NSA Whistleblower Released From Texas Prison; and Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America

NSA Whistleblower Released From Texas Prison

Former NSA contractor Reality Leigh Winner was released on good behavior from a Texas prison on June 2. In 2017 Winner became the first person prosecuted during the Trump administration on charges of leaking classified information. She was sentenced to 5 years and 3 months in prison and served four years. The 29-year-old will ultimately be transferred to home confinement prior to her full release from custody in November.

Winner, a former Air Force linguist, leaked a top-secret report detailing hacks by Russian intelligence operatives against local election officials and a company that sold voter registration software. She sent it by mail to the online publication The Intercept. Given the documents significance, Intercept staff sought to authenticate it before reporting on it. Their process of authentication, however, turned out to be deeply flawed because the Intercept sent a pdf scan of the hard copy report to the NSAs public affairs office which contained clues that then led the government to discover Ms Winner’s identity.

A former Air Force linguist, Reality Winner entered a guilty plea to a single felony count of unauthorized transmission of national defense information in 2018, after being prosecuted for leaking classified information.

Guest – Alison Grinter Allen, who is Reality’s attorney. Alison’s Twitter account

—-

Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America

There is no shortage of aphorisms about history repeating itself when leaders fail to learn from prior mistakes. While a thorough grasp of history is no guarantee that things will go smoothly in the future, it can help gain insight about current conditions, and can inform future actions.

But history is vulnerable to manipulation. Never stagnant, and always subjective, history is constantly being reshaped especially by those with the resources to do so. According to Professor Erik Christiansen, as new channels of mass communication emerged on the heels of World War II, elite communities in the media, commerce, and government mined examples from history to create their own propaganda. Through a range of techniques, aided greatly by television, they advanced their respective agendas, from commerce to politics.

In his book, Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America, by the University of Wisconsin Press, Professor Christiansen presents a history of what he calls the usable past in postwar America. He examines several sources of purposely politicized history that put themselves forth as credible citizens history, adapted for the new age.

Guest – Erik Christiansen, professor of history and public history coordinator at Rhode Island College.

—

Poetry By Raymond Nat Turner – Justice Served / Essential Work

Share This Episode