Accused Leaker Reality Winner Worked at NSA Listening Post

The Daily Beast reports:

The contractor accused of leaking classified information appears to have worked at a National Security Agency post, where her foreign language skills would have been useful to translate intercepted communications.

Reality Winner, 25, was charged Monday by the Justice Department for allegedly sending top secret documents to a news organization last month. (The documents are believed to be NSA files about Russian election hacking, reported on by The Intercept.) Winner didn’t work directly for the NSA though: she allegedly obtained these documents while working as a contractor for Pluribus International Corporation. Pluribus’ website shows that the company’s only Georgia outpost to be at Fort Gordon Army base near Augusta. Her résumé suggests she was working at the Georgia Cryptologic Center, a vast NSA outpost located at Fort Gordon.

Nicknamed “Sweet Tea,” the 604,000-square-foot facility collects signals intelligence from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Wired previously reported. Sweet Tea, which opened in full in 2012, is reportedly equipped to house 4,000 specialists working to translate and analyze intercepted communications.

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