Intercept Co-Founder and Whistleblower Champion Laura Poitras Says She Was Fired for Criticizing Editors Over Reality Winner Reporting Failures

In 2017, Winner, then a 25-year-old linguist with the National Security Agency, sent classified documents to The Intercept that detailed Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The Times report published in September 2020 detailed The Intercept’s failure to protect Winner's identity when confirming her leaks, and the internal investigations that followed. Internal documents reviewed by the Times “show an extreme version of the human errors, hubris, and mismanagement” and “startling carelessness” that led to exposing Winner as the source of the documents.