the time, but they didn't need to tell me, you're a woman, they're not going to talk to you.

I was very naive in this world that I was living in as far as what war I was trying to become a part of.

FR: Could you say more about that?

You wanted to talk to the insurgents with what purpose in mind?

RW: Honestly, I think I had imagined that as a low-level human intelligence debriefer or interrogator, I would somehow be the one that figured out what makes people commit incredibly cruel, widespread violence and terrorism.

I just wanted to know why this is happening.

And to me, in my early 20s, it was just, go talk to people, you know, follow the violence.

You'll figure it out eventually.

I was definitely shaped by my father's worldview.

He was born in 1944 at a time in which if you wanted to get to the other side of the country, you go stand by the road and put out your arm.

You know, you may go to college or you can just jump from job to job and eventually things will work out.

Definitely not like the world that we live in today.

FR: Right.

And how did that relate to how you saw, well, how you came to see the war in Afghanistan?

Because in this book, Reality Winner, in I Am Not Your Enemy, I think you really do paint a devastating portrait of the mistakes.

I mean, even the Defense Language Institute, you were taught by people who were Afghans, and they were very clear that they felt the United States was going about this in the wrong way.

RW: I mean, I think one of the definitive moments that I had in understanding that I wanted to see the war from the inside out and then rise high enough to change it entirely was in 2012, when I read the book Taliban by Ahmed Rashid, where it was talking about the parts of Afghanistan from which Osama bin Laden was operating and the relationship that Al-Qaeda had to the Taliban, in that, you know, when the leader of the Taliban was shown the twin towers coming down, he didn't know that buildings could even be that big.

And that, to me, said, you know, being...

And this, I read this book the summer after Osama bin Laden had been killed, and here we were still in Afghanistan.

And that, to me, was the biggest sign that, you know, we are fighting the wrong war, and we might actually be perpetuating terrorism overseas.

FR: And so how did it feel when you discovered that?

RW: It told me that the only way to fix it would be from within.

FR: Yeah, you write that you wanted to be in the room with cruel people where they make the cruel decisions.

You wanted a seat at that table.

I was struck by that because you certainly don't appear to be a cruel person.

In fact, I mean, you're the kind of person, as you make very clear in this memoir, who's really motivated by wanting to do good for other people.

So how did you understand your ability to change the frame among the people who are making the cruel decisions?

RW: I wanted to be the one voice in the room pushing back, kind of like the authorization for the use of military force after 9-11.

There was one vote against it.

I was just wanting to be that one person so that even if I wasn't successful, I knew that I tried in the absolute best and most difficult way possible and just now, you know, after the withdrawal in 2021, as a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and the war against terrorism, there are just so many of us out there looking at the country and the state it's in and just wondering what any of that was for.

FR: Yes. Do you think that has something to do with the disenchantment that so many young people feel with our institutions?

RW: I'm not sure if the result of Afghanistan itself is resonating as loudly with the younger generations as perhaps it should, but I can say for veterans my age who still cannot explain what we were doing in Afghanistan if we were not nation-building, which if you read the Afghanistan papers that was published in 2021, the memos of Donald Rumsfeld where he said adamantly, we are not nation-building and we were not at war for women's rights and we were not trying to put in a puppet government, yet soon as we withdrew from the country, those were the three things that collapsed first.

So if we weren't there to do that, then why did we stay for 10 years after the death of Osama bin Laden?

It's just something I wake up and ask myself every single day.

FR: So you received a commendation medal from the Air Force for, as you put it, quote, helping the United States government kill people, unquote.

Tell us about your job and how that job made you feel.

How did that experience shape your view of the mission you were serving?

RW: I can't speak much about the mission itself.

What I can say is that we were the ears, and we were primarily protecting troops on the ground.

And because we were so compartmentalized in the scope of our activities, it did not lend itself to much broader discussions or conversations about strategy as a whole.

It was just troops are in danger, we do what we do.

And, of course, it's been very vague ever since I signed my plea deal and incurred the wrath of the FBI and NSA.

I don't know what I'm even allowed to say as far as like the systems and the specifics of how we did what we did.

But what I can say is that when I signed into my shift and signed out of my shift, I know that we did what we did because there were people in my same uniform on the other side of the ocean in that country.

That's really the one thing that kept us motivated from day in, day out.

It was one thing that kept us from asking the bigger questions about why we were in Afghanistan in the first place.

We had a very small role in a massive conflict.

FR: But you witnessed some things.

For example, you witnessed the use of the dropping of the mother of all bombs by Trump at that time, where you understood that inevitably a lot of civilians were going to be killed.

And you do speak in your memoir about what you say the Air Force calls collateral damage.

And the way you speak about it, my sense is that you were deeply disturbed by the sense of killing people.

And you also point out that there is such a high rate of PTSD and dysfunction in people who do that job.

And then when they leave, they suffer a lot of psychological torment.

So I know it must be difficult to talk about, and clearly, of course, I don't want you to violate the terms of any agreements that you've made.

But I just wonder if you could talk about that psychological state that the job put you in.

RW: One of the reasons why I was not proud of that commendation medal, it was one of the reasons why when I was called to go receive the medal, my supervisor apologized to me and said, hey, you've got to go do this thing.

You know, as far as watching Trump order the dropping of the mother of all bombs in eastern Afghanistan, being a contractor at that time, not wearing a uniform, I viewed that just as the same way that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were experiments.

They were not needed to end World War II.

They were just experiments of something that we had in our pocket and that we wanted to use.

And it made me so angry, and it made me wish that there was a way to further communicate that to the people of the United States.

But as I looked around to civilians, they just weren't watching.

You know, they weren't watching Syria.

They weren't watching Afghanistan.

I think one of the greatest sources of the PTSD is the isolation from the fact that 99 out of 100 people that I'm going to meet have no idea that any of this even happened.

It's definitely a feeling of isolation that if you saw the movie or documentary National Bird by Sonia Kenneback in which she interviewed a couple Air Force operators who were also on the drone program, one of them was Daniel Hale, they talk about the fact that there's nobody to go to to sort of express these doubts that you're having as to whether or not you're doing the right thing or not.

The only refuge I have is that I saw these things happen and I know they happened.

Part of my life mission moving forward is to make them stop happening, to say never again.

That is why so many people who come out of these missions actually wind up being peace protesters.

FR: It's interesting what you say. My son's father was in Vietnam and I met him through the anti-war movement against the war in Vietnam, which when he came back he was also one of those protesters.

So I think it's a long history of that kind of thing happening in this country.

So let's move to the leak itself because I think what you've talked about now gives us a better sense of what motivated you.

First of all, you were a contractor at the time.

How did you come across the document and what did it show?

Why did you want to release this document, as you did to The Intercept and to the American public at large?

RW: The way I came across that document was so banal and routine.

It was the same as if you opened up any news website, Yahoo, CNN, and on one side of the screen it might give you the five most read articles of the day.

And there it was.

And almost anybody could access it, and almost anybody could access the very sensitive report that was attached to it.

So very quickly that was the most read article.

People were talking about it in low voices.

They were saying things like, that's going to get leaked this weekend.

And it wasn't.

The million dollar question as to why I printed it and took it that particular day, I do feel like there was a trauma blackout.

People have speculated that it was the firing of James Comey.

I don't quite remember that exact moment.

I think I was in so much fear, so much flight or fight response, and my heart was going so fast that entire day.

I really think I blocked out so much of what made me decide to do it.

If I could go back in time, I wouldn't do it.

But if I could, I would just scribble down those thoughts so I could come back to the present day and tell you why I did what I did.

But the intention behind that was, first of all, there was a leak every Friday.

There were no repercussions for it, but it was all word of mouth, right?

People were whispering to the media like, oh, this happened or this is the truth and that's the truth.

And I knew that the one thing about Donald Trump's brand is that he likes logos.

He likes things that look official and powerful, and nothing would be more powerful than a document that has NSA at the top of it.

And I knew that was the only way that something would catch anybody's attention in this particular media atmosphere.

And I also wanted sort of a litmus test for the American people so that what I hoped is that Americans would read the document and then they would be able to be like, oh, that they would understand the document too.

It was written in very technical language, but a language that I had been experiencing since I was 20 years old.

So to me, it was clear as day.

So I was very kind of like ignorant in that sense that, oh, anybody could read this document and understand it.

And then reflect on, oh, well, MSNBC said the document means this, but I can see that the second page of the document says that.

Or Fox News says this, but I can clearly see that it says that.

So people could kind of start to decode the bias in their own media that they're consuming.

Now, this was in 2016.

This was the first time we started using the word "algorithm."

The first time people started realizing, oh, my Facebook only shows the things that I agree with.

You know, other than the one uncle I don't agree with, so much of my media is just only confirming my own biases.

And now in 2025, it's like, you know, it's difficult to comprehend what it was like to be an adult when these algorithms were starting to take over and when people were starting to live in separate realities from one another.

And so what I thought is that I could stop it right then and there with one document, with one meaning, you know, black letters on white paper, and that everybody would see it.

And obviously that's not what happened.

The story became about me and who I was and where I went for vacation and what I said to my sister in a text message.

It was completely distorted.

FR: Yeah, and I remember when the document came out and how you were persecuted for that, which we'll get back to in a minute.

But I had never been able to understand until I read your memoir, Reality Winner, until I read I Am Not Your Enemy, why the government came after you.

I don't know why I thought that because, of course, Donald Trump, I mean, for those of our listeners who may not be aware or don't remember, the document was about the interference of Russia in the 2016 election in its penetration of election machines or election programming, election machine programming.

To me, you are a patriot.

I mean, who wouldn't want to know that this had happened?

Of course, Donald Trump didn't want to know, didn't want people to know it had happened.

And still to this day, you know, now he's going after Barack Obama for, you know, the so-called Russia, quote, hoax, unquote.

But it was no hoax, as your document proved.

So talk about sending that to The Intercept, because at the same time, I was really shocked at their carelessness.

So describe what happened.

You know, this was the same outlet that Edward Snowden had leaked to.

It had some of the most experienced security journalists in the country, but they made really serious mistakes that exposed you.

So tell us what happened.

RW: Well, I would like to start by saying that not a single mistake was made.

Everything that happened to me following the sending of the document to The Intercept was by design, and that I was so altruistic and naive when I chose The Intercept, because I had been listening to their podcast and following their articles, and they always said, if you see something, leak something.

And I had trusted them, not only because of their reputation and their work with Snowden, but because they were people like me.

They were people like the guys in my office.

They used to work for NSA.

They were military intelligence.

So, of course, if they received a document in their hands that was top secret SCI, they would treat it accordingly.

They would know how to disseminate it safely, that maybe they would even redact what they needed to redact, that they would see what I was trying to show people.

And what had actually happened is that Matthew Cole immediately sent an email to a contact at NSA with whom he's on a first-name basis.

And I don't even call him Matthew Cole.

I call him Matthew Mole because he definitely said, hey, we just received the document.

And the guy said, I want to see the document.

And instead of finding a way to obscure the document, Matthew Cole knew that the printer paper was special.

He knew that it being creased was significant, and he just sent direct photo scans of the document.

They could tell immediately what printer it came from.

And furthermore, his contact at the NSA said, I want to see the envelope it came in.

So Matthew Moll gave him a photo of the envelope with the Augusta post stamp on it, which led them immediately to me.

There was no question about it.

And furthermore, the way that the Intercept treated the document following this revelation that it was revealed to the NSA that the source had been compromised, is that they did not publish the report itself or even write an article about it until the press conference in which the DA of the Southern District of Georgia announced my arrest and my indictment.

So it was released at the same hour of my arraignment, but one hour before the press conference, because they knew that in their mind, the document was only significant because somebody had been arrested for it, not because of the content of the document itself.

FR: Wait a second. So you're saying that they didn't care that the document showed that the 2016 election apparatus had been penetrated by Russia.

What they cared about is that it would get more clicks, basically, because you had been arrested.

So I can never confirm or deny what is in the document, but I can say that having a martyr leaker to champion was worth a lot more than a report.

FR: Well, that's pretty heavy.

Now, this guy, Matthew Cole, was not the normal person who would have generally received it.

He was, as I remember from your memoir, Reality Winner, that he had come in to substitute or something of that, and you're thinking that he had actual ulterior motives.

It wasn't a mistake.

RW: Of course. I am completely forgetting her name, but she worked with Snowden directly and other members of the Intercept that were up in the chain had a specific policy when they received documents, and their policy was to put it in a secure room that they had on site and to not release direct scans of it.

And Matthew Cole took it upon himself independently to send it to his personal contact at NSA for confirmation that it was an NSA document.

He did not send it to, let's say, like an NSA security office or to, you know, where you're supposed to send alleged leaks.

He sent it straight to his buddy.

And I can say that why I believe it was not a mistake and that it was by design is because leading up to my leak, the Intercept had severely fumbled the receipt of classified information from Daniel Hale.

And he was at that time also facing an indictment.

And then right around the same time in 2018, the Intercept also fumbled the release of documents, memos, and firsthand information from Terry Albury about the FBI racially profiling African-Americans and Muslim-Americans as a means, as like, you know, a fake counterterrorism mean.

They just wanted to target those communities.

So both of them were caught.

Like, I don't even...

I think we can all agree that the result of Edward Snowden spending the last 10 years, 10, 14 years in Russia is not a success.

I think the flaw in the system is viewing the Intercept as having any capability of handling sensitive information.

I just was too young to see it at the time, but hopefully having three, four whistleblowers now living in really dire conditions as a result of their, not even inability, but their interest in creating a scandal around personalities rather than journalism and protection of sources.

FR: Wow, that is shocking.

And I think you might be talking about Laura Poitras...

RW: Yes

FR: who actually criticized them for their, well, now you say by design, but their failures to protect you, and they fired her, which was shocking for me to read in your memoir.

Yet The Intercept also contributed a lot of money, I think almost a million dollars, to your defense.

So have you ever spoken to them? And if not, what would you like to tell them?

RW: I have never minced words about The Intercept.

And, you know, I don't think I could behave myself if I was talking to Matthew Cole.

However, I have spoken to...

The Intercept itself did not donate to the defense, but however, they were part of the media enterprise that owns The Intercept, is the freedom of the press.

And they are the ones that hired my legal team and paid for the legal team.

The last time I had heard from them was following kind of an inflammatory, the infamous Rolling Stone interview of November 2021, in which I had been very flippant about the paying of my legal fees.

And within two weeks, someone from the freedom of the press was at my house with documents to prove that my legal team had been paid in full what was agreed upon.

They were very, very adamant about covering up or, you know, closing the door on any speculation about that.

As far as any further communications with them, I have had none.

FR: So, Reality Winner, let's talk a little bit about the day that the FBI came to your house.

They were pretty egregious.

They did not read your Miranda rights, and you ended up giving them a lot of information that they later used against you.

So, just briefly, tell us about your state of mind and what happened that day.

I mean, a lot happened that day. So, we'll leave it to our listeners to read your book, which, by the way, is absolutely a terrific read. But tell us a little bit about what happened in your state of mind when they came.

RW: I believe that the FBI was very smart and calculated in how they approached me.

And while I knew they were armed, the way that they had dressed and the way that they had spoken to me, they looked almost identical to the men I worked with in my office.

And I had felt, even though there was a massive power dynamic imbalance, I felt like these were people where if I spoke openly and plainly and explained myself to, it would be a disciplinary action and not necessarily a felony.

And I think they understood how naive I was leading up to that time.

My only interactions with law enforcement were results of my terrible driving and often misinterpretation of traffic signs.

I did not see Agent Garrick as a police officer.

So I was not waiting for them to read me my Miranda rights.

I did not think I was in an interrogation.

So just to answer people's questions about how could you be so naive, never talk to police, they didn't present themselves as police.

They looked like my coworkers.

They looked like people who would understand where I came from.

But I also felt like this was a situation in which if I became defensive or if I kept my mouth shut, my life was on the line.

And my preoccupation at the time as well, I don't think it was on purpose, I think they were just careless, was my cat and my dog.

You know, you focus on the fine details, the things that don't actually matter in the bigger picture.

In my mind, I was going to tell them whatever they needed to hear if their agents would just close the doors behind them and not let my cat out.

Or if they would understand that my dog, my foster dog, was terrified of men and so that they wouldn't feel threatened and shoot her on sight.

Because, honestly, the very week before the FBI had showed up, I guess I was, you know, kind of seeing a guy and he came over to my house for the first time and that dog acted so vicious, like tried to break through a door to get him.

So I had seen what my dog would do, you know, if she felt uncomfortable around a man.

And here there were 11 men and one of the petty things, everything in court was so petty.

I signed an affidavit saying all of them were armed and the FBI countered me and said, actually only 9 of them were armed.

So 9 of the 11 men were armed and I was just terrified for my animals first and foremost.

Again, I should have known I committed a felony.

I've been through the briefings at NSA.

I've signed off on them.

I did the annual PowerPoint of the insider threat. I was the insider threat.

But at that moment in time, I did not realize or I did not internalize the fact that I was under arrest at that moment for committing a felony.

FR: Right. So let's talk about how you were prosecuted.

You were prosecuted under the Espionage Act. This is a law that dates back to Woodrow Wilson.

It was brought about during the time that the U.S. had entered into World War I, and a major target of it were people who were against that war.

Eugene Debs, a socialist candidate for president, spent I don't know how many months in prison as a result of that.

But then it was not used.

Between 1920 and, you know, for 50 years, it really was barely used, if at all.

Why do you think it's being used more aggressively now, with your case being one of the most prominent?

I mean, you got the longest sentence of anybody under that act, and especially being used against whistleblowers, who, after all, are not spies.

RW: I definitely believe that the Espionage Act of 1917, while it makes sense to have a law on the book that says, hey, don't tell the enemy where our soldiers are at, it was left broad and vague for the purpose of being used politically later on.

I think that one of the historical cases that we can always look back to is Daniel Ellsberg, and just how narrowly he avoided over 100 years in prison for the Pentagon Papers, the fact that it got swept up with the plumbers and the Watergate scandal.

I think we would have a much different political environment today regarding whistleblowing if that prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg had actually gone through.

But I think that in the modern day, because of the proliferation of the media, because of the nonstop news cycle, and just how much information is out there, and the fact that the intelligence agencies are all combined with one another, they're all intermixed after 9-11, and that the access to this information by over a million people is a much greater vulnerability, but also using this act at a time in which it's no coincidence that there's so many more leaks following 9-11, following 20 years of mystery, wars, and conflicts, following the use of the, I think it's 63 words that the AUMF is, that anybody's brothers, cousins, sisters, dogs of Al-Qaeda can be attacked militarily without Congress declaring war.

The fact that we are having more political leaks and whistleblowing as it directly pertains to national security, I think that after 9-11, something broke, and that people who have been indoctrinated into our intelligence community began to understand that information being withheld from the American people is not being done to keep the country safe.

It's more about protecting liabilities.

And so I think that the aggressive use of the Espionage Act in the 2000s is basically just an insurance policy.

FR: Say more about that. I'm not sure I understand.

You say that it's not keeping us safe, but it's used to protect liabilities. 
Whose liabilities?

RW: I don't want to make this about a particular administration because I do think it spans multiple and it spans multiple parties.

But, for instance, the way that the war in Afghanistan ended and the way you reference that, there's so much disillusionment in why people signed up for the military in the first place.

If it had been leaked 10 years before that we actually didn't know why we were still in that country, that disillusionment would have happened much sooner.

And just a lack of bodies to throw at a problem might have ended the problem sooner.

So I think that it's being used as a way to make sure that the American people don't know what's truly going on, even though, as taxpayers, this information belongs to us.

If they were doing everything right and everything transparent, there would be no need for secrecy other than this operation's about to take place.

We can't have anybody finding out where our soldiers are, which makes sense.

But I do think that the American people deserve the report leading up to that explaining why we're even doing that operation in the first place.

And they don't want people to know that, and I think a lot of that also has to do with the industrialization of our military and the fact that a lot of these conflicts are just being used to create new equipment and to have a military economy.

And it's just one of those things where it's not going to be inherently political because so many of these whistleblowers have been prosecuted across multiple presidential administrations, regardless of which party was in power.

FR: Yeah, you point out that there's a real double standard about mishandling secrets, which I think proves your point that you just made.

Generals like Petraeus, presidents like Trump and Biden have mishandled secrets on a far greater scale with virtually no punishment, maybe very little.

Meanwhile, you got the harshest sentence of any such leaker.

So it does beg the question, how important, you know, if it was so dangerous to leak things, how come people are not being punished who are leaking them, who are members of the elite?

RW: I can only say that it is a greater reflection of the American criminal justice system.

I mean, that is why, you know, an African-American man might get three times the amount of time for an assault than a white man will get for an actual murder.

Or, you know, the crack and the crack cocaine, you know, disparities, right?

Depending on where you are on the totem pole will determine how you fare once charged with a crime or if you're even charged with a crime in the first place.

FR: You also made another, I think, interesting, well, many interesting points, but this is one that struck me.

You said the unaccountability that the Espionage Act protects, I mean, the kind of unaccountability we've just been talking about, erodes public trust in government.

I just wonder if you could connect the dots for us a little bit more strongly for us.

How does that unaccountability that the espionage protects erode public trust in government?

RW: Definitely.

I think that in understanding just how systems in courts work, we can all understand that a civil case has a much lesser burden of proof than a capital murder case.

And when it comes to the Espionage Act, little to no proof is really required as to what damages were actually done by a certain act.

And furthermore, you know, there are very few indictments that define what national defense information is, because if you look at the statute under which I was charged, 793E, it's the retention and disclosure of national defense information.

And I would say that the one time a prosecutor went to length to describe or define legally what national defense information is was actually in the Trump documents case.

And it was very strongly worded.

But even for me, reading that indictment from front to back, I still felt as if the fact that this law itself does not define national defense information, that we're still relying on prosecutors to define the term within an indictment, because I definitely feel like the national defense information they used in his indictment did not apply to the, quote unquote, national defense information that was leaked by myself versus the national defense information that was leaked by Terry Albury.

There is not even one standard definition of the conduct that even warrants an indictment under 793E to begin with.

But furthermore, to say, like at least in my case in particular, the prosecution read this vague yet menacing statement about irreparable harm was done to sources and methods immediately following the release of that document.

And then the judge was very concerned by this.

And then we were all whisked away upstairs to the top secret courtroom, right?

Because it was told to the media in the regular courtroom that the damages done could not be said aloud, could not be said publicly, and they had to remain in a secured environment.

So we went upstairs and I was like, oh boy, here it is.

Like, this is going to be the final nail in my coffin.

And we get up there.

And again, the prosecutor repeated the same vague yet menacing statement because under the Espionage Act, the government does not actually have to prove that you compromised anything.

Just the act of releasing the document was a felony worthy of 10 years.

It does not matter if I released a memo or if I released actual information that had United States soldiers killed.

There is no difference in the law.

It is one of the only laws in the entire United States judicial history that intent, criminal intent, does not need to be proven.

All they have to do is say you had the document and you sent the document.

We don't need to prove that there was any consequence of that, there was any damage done, or that you intended to do it maliciously.

And it also does not matter if I gave it to another intelligence professional, if I gave it to Vladimir Putin himself.

The same way with, you know, I like to use President Trump's indictment as an example, as a comparison, because it does seem so much more severe.

However, in a court of law, the NSA and the FBI have no responsibility to prove that the documents in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago were seen by anybody other than people with security clearances.

For all we know, and I'm not defending him, I'm just explaining how this law works, he could have had a staffer put that box in a bathroom and nobody had seen it.

And there was no national defense repercussions of that document sitting in a bathroom by a toilet in a box.

And it still warrants the same exact consequences, legally, as if he had given it or sold it to an enemy of the United States.

Because there's absolutely no room within that law to make that distinction.

You can't even say, I did it in public interest.

And if I were to go back in time and if I were to repeat the same conduct, I honestly believe that I would have received the same exact indictment under 793E of the Espionage Act, if I had just taken that report, gone into my car and driven up to Washington, D.C. and handed it over to my state senator.

Even though the senator has a top secret clearance, taking that document from NSA and driving it to D.C. to give to my lawmaker would have resulted in the same criminal indictment.

And I just think that's nuts.

FR: And what's also nuts is that it resulted in your criminal indictment and four years in prison, whereas absolutely nothing happened to Trump as a result of having put those boxes where he did, which underscores what we had talked about before, the double standard.

So how did the fact that the Espionage Act doesn't take intention into account, neither intention or impact, harm, it doesn't take any of that into account.

How did that shape your prosecution and defense?

Because I imagine it made it very difficult for you to defend yourself on almost any level.

RW: It made it absolutely impossible, especially since I know you brought it up previously that my Miranda rights were not read to me.

And so we did have a nine-hour marathon hearing as to whether or not I was in detention or if I was being detained at the time that I had made my confession to Agent Garrick.

And the court to this day, 2025, the Southern District of Georgia, has never ruled on or made a determination as to whether or not that was a legally admissible confession.

And so we were waiting.

I mean, I sat in that county jail for 15 months, but it was almost a year before I changed my plea.

We were waiting for them to make that determination because the entire trial hinged on whether or not the FBI or the prosecution had an admissible confession on file or not.

And furthermore, what the final nail in the coffin was, is that we did file 41 subpoenas based on Jenna Solari's statement about the irreparable harm that I had done to national security.

FR: Supposedly done.

RW: Supposedly done, yes.

Because we wanted the data on whether or not sources and methods before the leak, during the leak, and after the publication of the report itself, we wanted them to prove that something bad happened to our national security.

And every single one of those subpoenas, which would not have affected Judge Epps in any way, shape, or form, he denied them all unilaterally, just said, I don't even feel like ruling to give you guys information for your defense.

This is a phishing expedition, when it would have been invaluable information to put before a jury, and to really have a groundbreaking case in questioning the validity of the use of the Espionage Act for political leaks.

FR: So, just in the interest of time, I'm going to skip over your time in prison.

I just have to let our listeners know, it is a riveting account of the abuse that you faced from the authorities in the prison, and the incredible support, wonderful support that you got from your fellow inmates.

But I want to just come out to today.

You say that when you got out of prison, you had a lot of difficulty in adjusting to normal life, that you would become what you called, you know, what people call institutionalized.

I want to ask, have you been able to recover? What was that like? 
And what has been the lasting impact of all of this on you?

FR: I don't know if I can say, oh, I became a better person because of what I went through.

I can say that I'm a little bit more resilient because I know that things could always get worse.

Definitely, I live a much simpler life because of the years I spent deprived of basic luxuries.

However, there are some lasting impacts, especially when it just comes to person-to-person conflict resolution.

I am extremely passive-aggressive because of what I went through.

I still find myself today trying to manipulate situations without having to address them the way that you would in a prison environment to avoid an overflow of conflict or to try to change an officer's behavior indirectly.

However, I'm also extremely active-aggressive.

If I feel like somebody isn't listening to me, I get louder and louder.

And, you know, the idea of a physical altercation to me is not, you know, it's not reprehensible.

It's a resolution.

It's a tool in the toolbox.

It's definitely not how somebody like me, trying to move forward, trying to be a force of good in the world and to reform matters within our institutions.

It's not an outlook on life that is going to benefit me.

But time and time again, I do fall into it.

And because of, it's so difficult.

The first thing they do when you get out is they cut you off from talking to other people that have been incarcerated.

And so I spent a whole year not being able to talk to anybody who had been locked up.

And it's changed the way I can communicate about what I went through.

And it kind of keeps me clamped up.

I'm not doing the therapy that I need to do to heal.

Because I just, I can't talk about prison to somebody who's never been to prison.

I can tell you stories, but I can't break down how I feel moving through the world after it.

So I mean, in much ways, I'm still in a place of healing.

But right now I am in such a stable community and losing every last thing about how I structured my life, and how I want to structure my life.

And now being out and being able to do that is a way for me to have seen what my priorities are in my self-care and what I need to do to stay stable in my own mental illness.

And as an adult coming into my 30s, I don't leave any wiggle room in what I need to stay well.

I definitely have my boundaries up around my physical training, my use of CrossFit to keep my mind and my body safe from my self-destructive proclivities, and I simply don't allow anything to compromise that.

FR: I have to say, I think the kind of insight that you evince in this book and with which you're talking with us now, what you've just said, how you do prioritize your healing and your health, I know that you are going to accomplish the growth that you want to, the healing that you want to, because those are the characteristics that really count.

And also, I want to thank you so much for talking with us with such sincerity, honesty, and authenticity here.

Your book is absolutely terrific, very, very powerful.

I know that you're planning on, you know, continuing your work to make people's and animals' lives better.

I understand you're studying to be, to work in the veterinary profession, is that right?

RW: Yes, I am in school right now to get a bachelor's in veterinary technology.

FR: Yeah. Reality winner, I was deeply moved by your book and by this conversation, and I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

RW: Well, thank you so much. That was the fastest hour of my entire life.
It was just delightful. Thank you so much.