Yashar Ali  🐘Verified account

2. The Intercept reporters and their editor(s) really had no options here, I don't believe they could have handled this any other way.

3. Let's go through the facts. Reality Winner printed out the NSA document at work, it's likely she used a system called JWICS

4. JWICS is a program run by the DIA and can track who prints documents and who accesses documents. More on JWICS in another thread.

5. She then mailed the document to the Intercept. The document was mailed anonymously, The Intercept had no idea who sent it.

6. The Intercept, like any news org, wanted to report on the contents of the document. Remember, they don't know who its from.

7. When you receive a document anonymously in the mail, as a reporter you are free to use it as you wish, by mailing it anonymously

8. The source has given you permission to use the document any way you wish, they are expected to have done the leg work to make sure

9. They won't be caught. A perfect example of this is when NYT @susannecraig received pages from Trump's tax returns last October.

11. So the Intercept team sends the doc to the feds, people keep talking about the crease issue mentioned in the FBI affidavit.

12. Given that the NSA document came from JWICS it doesn't matter whether there was a crease or not. Once the feds got the doc they were...

13. They were going to check JWICS to see who accessed the document and who printed it. The feds were going to check JWICS regardless

14. And when they checked JWICS they would have seen her name as someone who accessed it and still noticed that she had

15. That she had emailed the Intercept about a totally unrelated issue: podcast related matter. And when they went to her home

16. She would have still confessed. The intercept sending a PDF of that document probably saved the Feds a few minutes at most.

They were sloppy.

you didn't go through the thread did you.

You can't get past the fact that they were not able to protect their source.

you didn't go through the thread did you.

I did. And I appreciate your theory and you educated me on a few aspects of how these things were handled. That said, they F’d up.

So they were supposed to publish w/out reaching out to the NSA for comment?

Fact is now they will get fewer leads. If they saw the dots they might have considered sitting on it to maintain trust & flow - or not

ONLY SIX PEOPLE ACCESSED THE DOCUMENT.

So @theintercept was supposed to know that?

They are a premier collector of leaks. I presume they knew it but felt they needed to do journalism - which is totally their prerogative