Victory over reality
The US press took up the promotion of the next Chelsea Manning. This time, a girl with a strange name, Reality Winner, was raised on the shield, detained by US intelligence services for transmitting certain “secret documents” to the media. The perpetrator of the scandal faces at least 10 years in prison. What did she do that was so terrible?
The story began on February 13 of this year, when Reality Lee Winner took a job at Pluribus International, a private intelligence firm that works as a contractor for several US intelligence and defense agencies, including the National Security Agency. “Our employees have decades of experience in intelligence, counterintelligence and analytics,” Pluribus says on its website. In general, a difficult company.
Winner's experience as an intelligence officer is limited - she previously worked as a linguist for the radio transcription service for the US Air Force, and she was barely 25 years old. Winner then joined the staff of Pluribus and immediately received the highest clearance to state secrets, which in itself looks strange and suspicious. Her political views, which the girl did not hide, did not become an obstacle to the highest level of security clearance - Winner’s Twitter account is filled with selective curses against Donald Trump.
Three months after Winner was hired at Pluribus, on May 5, the NSA released a report on cyberattacks on polling stations allegedly organized by Russian GRU hackers on the eve of the US presidential election. The NSA document was classified as “secret”. On May 9, Winner printed the document, took it out of Pluribus, scanned it, and emailed it to The Intercept's website.
This online publication was created in 2014 by Pierre Omidyar, the son of Iranian immigrants, born in Paris. Even as a child, Omidyar's parents brought him to the United States, where he became interested in programming. In the mid-1990s, Omidyar launched a small online auction, which grew into the famous eBay and brought its creator more than $8 billion. At the same time, the billionaire lives as a recluse in an old apartment, does not conduct public activities, drives a used Volkswagen and invests hundreds of millions of dollars in NGOs and independent journalism. Omidyar's interests are focused on protecting freedom of speech and fighting government surveillance of citizens.
In 2014, Omidyar invested about $250 million in the creation of the media holding First Look Media, the flagship of which was the website The Intercept. Omidyar invited Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who made a name for himself with the first publications of Edward Snowden's revelations, to lead it. Since then, The Intercept has regularly published classified information about the killing of civilians by US Army drones, about Operation Socialist - a hacker attack by British intelligence agencies on a Belgian mobile operator - and many other scandalous investigations.
Having received the NSA report from Winner, the publication’s employees turned, oddly enough, to the NSA itself for confirmation of the information. The NSA asked to send them a scan of the document and, having received it, were able to determine the brand of the printer and the date of printing from the micromarks on the document. It soon became clear that six employees at Pluribus printed the report, but only one of them had email correspondence with The Intercept. So the breadcrumbs led to Reality Lee Winner.
On June 3, as many as ten black jeeps with tinted windows drove up to Winner’s rented home. FBI agents rushed out and charged the girl with disclosing classified information, seized her cell phone and took her with them. On June 5, the NSA report (with small cuts made at the agency's insistence) was published in The Intercept.
As the journalists themselves admit, the NSA report is missing the main thing: operational (raw) information - it only contains conclusions. Translated into normal language, this means that there is no evidence, and without a source of facts, any conclusions can be drawn. However, according to the “analysis” of NSA officers, the GRU in August and October 2016 carried out hacker attacks on polling stations and companies associated with the US presidential election.
The “GRU hackers” attacked their targets in a way that was offensively primitive and not resourceful – using the most advanced “phishing” method, accessible to any “kulhatker” who has mastered the “Cyber Warfare for Dummies” manual – they sent emails supposedly from companies known to the recipient, asking them to log in to fake websites and thus collected information. The NSA, in turn, crumples and chews analytical snot that the depth of penetration of “Russian hackers” into the US electoral system is unclear - either they exist, or they don’t, or they managed to influence the voting results, or “it just happened that way” .
Aerobatics!
Experts interviewed by The Intercept argue that it is impossible to seriously influence the results of the US elections. The rules for processing ballots and the operation of computer programs are structured differently in each state, in each district. In order to carry out a targeted “stuffing”, it is necessary to have information in advance about which polling stations to throw in – and the polling stations that are important for candidates are different in each election.
However, the real purpose of publishing the report is not at all to catch the “Russian hackers” by the hand and bring them to light. Neither the security services nor the journalists simply bothered with evidence of their interference in the elections. But the scandal allowed all Trump’s opponents to once again declare that the vote counting system had failed - and demand a recount.
Casting doubt on the US presidential election is the main purpose of The Intercept. “If there is a possibility of a hacker attack, then the legitimacy of the election is at risk - regardless of whether there was actually a hacker attack or not,” the publication quotes Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity specialist at Harvard, as saying. – Elections do two things - they appoint a winner and convince the loser... Elections must be not just fair, but demonstratively fair. So that the loser can say: yeah, I blew it according to all the rules. If you don't, you're screwed. You will simply be torn to pieces...”
The Reality Winner story puts Trump in an awkward position. On the one hand, the NSA report she leaked makes the past presidential elections illegitimate. If Trump does not respond to this leak, everyone will say that he is guilty and therefore remains silent.
On the other hand, if the Trump administration begins proceedings, and the punishing sword of the American Themis falls on Winner for disclosing classified information, the democratic press of the whole world will raise a stink to the skies. The 25-year-old blonde nymphet is ideal for the role of the “dressed up” who was devoured by the evil crocodile, “Putin’s henchman” and “male chauvinistic pig” Trump.
Winner, judging by her social media accounts, is lonely, a little on the money, and has no friends.
“Being white is like being a terrorist,” Reality Winner mused on Twitter.
At the same time, the girl is well educated - she independently learned the eastern languages Farsi, Pashto and Dari. During the holidays he acts as Santa Claus and sends gifts to Afghan children. Votes for Democrats and Greens. He is a convinced vegan and is a fan of yoga and bodybuilding. Winner's Instagram account is filled with healthy food photos and workout selfies. In addition, Winner feels sorry for homeless animals, she picked up a dog and a cat on the street and after the arrest she was most worried about her pets, but she positions herself as an ideological child-free, since she is scared by global warming. Winner also joined the protests of green activists against the construction of the Dakota oil pipeline and put a “Make America green again” sticker on her car bumper.
Like WikiLeaks whistleblower Seth Rich, who was killed last July under suspicious circumstances, Winner is a staunch supporter of Bernie Sanders. He calls Trump a fascist and demands a recount.
“She’s a good girl,” the hippie mother praises her daughter to the Daily Mail, who awarded her daughter a name that, together with her surname, gives the combination “Reality Winner.” - She is a good person. She served her country. She is very kind, everyone loves her.”
The story of “a brave young girl who was not afraid to tell the truth” surfaced at just the right time and was replicated in the press with pleasure and in every possible way. Sweetheart, a vegan, a cat lover and a green activist are being sent to prison for transmitting to the media some completely murky text, more reminiscent of fiction than a closed analytical report. And this dregs from the bowels of the NSA already serves as a bludgeon to crush opponents in America’s inter-party political squabbles. After all, no one is going to cancel the election results, which means no one can admit that the “long arm of Russia” got in and cleaned up something in the counting of electoral votes.
The hype around Winner is pure white thread and looks like a provocation. The democratic sheep, the standard liberal “legally blonde”, who for some unknown merit has received the highest level of access to secret documents, suddenly receives a piece of paper marked “secret”, which does not carry any secret information, but which, if properly promoted in the press, can influence the opinion of ordinary people. Given Winner’s personality, it would be expected that she would rush to use the “document” against Trump. A girl working for the intelligence services didn’t think of transferring the document onto a flash drive and sending it from a disposable email address outside of America. And they take such people as special agents?
Set-up, “phony” and provocation eat away at the eyes.
The figure of a man-made Snowden appears, only in a skirt, cute and smaller in scale. However, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also stood up for Reality Winner, announcing a $10 reward for the name of the person who leaked information about her to the American authorities.
The situation is also strange in that Snowden found refuge in Russia for publishing materials not directly related to Russia, and Reality Winner suddenly became the target of prosecution for planting materials against Russia. There is definitely a lot in this story that is unclean.
In any case, the Reality Winner scandal is further evidence that the United States is a veiled police state. There are fraudulent methods and manipulations with freedom of speech, which is declared in the United States, like personal freedom, to be a universal value. The grin of liberal totalitarianism...
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