Augusta made international news this week, but not in a good way. Is our fair hometown not only “Home of the Masters,” but “Home of the Master Spy?”
Um…no.
We do host a massive National Security Agency operation at Fort Gordon, and for that the CSRA is blessed. The mission comes with hundreds of well paying jobs by (mostly) amazingly well behaved and law abiding taxpaying citizens and patriots.
Unfortunately, if someone associated with the all important counter-intelligence mission of the NSA goes “off the reservation,” the news bulletin carries an Augusta dateline.
As you may have heard by now, 25-year-old Reality Leigh Winner is one of those workers who has officially moved “off the reservation.” By the looks of some of her social media posts, she may have set up a permanent residence in orbit over Neptune, had it not been for the fact that she was arrested by the FBI this week for leaking “top secret” documents to an online news service.
To say Winner (perhaps the most ironic name to hit the newswires in 20 years) is liberal would be an understatement. Her views are left-wing radical, and how she was ever allowed to exist as such an outspoken nut on social media and maintain her security clearance is a mystery to me, and surely a scandal in and of itself.
In fact, she was such a demonstrable screwball that the theory you are about to read below is not only plausible, but it makes a whole lot of sense.
Did Reality Winner’s looney-bird political and social views cause her to be set up by the NSA in a “sting operation?”
The following letter arrived this morning from someone I will only refer to as Colonel Mustard. I made a few minimal edits to the letter to help disguise his identity, but believe me when I tell you, the Colonel knows from what he speaks.
His theory? Miss Winner may have been caught like a rat in trap that was designed especially for anyone who was prone to leak something juicy. It had to be understandable and in a simple enough form to cause enough excitement to trigger an immediate action by the “leaker.” At the same time, it should be info that while intriguing, was not seriously dangerous to national security to release.
Mission accomplished!
Here is the letter I received:
Dear Austin Rhodes,
SUBJECT: Problem with the Reality Winner Story
The first issue is that all, and I repeat “ALL” intelligence facilities are compartmentalized. These compartments are known as bays and each have isolated missions. Thus, geolocation otherwise called DF “Direction Finding” finding out where a target is coming from is isolated from the actual bay monitoring or collecting the signal of interest. Likewise, satellite communications, radio systems communications comprised of analog and digital data, imagery, and linguistic are all isolated from each other. The missions of these bays are generally categorized as SIGINT, HUMINT, GEOINT, MASINT, SATCOM, etc. No one bay has the completed report. Within each of these MISSIONS there are noted Shift Supervisors and Mission Managers who prepare reports for their compartmented areas and then forward their findings via secured communications to NSA where the complete report is finalized when all the data from all the sources of collection is compiled. If that is not enough compartmentalization there is also the fact that all software used by all these different mission bays and personnel are also scrutinized by ISSOs, Information System Security Officers. The ISSOs give access to these personnel to utilize only the selected software needed for not only their assigned mission but also their assigned position within that mission. As a mission or assignment is finished by an assigned person for that operation the ISSO removes and adds access to the selected systems for that person by the ISSO.
As noted the supposed leaked information was sent anonymously to the INTERCEPT. Due to the fact that she was a linguist she would have only had access to limited linguist data, not completed reports accessed by only Shift Supervisors/Mission Managers, much less the facts that her access to print anything would have been limited by the ISSO when assigned to any mission and bells and whistles would have alerted the S2(SECURITY) had she tried to access a system for which she had not been assigned access. This coupled with the fact that the AOR, Area Of Responsibility, for which the collection units operate is not Russia. Also of note is that when contractors are within any and all secured intelligence facilities they are to be assigned a chaperone to monitor their activities.
Thus, it sounds in truth that she accessed a generalized email communication system and thus an unofficial report; meaning it lacked supported facts/data, yet was put forth as on only a confidential email system from which everyone within the secured intelligence facility has access. As I have stated Russia is not the AOR of Fort Gordon, thus her print out would have been a generalized letter not an actual report derived from factual data, but rather an allegation without supported data. I say this because if it had the supported data it would have been classified at a higher level for which she would have had no access; even within a secured facility, due to her mission assignment as a linguist.
Hillary Clinton spouting out to everyone that the United States Nuclear response time is 5 minutes was more damage to our National Security then this unsubstantiated document that was either dispersed and marked as confidential or even unclassified for everyone to read. It sounds like the story was planted and they waited to see who would take the bait to try to leak it.
Contact the GRSOC and Cyber Command at Fort Gordon to confirm that what I have stated is not 100% fact and true!
This reeks of a planted faked report, else it would not have been on a generalized system for which everyone within the facility had access to print said document!
Thanks Austin…
Love the show!
CM
Thank you, Colonel Mustard. I love you, too.
