DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: Interview with Reality Winner

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou and political cartoonist Ted Rall interview whistleblower Reality Winner. Reality Leigh Winner is a former U.S. Air Force veteran, linguist, and NSA contractor whose life took a dramatic turn in 2017. Raised by a politically engaged family—her father, a brilliant but unstable philosopher, ignited her passion for ancient languages like Pashto and Farsi—she enlisted post-9/11, driven by unyielding patriotism. Deployed to support U.S. operations in Afghanistan, she honed her skills as a translator, facilitating intelligence missions. At 25, working for the NSA in Augusta, Georgia, Winner stumbled upon a classified report detailing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election via cyberattacks on voting systems. She leaked the document to The Intercept, believing it vital for democracy. Instead, journalistic misconduct led the FBI straight to her door. Arrested and charged under the Espionage Act, she pleaded guilty, receiving the longest sentence ever for a single leak: five years and three months in federal prison, plus three years' supervised release. Released in 2021, Winner endured house arrest and ankle monitoring while rebuilding, now a CrossFit coach and aspiring veterinary technologist in Texas. Her story inspired plays, films like Reality (2023), and documentaries. In her poignant 2025 memoir, "I Am Not Your Enemy," she chronicles her childhood, the leak's moral calculus, prison's dehumanizing toll, and resilient quest for truth—affirming she's no foe, but a hero who paid dearly for conscience.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining the Deep Program Show with Ted Rollin, John Kiriaku. It is a pleasure to be joined today by Reality Winner. Reality winner is, of course, I would say an American hero. She's the author of a new book called I Am Not Your Enemy. Great read. Go out and get it. She's also a former U.S. Air Force senior Airman, as well as a former and also an NSA whistleblower who served time in federal prison for violating the Espionage Act, something that you and John have in common. So let's just get to it and talk about, you know, I think, you know, I'm not going to go chronologically here. I'm going to, I think it's important to say, so let's get to the main event. We can work backwards to the chronological stuff. But I'm super, I wrote a book about Edward Snowden. And, you know, one of the, and my way in for that book, and I'm really interested in, I'm so honored to be with really both of you here today, was the fact that, you know, hundreds of

thousands of people had access to the same exact information as Edward Snowden. And only he chose to step forward. And I wanted to kind of know what was it about him? Why him? Why not? not all these other people that caused him to see all these things that were plainly wrong, illegal, violating the Constitution and our basic privacy rights of Americans and people around the world, what was different about him? And so, you know, that was the exploration that I was interested in. And I think I'm interested in that with you as well. So reality, if you can just sort of tell us where you were working when the NSA document, in question came into you know cross your cross your path and sort of what happened next well I will say

I have so much in common with Ed Snowden and I'll get to that at the end of this answer but to start off I was working at Fort Gordon Georgia it was what I considered a temporary position to renew my security clearance which was going to expire the January after I had gotten out of the Air Force. So they expire like every five years, I think or something like that. I think I had started it in 20. Whatever it was, it was going to expire very soon. And because I didn't have an active position at NSA,

the job recruiters that I was talking to, trying to get a position at Bogram in Afghanistan, weren't interested in hiring me until I had an active security clearance. And so I just took the next available position as a linguist. I didn't even know if it was going to be on Fort Mead or Fort Gordon. I just took it and hoped for the best. Fort Meade is NSA headquarters. Yep, in Maryland, yeah.

I had rented a house in Georgia, and so I had accepted a job, and luckily that job happened to be in Georgia as well. well or else I would have panicked. But they renewed my security clearance during that year, and I was already, at the time of my arrest, talking to other recruiters trying to get a new contract in Afghanistan. And you were a translator in two of the, well, in three of the major languages spoken in Afghanistan, right? Pashto, Dari, which is Persian, and Arabic. Not Arabic yet. It's always been something I've been trying to learn. and off again um but like it's kind of like one of those things where if you read like a sign

in spanish and you're like oh i kind of like given the context i know what they're saying if i had like you know something in arabic at like a restaurant or something i would i could figure it out okay yeah so one of the things that led me to be kind of vulnerable is that i was very disconnected from what i was doing because they gave me farsi which was an iranian mission which I was not interested in. And then also they had assigned me to this workshop and nobody really knew I was there. It was just one of those wonderful uses of our tax dollars where they were just giving people contracts and then putting them in offices and nobody knew what I was actually sent there to do.

And my direct supervisor was overwhelmed and he was one of those guys that doesn't know how to delegate. So he was like, you know, just go do this. Go do busy work because I don't have the emotional capacity right now to bring you on board to this mission. So that was my first three months of working at that contract when I saw the document. So you're at a, so this is not the, you're not at NSA. You're at a private contracting company, yeah? No, I am in NSA, big government contractors. I am in Fort Gordon in the giant, shiny NSA building that was brand new at the time.

Gotcha. Go ahead. But what I will say is when I read Edward Snowden's autobiography or his memoir in prison, someone sent it to me. And I think what you touched on, like why one individual saw it is that when he went over his childhood, we had played all the same video games. you know, being very similar in age. And the point of all of these video games, Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Zelda, I think he listed a couple more,

but he was really into Zelda. And it's just, you're one person. He also liked Magic the Gathering, right? Yeah, and it's like, it's very much one person in that universe. Like, we call it now, like, main character energy. But a lot of us millennials that grew up with the storylines, It's one person who wakes up and realizes they're special and they can do something that nobody else can. And I think we both kind of had that sort of like, this is going to be really hard.

There's going to be some really evil people, but it's going to be an adventure. I have a question for you. Reality, one of the things that I learned very early on in my own whistleblowing experience is that almost, no whistleblowers consider themselves to be whistleblowers. In fact, when I, when I met with Jesselin Radak from the Government Accountability Project for the very first time, it was just a couple of days after my arrest. I was walking out of her office and I said, thank you so much for for helping me. I know that you help whistleblowers and I'm not a whistleblower. And she said, you are a whistleblower. I said, I'm not. I'm just a guy. And she said, I remember her

exact words. She said, there's a legal definition of whistleblowing. It is bringing to light any evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety. She said, motivation is irrelevant. Well, it was my experience after that that Ed didn't think he was a whistleblower. Looking back at Tom Drake, Tom was adamant that he wasn't the whistleblower. And of course, in the end, we all were. We just didn't realize it. I remember in early comments that you made that you said you weren't a whistleblower. And it made me chuckle because we had all gone through the same thing. Do you see now how important your whistleblowing was? Has it finally registered with you now that you have the benefit of a few years where you can

look back and see how you affected the political debate on these issues? I don't. I know you're going to say that. I think that part of, like, the definition of whistleblower does not include sneaking documents out in your underwear. Or how about on a thumb drive if you're Edward Snowden? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So for me, just because I know that even though it did affect public safety in a way, it wasn't necessarily something that. the um it was not something that showed that our government was doing something wrong or malicious

to the american people and i did do the illegal thing of sending it to a journalist and you know i wish i and that was one of the things too of feeling so isolated was seeing that and just being so certain that every other individual that works for the federal government had also seen it and that wasn't true like I should have taken that document straight to Congress. If I had driven that up and handed it to a senator that I had trusted, then I would say I'm a whistleblower. But instead I sent it to an online news agency. And it was outside of my power, it was completely ineffective because they had no interest in giving that document to the public, only until they found out that I had been arrested. Right. So let's, so let's continue with like the, and I mean, Tom Drake and Ed Snowden,

And Tom Drake did go the congressional route and was frustrated, and it didn't work, to say the least. Didn't work in that. It bought him seven counts of espionage and two counts of theft of government property, which was the information that he walked out with in his head. Snowden took note of that, and that's why he went the media route. So, okay, so you're, so, okay, go on. You're back at NSA, and I mean, I'm interested in the document and, like, you know, what it was and, you know, why you thought it was important and needed to come to public attention. Honestly, it was just, like, the most read report at the time, and everybody was like, maybe not the document itself, but this information is going to be leaked, either by Congress or it's going to be, like, it's going to be in the news. by this weekend and it wasn't oh so if you thought it was going to be leaked why did you leak it

because it wasn't so tell us what was in it for people who don't know i can't say okay all right so i can say um so according to news reports um this was a document that uh that that basically it's a report about uh russian attempts to hack into um election into election counting mechanisms during the 2016 election and using fish spearing attacks, which is basically sending an email, for example, or a text and saying, like, please click here in order to try to gain access to information and voter registration, voter info, et cetera. And so basically this was evidence, possible evidence of Russia. Let's just say maybe not interference in an election, but certainly an attempt to gain access to private information that should not be available to anyone but the Board of Elections, I think it's fair to say.

Okay, so you see the document in question, and you thought it needed to come to the attention. The public needed to know, yeah? Yeah. Why? Because in 2017, there was one question. that was being asked every single day and it was not something that we had as a nation really had faced before like people it was just one debate that was going on and I honestly felt like it was the NSA's job or at least it was someone in the government's job to lay bare

the actual facts for everybody. I just felt like that was their responsibility instead of letting it foment to such a toxic level that, you know, things weren't getting done, you know. But obviously that government administration wasn't going to do it. And it just frustrated me so much. Your mom and stepfather, were very, very active around your trial

and your incarceration. They did literally everything they could think of to draw friendly support to your cause. And at the end of the first Trump administration, they were actively seeking a pardon or a commutation for you. Did you make any headway in that first time around? And would you consider a plus, Applying for a pardon the second time around?

So right now, the Office of the Pardon is not available, and I think just based off of like a general moral decency this time around, I'm not really interested in having things in common with like January 6th insurrectionists. At the time, at the end of the first Trump presidency, we were absolutely languishing in federal prison due to the COVID pandemic. And my whole story, it's kind of like a slapstick comedy because it's like, you know, one scene, it's Comey and Trump in, you know, in the Oval Office and in their respective government agency saying, the next person that leaks is going to die.

And then you have me mailing the document out because like, do-to-do, I had no idea that was being said. We had somebody in our team get a memo about my pardon in the White House on its way to the Oval Office. Like it was right there outside of the door and the news broke about the call with Zelensky getting leaked. So obviously no sympathy for leaker. Like the person with the memo just turned around and walked away. Timing is a bitch. It is. I can tell you in my own case, too.

And I got this from someone with direct, like regular access to the president. He told me that on the last day of the Trump presidency, January 19th of 2017, that he was preparing to pardon Julian Assange, Ed Snowden and me. and got a call from Mitch McConnell. Not Mitch McConnell has never heard of me, but Mitch McConnell told Donald Trump, if you pardon Assange and Snowden, I will release Republican senators to vote their conscience on whether or not to convict you

on the charges that had been referred to the House. And so Trump canceled the pardons. There was that kind of pressure from Republican senators, and he caved. he did pardon little wayne though you know what and that was the nature of the call that i got from my friend he says are you sitting down and i said yeah what's going on and he said he's pardoning little wayne and i said little wayne and he says little fucking wayne this is very important today i was like oh my god i said the world's upside down i don't know what i'm going to do it's very

fucked up. Okay, so I want to get back to the leak, though. So you get this document, you printed out at work, correct me if I'm wrong about any of these details, and you sent it off to the Intercept, which is, of course, the progressive, formed by, founded by P.R. Omediar, media organization that was where Glenn Greenwald was working at the time as an editor, and you were obviously hoping that they would publish an article about it and bring it to the attention of the American people. In terms of spycraft or tradecraft, did you, I mean, were you concerned about being caught? And so what steps did you take?

Like, for example, did you avoid putting fingerprints on the package? Did you mail it from far away? Did, you know, I know you got caught because of the printer, but and also because the intercept fucked up, but they were really incredibly careless, to say the least, shoddy journalism, to say the least. But anyway, so what steps did you take? Did you handwrite, did you handwrite the label? Did you print out the label? You know what I mean. So it was just how to get the document out the building. So don't carry it out.

like I said I did handwrite the label I did put to the intercept on it right I just put like a generic name and then sent it to their secure mailing address I did not mail it right away I just sent it from a USPS box that was most convenient for me like a day later the one that was nearest to the yoga studio where I just happened to be subbing that night um other than that, I just knew that the envelope being nondescript and getting to the intercept. They would see it, realize it was important. I guess verify it. I don't know. It had the logo, like what more was there to verify. And that information would be released to the people. And you thought this was going to a journalistic organization, so you didn't have to worry

about, you know, the FBI crawling all over, you know, searching for fingerprints and, you know, you're basically sending it to Bob Woodward in 1972, right? Right. Exactly. And I had thought, too, is like everything was so high tech. They're looking for thumb drives. They're not going to be like, oh, they got this information

from a piece of paper sent in the mail. Like, they were going to be looking for. Or if they had, not just like thrown the document out there in the public, they would be like, okay, well, who in Congress is calling the press? You know, like they would have thought it would be given like orally over the phone or by WhatsApp or something secure, not like the lowest possible technical means. This is like when they mailed the Pope, the Hope Diamond.

Exactly. Why did you choose the intercept? Because they sent it to me. I wouldn't have turned. That wouldn't have happened to you if you'd send it to me. Because they said if you see something leak something, they did have their history with Snowden. They were all former government veterans. They really cared about national security. I mean, they were talking about Yemen in 2015.

Nobody was talking about Yemen in 2015. These guys were so connected and queued in and talking about the things that mattered. because I felt like they were like me. They were seeing the bigger picture. And I thought, of course, these people are going to know exactly how to give this information out to have the best effect possible. Did you consider WikiLeaks? I didn't really know how to use the dark web. So no, that wasn't really an option.

I'm not good with computers. I'm good at breaking computers. Okay. So the Intercept receives it from what we know, they get the package, and they, first of all, we don't know that they're interested in even doing an article. They don't seem to find it interesting, and I want to get to that. But someone from the Intercept, the reporter who's assigned to it or who's dealing with it, then takes it to his buddy at the NSA and basically says, says, hey, will you verify this? And hands, not like a photo of it or an image of it, but like the actual physical envelope and paper, I mean, I'm sorry, he went full retard. And he handed it

over to the NSA, who of course went to work doing what the NSA does. And in probably five seconds, right? They had like everything that people don't know. I didn't know this until I read about your case. Everything that's printed out of from a printer, like I have one right behind me here, has a little invisible, kind of like an old fax machine, like identifying piece, image, but it's a watermark. And you can, you can get to it if you know what to do, NSA knew what to do. So they were able to be like, oh, this, this machine is at this office at NSA. And so at that point, your arrest is becomes inevitable. is that basically right it is um he didn't give them the envelope at first this is how

freaking stupid it was his friend was like wow that's really interesting can i see the envelope where it came and then he's like sure i mean it's just an augusta georgia area code stamped on the envelope what what harm could come from that i'll tell you that you should never work in journalism him again. Sorry. Well, you know what? Let me, let me add to that because that's an important statement you just made, Ted. The two intercept journalists that were responsible for sending you to prison were the two intercept journalists responsible for sending me to prison. No way. And, oh, the same guys. The two same guys. And Daniel Hale and Terry Aubrey. Thank you for saying that. You're exactly right. I tweeted after your arrest, I tweeted,

serious i tweeted at the intercept i said serious question at intercept are you guys just fucking stupid or are you working for the fbi it's a good fucking question and of course they never responded but it was a serious question if you are a national security journalist then you know and have known since you became a national security journalist that identifying information is embedded in the in the documents can be in the dot of an eye it can be in a period the naked eye can't see it that's why they wanted an actual copy of the document of course they could see where it came from but if you're a national security journalist one who who you know has a website about himself and about what a great and important national security

journalist he is, then he's either a moron or he's working for the government. John, any, any journalist, you don't have to be a national security journalist, any journalist. I mean, you don't burn a source. I mean, you know, you go to prison for the rest of your life rather than burning a source. Well, look at poor Daniel Hale. He gives his information to the intercept, and then they put him on a three-member panel to repeat the information that he gave them. it was it was a matter of hours i mean john you bring up an important point i mean if if in terms of

the intercept guys right i mean like if they're not going to run an article and there's no oh kitty um if there's if if you're not going to run the piece you don't need to authenticate it no right you don't need to authenticate the material at all no yeah exactly they were taking themselves way too seriously um matt cole is just messy It's by design so that they can be like, oh, well, we stand with the martyrs of free speech or the martyrs of whistleblowing. Like, you can't really have a whistleblower without somebody getting caught, right? And then I'm going to be like an anonymous whistleblower.

Nobody likes that story. And so he's doing it by design. I've got a monkey on my back. Oh, my gosh. It usually does too. Yeah, yeah. But it's completely on purpose. And my goal moving forward is to,

make sure that everybody knows that they will purposefully screw you over so they have something to write about that's all they do you're really convinced of that fully convinced that all they do is cause chaos and that's why um laura poitrous isn't there anymore there were some people that cared and it's like even at the point to where i know that glen was the number one voice that did not want to publish the document why um certain countries that um he's interested in stuff like that but he didn't you think it was political like basically because of the narrative uh that was contained in there like went counter to his personal politics exactly yeah it went counter to his own personal interest so he didn't want to publish it and i felt some type of way about that at first but then

I realized like he wasn't even there like he just said we're not going to publish it if they never published it then I don't go to prison it was Matthew Cole being messy like oh we're not going to publish this but I want to give it to my buddy because now I want to find out where it came from why would you verify something if Glenn said don't publish it so like you should have you should have set it on fire yes they should have disposed of it just let it go and That's honestly what I did. That's, I think, one of the reasons why I don't remember why I walked out with that document. Because for three weeks afterwards, I was like, oh, like, they're not going to publish it.

Like, let me just pretend like this never happened. So wait, so for a couple of days, were you expecting to turn on to even, to see a news alert on your phone, like, breaking? And it was going to be like, oh, my God, that's me. I think I was shaking for six straight days. Like I was like giving myself ulcers over it. Yeah. And then by like day 10, I was like, okay, it's lost in the mail. Let's just never do this again.

I threw it into a hole. Yeah, I just like locked that away. I just compartmentalized it and moved on. Shit. I'm so sorry. God, I mean, I'm so ashamed for my profession, really. And I have all, every time I've thought about that, I've always been like, these fucking asshole.

okay so all right so what happens next um well and that's why people are like why did you go to belize and come back right because i had just like throwing away the memory that i had done something terrible um and then what was the timing there so like you say you after how long after you mailed did you two weeks probably about two weeks i mailed the document like on a tuesday and then a couple By the way, I stayed at one of the same hotels as you did. They told me they were there. It's pretty funny. The Howard Monty Resort?

Yes. Amazing. My favorite place in the world. Oh, my gosh. Wonderful family, too. Really like those people. So, yeah, it's just like then they had showed up. And obviously now we know with the Broadway play and the movie,

just how. violating that a completely consensual interview was, right? I was free to walk away at any time. So wait, so let's go back to that. So let's set the stage. Sorry, reality. So you're home when they show up or you come home and they're already there? What happens?

I had just come home. And then that was another thing, too, like one of the ways that they kind of, especially for women that they try to put you off. guard is that on Saturday mornings, like I get up and I was out the door by 6.30 to the gym. I was at the gym for maybe four hours, went out to lunch with a boy and then was supposed to go back to his place that night to watch a movie. But I needed groceries and stuff like that because I meal prep on Sundays. So I went to like the nearest Kroger. And my whole thing was, I was not drinking alcohol at the time, but I was like, I kind of want to bring like one of

the larger 22 ounce craft beer bottles over. And so I had picked one up. I had put it in the dairy, gone back and gotten it, walked around a bit, gone and grabbed a different one, walked around a bit, gotten a six pack, walked around a bit, and then went back for another bottle and then put the bottle. Like it was for me, I would like obviously I didn't know the FBI was following me. So I didn't get back to my house to like 2.33 o'clock in the afternoon. And so I pull up and I park and I'm like grabbing like my freaking giant bag of kale and ice cream from my car.

And they pull in behind me and they're like, hey, you've been gone a while. And I'm like, okay, I'm sorry. Like I was just like so embarrassed because like you realize, oh my God. they're following me. They're probably thinking I am an evil genius trying to lose them on my trail. And I just can't decide what you're here to get. You knew immediately when you saw them who it was. No. No, because they had no identification. They just looked like they were there for masters, the golf tournament, because they were wearing, like, pastel polo shirts. Yeah, I've seen the movie. Like, I think Garrett was wearing, like, yeah, he was wearing, like,

sky blue and Taylor was wearing like literally like Pepto-Bismol pink. And they didn't, they didn't present IDs or? They did. And then they said, we do have a warrant. We're looking for some documents. And that's when I was like, okay, well, I don't have any documents anymore. They're going to search and I'm going to figure this out later. Were you hoping at that point that you might be able, that this might still all go away,

that you might be able to satisfy their answers, just be like, I don't know anything about it. And they search the house. They don't find anything. Maybe they're like, mm-hmm. Right. And it's one of those things that it's a legal technicality that I didn't pick up on the time.

But one of the reasons why we went to court and we argued that I was not free to walk away is they had a warrant to search my physical person. And so until they executed the physical body search, no, I was not free to leave. And so the interrogation happened between the time they searched the house and the time they brought a female officer. Because they never sent the FBI did not send a single woman to my house. They sent 11 men. And they needed a woman to put hands on me to search my body.

But by that time, I had already confessed because of our completely, air quotes, consensual interview. Why didn't you just roll John Curiacu style and say, I am represented by counsel and I don't talk to cops? Well, I made them same mistake that reality made, because up until that point, anytime the FBI ever asked me anything, I would say, hey, anything for the FBI, anything I can do to be helpful. I'm a patriot, right? Just like reality. So it never occurred to me when they started asking me questions. And they tricked me, of course, just like they tricked her. They said, hey, remember that case you helped us out with two years ago?

And there was this case. I said, sure. They said, we need your help again. And I said anything for the FBI. And then they- Famous last words. Reality, I mean, surely it must have occurred to you that maybe I should shut up now. no because they looked like all the guys in my office and i worked for the nsa they're the

FBI in and being a white woman from a middle class background where my mom worked with uniformed police officers as a child protective service investigator for me also just like with the intercept kind of listening to them so much I don't, or I didn't view the FBI as law enforcement. I viewed them as more of a government agency. And so I was not in any way, shape, or form thinking about like, oh, I'm talking to cops. These are the same uniform cops that murder Freddie Gray in Baltimore. I wasn't, that wasn't my thing.

Or the Black Panthers in Chicago. You know, and that was the thing, too, is I never had that education. I was just in that era of learning about the prison industrial system. You know, if you had given me six months of going down that rabbit hole and learning about things in the country, like, I didn't even know about like Cohen Intel Pearl. I didn't know any of that stuff. I didn't know. You could have asked me who Jay Edgar Hoover was, and I would have thought he invented a vacuum cleaner. Because my whole life from the time I was 11 years old, all I cared about was Afghanistan, 9-11, and the Taliban, and how to learn as many languages as possible.

Really? Do you mind if I ask you how old you are? I am 33. Okay. Yeah. I mean, you're so young to have gone through all this, just like Eddie. so all right so obviously you talk to them i've seen the i mean i have seen i've seen i've seen the movie but for those who haven't um they talked to you for hours right and then like an hour like two hours and then arrested you yes okay so um at that point i mean are you thinking i need an attorney I mean, I'm in deep shit.

What are you thinking? So this is where like the real trauma fuck starts to happen because, and I think John can kind of give you a little bit more backup information because, so remember how like Thomas Drake was arrested for like what was in his mind, right? It doesn't have to be a tangible physical piece of paper with a top secret label. on it. We had been told, because I had actually worked for the NSA at the time of Snowden's leaks, at the time of Chelsea Manning. And we were not allowed to read news articles about them. Because those news articles, the way you introduced my case, somebody who has a current top secret clearance

could not listen to this podcast. If there's still classified information being played on their device, they are now holding digital signatures of top secret information. Ridiculous. So I didn't know what they had gone through. And I didn't know if this was a process that an attorney could help with. All I had known is that when they first got Chelsea, she went and spent nine months in solitary confinement at Quantico. And so Agent Garrick and Taylor did not say you are under arrest.

They didn't read the Miranda rights that you see on law and order in CIS. I've never had my Miranda rights right to me. Exactly. Did they handcuff you? So that's, it was the weirdest arrest ever. And it's either that's just, they were awkward about it or, you know, white privilege comes into play. But Agent Garrick said, yeah, we're going to have to take you. in is how he told me I was under rest. He said, we're going to go in this vehicle and he gestured

to one of the black unmarked government vehicles. He said, I will be sitting next to you the whole time. He said that we will cuff your hands in the front so you won't be uncomfortable. The only thing I want to apologize for is that it's going to be a bit of a drive. And that's when I thought, holy fucking shit we're going to Quantico and you had animals at home right? Yes so that was when I was like I'm going to Quantico I don't know how to tell my parents that and that was when he gave me my cell phone back

to call somebody to come get the dogs so I didn't call my parents because they're not in Georgia I called the lady at the animal rescue because she's like the last person I had spoken to that week like I came home from Belize she dropped my dog off and then I went to work for three days went to the gym and got arrested like that's what had happened so I had just seen her she knew where the house was I just said hey Kathy I need you to come get my dog and my cat I don't know what's going on but I am in a bit of trouble and I just need you to come get my animals sometime tomorrow. I can't even take care of my

cat right now. She said, okay. And I said, I can't, I can't talk any longer like, this is it. So she got off the phone. I got off the phone. I handed my phone back to Garrick. And he's like, why do you think you're in trouble? I was like, I was like, you just like, I'm going to Quantico. Like, what do you mean? Like, you just hold me like, I have manned cups on. It's kind of a, it's kind of a tell. Right. Like, like, I had just confessed to you. Like, we all, like, why are you doing this? So anyway, and then he's like, well, don't you want to call your family? I was like, I thought I got one phone call and these two living creatures in my house are important. Like, duh. Like, I, like, the whole thing was like, look at this fucking sociopathic. big bitch. All she cares about is her dog and her cat. She's not giving any until her family is how I felt. You know what I mean? Like once they brought that up, did you say yes, I would like

to call my parents? Yeah. And so he's like, okay. And then again, oh, so they said we're going to have to take you in. They never said you are charged with this law. I wasn't arraigned yet. It wasn't even like that yet. It was just like at no point, nobody said the word espionage. so I still didn't even know exactly the technicalities of what I had done wrong right like we just had we had an action and a result I didn't know where I was going okay so I called my dad because you know I never tell my mom when I'm in trouble I always tell my dad and I was just like hey like again I was like I'm in trouble I don't know where I'm going but the FBI is here and And I guess I'm going with them. I don't have any information. Like, I didn't have any information. Like, I was like, I didn't even know these guys were cops.

Like, what do you think? Like, it was so crazy. And then Agent Garrett was just like, just give me the phone. Give me the phone. And he grabs the phone. And like, my heart rate is so high at that time. Like, he walks away from me and I don't hear what he's telling my dad. So basically they already had me on the schedule to be arraigned that Tuesday, that Monday or Tuesday.

Ah, let me interrupt you. They do that on purpose. They like to make their arrests on Thursdays because there are no arraignments on Fridays. And so you have to spend Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night in the local jail, which in D.C. is a very dangerous place. And then they rain you on Monday after you've been beaten up a couple of times. and softened up and are much more willing than you were on Thursday to take a plea. Yeah. So, you know, luckily I was arrested on a Saturday afternoon.

Right. But yeah. So he was the one that how the fuck would I have that information? Like, hey, meet me at the federal courthouse in Augusta, Georgia at 9 a.m. on Monday. You know what I mean? Like, that's what he told my dad, apparently. I never heard that conversation. And then he takes my phone.

and then we had that very dangerous conversation about how to turn my phone on because they didn't know how and I was like well you press the button on the side and you like you swipe up and they were like whoa whoa whoa don't do that and I was like but that's how you unlock it and they're like well what's the passcode and I'm like I don't lock my phone like online and mobile banking was like just invented like even if it was like I wouldn't have a lock on my phone. never had a lock on my phone. So they were just like, wow, why did you have a lock on your phone? I was like, can you just stop fucking with me?

So then that was when these stupid idiots realized that they had to search me before in order to, you know, satisfy the warrant and none of them could touch me. So they called somebody from the Richmond County Sheriff Office. A woman showed up. She went and patted me down. There wasn't much. I was not wearing much that day. And then she comes back out and then pulls Garrick and Taylor aside and she's talking to them.

And I don't know what happened. Maybe she thought, I mean, she could have hated me for all I know. But after that conversation, all plans changed. And another sheriff's vehicle came and another woman came out. And then that's when Garrick said, hey, you're going to go with her. And you're in Richmond, Virginia at this point? Um, I'm still in Augusta, Georgia, but we're in Richmond County. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So that's the county that I was technically in.

And so she came up to me and she's like, hey, like, I guess I'm arresting you. Why don't you come with me to the vehicle? We walk to the vehicle. She opens the door. And she's like, sorry, it's policy. I've got to have you in cuffs. So then she cuffs me behind my back and then I get into the vehicle. And then she closes door and then that was the first time like as she drove away from those FBI agents that was the first time I realized that I had just survived my own arrest yeah so I guess this brings up the point the always important point that when you're dealing with the cops to ask them am I under arrest am I free to go am I being detained and just keep insisting on that

Okay, so they took you to the lockup? Yeah, they took me to the Lincoln County Jail. So it wasn't the one directly by the courthouse. I guess that county jail did have a federal contract. It was very small. It was very secluded. And I think that's kind of why they chose it. They booked me in and then they took me back to the woman's cell block was one cell.

and it used to be the disciplinary one for the men. So it was smaller, not quite as nice. They only had one place for the women to be. So if the women didn't get along, it was just playing like rotating chairs with the one isolation cell, which was literally across the hall from us. So like when women didn't get along, they were still arguing across the hallway.

Or if somebody did get put over there for a fight and everybody was supporting the person that got pulled out. Like, we would just sit at the door and talk to them all day anyway. Like, nobody was ever truly, like, in isolation or completely alone. So you are, you know, I'm like, okay, so where does an attorney enter the picture? My attorney showed up five minutes late to my arraignment. I was downstairs in the holding cell and then they put me in a very small

like the room where you get to talk to your attorney through like the grate for the first time. And court ordered attorney. Court appointed attorney, Titus. He said, hey, they told me 30 minutes ago that I'm on this case. I don't know what you're being charged with. I'm so sorry.

He was like, we are going to plead guilty. and we're going to i mean i'm sorry i'm so sorry he said we're going to plead not guilty okay okay all right not guilty and then we'll have a conversation about this he's like i have no idea what's going on they just told me um and then i said i don't care like how do i get out on bond like everybody gets out like you what i mean like when do i get out i got out on my own recognizance so did geoffrey sterling yes but i'm a terrorist yeah apparently obviously Yeah, just look at you.

Society needs to be protected from you, clearly. They're going to pull that out of context. It's going to be saying, I'm a terrorist, I'm a terrorist over and over again. Don't be afraid of sarcasm. It's a humorous, best friend. Anyway. Yeah. So, and he was certain of that, too.

He was like, okay, well, they will decide when we get, he's like, I'm not going to make this grow any promises, obviously. He's like, but we will talk about that in the courtroom. He's like, but just today, you're going to say your name and you're not going to say anything else. That's how we're going to do today until I figure out what's going on. Obviously, that hearing didn't go well. They said, oh, well, we're not going to have a bond hearing until Thursday. Obviously, I couldn't talk to my family.

And then that was when Titus saw what they were charging me with. and I pled not guilty and then was it, no, it was at the hearing on Thursday that they took away my court-appointed attorneys because they figured I could afford my own attorneys. Can I jump ahead just a little bit? your mom posted something on Facebook just before your book came out reality and she said that your conviction precluded you from making money from the book I found that to be outrageous I've made a living from my conviction I've written what eight books and at least three of them have something to do with my conviction. Why was that restriction placed on you?

It seems like a violation of your constitutional rights, patently unfair. It hasn't been placed on the rest of us. Why you? I'm going to say something that is just so funny, but it's because I'm a star, obviously. Yeah. Yes. It has to be it. Or you're like son of Sam. There's the son of Sam law, right?

So that is, that I was going to get to that. Because they realized very early on in the case that instead of the document and national security, this case quickly became about who I am as a person. Yep. And that I was

actually getting a lot more public support than they wanted. Yes. Their last ditch effort to embarrass me was to publish almost in full in the court record that conversation with the FBI. Within two months, it was turned into a Broadway play. Yes. And so they were like, we tried to embarrass her, and now it's on Broadway or off

Broadway. That's jujitsu. Exactly. Like, every time they tried to humiliate me, we turned around and were like, actually, Actually, that's why I'm likable. And so by the time of the conviction, they had added in there that no part, from the moment I joined the Air Force, really, all the way through my time at the NSA, through the conviction and even post-conviction in prison, nothing associated with my clearance or my charge.

for me, for my associates, my acquaintances, for my current, and they put in their current and future family members. Like, it's like they knew my sister was pregnant with the child at that time. And they were like, that niece will not get anything. Like, it was so petty because they knew that these movies were coming out. They knew that people were more interested in who I was as a person. then the felony, the conduct that resulted in a felony. Let's talk about that reality.

I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I never understood the following aspect. John, I totally understand why they shit-canned him. He exposed the fact that the U.S. government was torturing people. In your case, you exposed the accusation, the allegation that Russia was spying on our elections. Why does anyone in the U.S. government want to defend Russia or care what Russia is or is not doing? I mean, you didn't embarrass them. So why are they so upset? They have this really cool dance thing.

But I did want to follow up on that. They also knew that the only other people who are prohibited from making money off of their conviction are, serial killers. Right. So it was kind of like we double dog dare you to use legal precedents involving serial killers to justify making money off your story, right? So that was kind of like that was a further slap in the face. Like, you know, we dare you to use the same law that men who have murdered and raped

women and are now popular in prison to just, justify making money, which is why we have never even considered appealing it. Like, that would be so repulsive to me. So, I mean, for me, I'm just like, my last laugh on that is I'm not making any money, but I'm not seeing a single movie where Garrick and the lead prosecutor, Jenna, or even the judge, I'm not seeing a single movie that makes them look like good people. Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to shoot.

People aren't stupid. I yeah let me ask you a follow-up about that too I am I've had a strange thing happened to me now that my case is you know more than a decade in the past um three of the FBI agents that were involved in my arrest have reached out to me one recently to apologize and two of them called my attorneys to apologize one reached out to me directly got my email address somehow and said that he was sorry that he arrested me, that he's lost sleep over it over the last 13 years, and that he wanted me to know that the orders to go after me

came from the very top and that at the working level, they were simply following orders. I always believed that that was the case, and it was nice to hear the apology. It doesn't change anything, of course. But your case seems to be so much more clear cut than mine. Out of all the whistleblowers, and forgive me, but I consider you a major whistleblower, out of all the whistleblowers, you're the one that violated the law the least

in terms of the amount of information that was revealed. It seems to me that these FBI agents, whether they were friendly or not, should have run to their computers to apologize to you. Does that happen? Have you heard from any of these people that were involved in your case? No. Well, one, I'll talk about that at the very end. They have not. What I do know is that I have the satisfaction of knowing that everybody wanted my case because it was like the first really scandalous like leak or whatever that they could prosecute under trump yes everybody wanted this to be their career stepping stone and then obviously the day i was convicted trump was like this is stupid

this is small potatoes like this is not a victory and in hindsight what i was hearing once i had gotten out of prison and i was actually listening to joe rogan he had some guy talking about it his like CIA guy. But he basically said, Mike Baker. Yeah, I think it was Mike Baker. He said during the Trump administration, there were little to know FBI and CIA promotions. Like he like basically like kneecapped both of those agencies in that first term. And so I was like, okay, well, good. Nobody got a promotion because of me. I know that the lead prosecutor, the mastermind, behind my case, Julia Adelstein was fired earlier this year because of her connections with the Mar-a-Lago case. And I know that Jenna's making a lot of money doing corporate law,

but she's not like the hotshot national security prosecutor anymore. So it seems like none of them are doing anything relevant anymore, you know? I found that to be the case in the racial situation as well. Yeah. Yeah. Like y'all aren't doing anything. and I've got a memoir. Have you gotten any apologies from The Intercept or from Glenn Greenwald? Good question. I don't think Glenn likes me or takes me seriously. It doesn't like anybody.

The apology did come from the contribution to my legal team, like finding the legal team, finding a group of Republicans that would defend me in court was very important, paying millions of dollars for it. Jim Reison personally came to see me at one point. And I do know that because of her convictions, Laura Poitris resigned because she was the only one willing to say that I got screwed over. Did you ever consider suing the intercept?

No, because I've always I have always just taken accountability for the fact that regardless of what they did, I broke the law and I can't be like in court saying like, you didn't help me break the law more effective. You know, that would be like, you know, suing your partner in a bank robbery because they didn't grab enough cash on the way out. Respect reality. I don't know.

Personally, I want to sue on your behalf. I know, right? Well, okay, so now let's get to, if I can, if I may, you know, I do want to know the, you know, sort of why do you think, why you know, why do you think you were the person who said, okay, no one else is going to release this? I want the country to know and have this discussion. and I'm not just going to wait for someone else to do it. I'm just going to do it. I'm dropping this sucker in the mail. I don't know if it's really because of like personal aspirations or hero complex.

I think it, and I don't play like being in a dark place. Like I don't blame that. But I didn't have a family. I had this vague. dream of going to Afghanistan and building a resume so I could work for a humanitarian aid organization down the line. But nothing in my future was really like materializing. I did not feel like I had a bright future ahead. In my current life, I had a foster dog that hated everybody and a cat, like I had just lost my father. I couldn't stand being home. And so I was like,

I really didn't have anything to hold on to. So when it was like, oh, you sacrificed everything, it was like, I sacrificed the possibility of a career doing what I dreamed of doing. But even that wasn't tangible at the time. You know. So did you feel like you didn't have much to lose? Exactly. I didn't have anything to lose. And I thought that I kind of thought if the information got out first and everybody

was like, oh my gosh, this is so important, whoever gave this to us really did something great for the country. When they did catch me, it would, this is so dumb. But like, our favorite movie growing up was Moulon. the cartoon one. And so at the very end, she's standing in front of the emperor. This is like such an Ed Snowden moment.

Like I hope he hears this because he always talks about like Zelda and movies and stuff like that. But the emperor standing in front of her and he's like, you disgraced your family. You illegally entered the army. You, you foiled this plan. You blew up the emperor's palace.

You know, you did this. You did this. You did this. And he's like, and you have saved us all. And that's what I want. I wanted my little Moulon moment.

What would you do different? Would you do anything differently now? I have to assume so. If I could pop you, knowing what you know now, I pop you right back in front of that post office, that mailbox. Are you doing any? What would you change? Yeah.

So I'm not printing that document out. I'm quitting my job. and going to Afghanistan and doing like a Dan Terry moment. If I'm going to lose everything, I'm going to lose it the way he lost it. Or I'm taking that document, driving to Washington, D.C. and putting it in Bernie Sanders' hands. Like, there's only two options. Don't do it or go to prison for giving a document to Bernie Sanders. What would you say to anyone who's thinking about leaking to the internet?

intercept? Absolutely do not leak to the intercept. There are more effective journalists. I don't know, like the Washington Post is shit now. It is. It's a right wing rag now. New York Times is garbage because Ed Snowden called New York Times and left messages and they never called him back.

Exactly. It's going to have to be something done like independent. like you are going to have to find a way to get that information out there independently and do it from a safe place or accept that your life is about to get very hard and that's kind of like one of the things where it's like I'm not telling anybody to break the law but I'm also telling people like me like white people you're not going to El Salvador you're not getting sent to Sudan like at this point in time time but if you do not start coming forward and you do not stop putting your head down and following orders, we are going to get to that point, right? Like, you need to start coming out. I think the entire NSA needs to come out, starting with the director. I think that these agencies need to start standing up for something

unless they've always wanted to be the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Peace and Truth, or whatever. Like, if that was their goal all along, then all hope is lost. all hope is lost, but, you know, especially even like our active duty or National Guard, our service members in uniform in D.C. right now, like, I hate using Hollywood and pop culture as a reference, but like everybody looks back and admires the conscientious subjectors, admires the people who are willing to sit in the brig rather than go kill children abroad or march against their own people in the streets of BC.

Well, reality, I'm twice your age, and exactly, and I remember the Vietnam War, and people really did not respect or treat the conscientious objector as well. They were treated and insulted as cowards and made fun of and ridiculed, but they were heroes. And that's the thing, too, is people need to understand. Like, people will remember in time, And you have to understand that history is a process, you know, and it's just like, also like, just do the right fucking thing.

How can you put on a uniform knowing that you are being sent to march against the people of the United States of America? Like, if you wanted to be a bully cop, you should have gone and been a cop. You're not. You're a soldier in the United States military. How dare you accept those orders? You're here. Can you, do you, can we, can you talk a little bit, well, talk as much as you want, about the, about the, about the, your prison experience. I mean, what I read was really interesting. Yeah. County jail was really hard. I mean, they make it hell for a reason.

Yes, a kitty. Oh, I love the kitty. County Jail was the lowest point of my life, and then the transport process was even lower. You know, never say rock bottom because rocks, huh? Did they force you to go through Oklahoma City? Yes, and I didn't even get the privilege of going to that transport center. I went to the overflow Grady County Jail. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was a filthy warehouse full of meth addicts and neo-Nazis.

Yeah. Awesome. So how long, so how many, how many years was it? It was exactly four years to the date and 15 months of it was in county jails before I had the privilege of going to federal prison. When I showed up at Carswell, I feel like I made it into Harvard. Yeah, I bet. The campus was beautiful. Like I called it a campus. It wasn't a compound. I just remember so many of us had been in county jails for so long. The housing unit was just one big room with cells lining the walls. And then, like, we had a common bathroom at the end.

And our ability to process, like our sensory capacities had been so limited by that time, by just living in one room for a year, that, like, there were so many of us looking around, like, wow, we're going to get lost in here every day. And it's one room. I mean, just I remember. getting lost on the compound. And just like, once I got my MP3 player, once I was able to run and exercise,

you know, life was petty, life was hard. But I was going to be just fine until COVID. Yeah. So what happened? So COVID hits late February 2020. I remember it really well. We all do. So what so.

you went into lockdown? Yes. So we were a little bit behind the curve just because they were actually doing like some common sense stuff like, okay, so like we're on a compound, none of y'all should spontaneously catch COVID. New people coming in, we're going to quarantine them for a couple weeks just to see. But y'all should be fine. They started decreasing like the capacity of like the chapel and indoor spaces.

is like y'all just can't gather like more than 30 people and then i had taught my last spin class on like march 14th and then on march 15th and 16th there were all these rumors and we had been in lockdown by the 17th um you can't go outside anymore and we thought it would just last a couple days and then it was a week and then it was two weeks and they were like yeah you're all aren't going outside and then it was y'all are only going outside as long as it takes to search the unit for drugs and to sanitize everything so like once a week at an unspecified time like a fire drill we would be ushered out and then they would go in and allegedly sanitize and look for drugs oh for heaven's sake um so it was like it was great if i was ready for it

Like, everybody was like, winner, I think they're coming. I think they're coming. I grabbed my MP3 player, put my running shoes on, and go run for an hour while they did that. But because it was so, like, sporadic, and then they started like, okay, you guys get to go out an hour for exercise once a week. Things were just like, it was just so bad. And then they put us on lockdown for George Floyd. and that was they just they came in like five officers deep and said get in yourselves like literally like screaming at us they were pointing tear gas guns at us and like I said that our prison was unique we

didn't have toilets in ourselves we didn't have doors in ourselves we had a common bathroom at the end which means in order for them to facilitate a lockdown they had to have 24-hour manned positions to take bathroom requests. Their parents must have been so proud. Yeah. Every single day for a week straight, you, and, you know, obviously, like, there were a lot of male officers,

so as women asking to go, and it's like, I had a miscarriage in my early 20s. I have a lot of scar tissue in my abdomen. You know what I mean? I've got, like, an hour bladder on a good day. Like, there's so many women there that also, they had C-sections, they had multiple five, six, seven children. Like when it comes to female bodies in particular,

when you start talking about limiting their access to restroom facilities and to hygiene facilities, that's a human rights issue, you know. And that's something that our federal, everything in federal prison is dictated by what the men's compounds means, because those are 85% of the inmates, because those are the biggest security concerns. So when it comes to the women's conference, They're like, well, that's not policy. You don't have to have access to a toilet every hour.

And we're like, but we need it. Like when I'm telling you that women were going, they were urinating in their trash cans and threatening to throw it out into the common area if they weren't allowed to go to the bathroom. Reasonable. Things like that. I mean, that's what we went through for a week,

and we didn't know why. Nobody told us why we were being treated that way. Were a lot of your fellow prisoners black? Is that why they were worried about George Floyd? It wasn't, it had nothing to do with the prisons. It was that the marches for justice on the streets were so, we're ramping up to the points of where the federal government decided to take the riot task forces out of the federal prisons to patrol the streets that we went into critically low-man status across the board in federal prisons, which dictated a federal lockdown.

It had nothing to do with our conduct or our expected conduct. So it's just their paranoia. Yeah, for nothing. And that was when I started using drugs for the first time because I couldn't handle the injustice that we were the ones being punished because a cop committed a murder in front of the world. That was, that's when I lost my mind.

These drugs are smuggled in by the guards, I assume. Nope, they were sent in. So you spray synthetic, synthetic THC on a piece of paper, like a letter, and then you send it in, and then they cut it up into pieces based on how much they want to charge for the piece. And you just put it under your tongue and you just trip for a while. sort of like the way acid used to be exactly it was like that um somebody gave me meth once and i told her like not only am i not going to pay for this crap but um you're lucky i'm not

going to hit you in the face because it was so bad meth was awful don't do it so were you addicted by the time you uh your your term you were released no um i was just like emotionally dependent on it and the scary part was just like when i learned how to balance the use of it with continuing to work out because if i like that was the whole thing i was like i'm not going to use this until i can work out again then i'm going to work out and then i started using it occasionally and it wasn't like such a severe addiction it was just like then all my friends everybody around me started getting busted for it and then i still wanted to buy it so that was like the thing it was like the i was starting to just not even care about

the risks anymore that was probably like the most concerning part and so obviously you're not on it now what happened um supply and demand like they really cracked down it wasn't a very anymore. I hate, like, this is so stupid, but my girlfriend really didn't want me to use it. And then I found out, like, I was just using to piss her off. Like, I didn't need anymore. I was just getting high to make her mad. Luckily, this is not a substance that causes withdrawal or cravings.

It's just literally like, I like how this feels. I'm going to do it. So those are kind of like, some of those things are a little bit easier habits to break. But also all the drug dealers got popped at that point in time. So it just wasn't available. Like, I got really lucky. And you're one of the longest, if not the long, you had the longest or one of the longest whistleblower sentences in U.S. history, yeah?

Yeah, I think for anyone count, yes. I'm not really sure about the Jack Tashira case. I don't know if he's going to beat me or not. Yeah, but he wasn't a whistleblower. No. He wasn't, and he had multiple, like, he had like hundreds of documents. Yeah, right. He was trying to impress his friends.

He was a braggard. Yeah. Okay, so ultimately, you did your four years. You're out. You can't make money from writing books. You can write books, but you can't make money from them. Yeah, you can write as many as you want. I mean, I won't make any jokes about how, you know, writing isn't paying anyone anymore.

for anyway. But so, okay, so what's your life been like since then? At this moment in time, I'm coaching CrossFit. It's just a massive privilege to get to coach my favorite sport. I would be competing, but I'm on book tour this fall. So kind of taking the fall off, I also tore my rotator cuff. So that's kind of been what I've been dealing with. And right now, I am in a bachelor's program for veterinary tick. Good for you. And I'm using my VA benefits for that. So I still have some benefits.

And I rescue dogs. So like right now we have eight dogs. I'm busy from, you know, 6 a.m. to 10 o'clock at night. I'm, if I'm not podcasting, I'm in school, coaching, or chasing dogs. Great. Reality, thank you so much for joining us here. It's honestly been really great. really great. Thank you so much. This was fun. Very best of luck with all of it. Yes, to you too.

Thanks, everyone, for watching us here on D-Program with Ted Roll and John Kirooku. We're here Monday through Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, although this is going to air. We recorded this ahead of time last week. This is going to air on Tuesday. I think October, or maybe it's not quite October. September 30th. September 30th, right? And so this is going to air September 30th, so it's not live. But so this particular, starting tomorrow, will be on at 9 a.m. Eastern time. Please like, follow and share the show. Reality winner, NSA whistleblower.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, guys. And by the book, I am not your enemy. All right. And I will hit this.