John A. Gentry

None of them were caught.

There was, within the main part of the IC, the one person, certainly not at CIA and ODNI, the two activist groups, in the first Trump years, there was one young woman who was arrested and punished, a contract employee, former Air Force linguist,

at the National Security Agency at their Georgia facility by the name of Reality Winner, who was then 25 years old, who brought some documents out of NSA that she thought were relevant to the Russia is using Donald Trump as an asset issue, which was a big one in the early part of the,

In fact, not just the early, but later, you know, all the way through the Trump years.

So she brought some documents out, sent them to a news site.

The news site got these documents, sent them to the NSA and said, are these real?

A reality winner was arrested shortly thereafter, answering the question.

So here was an intelligence officer who used not very good tradecraft.

So it turned out that apparently she copied these documents on machines at the office, and the machine left some identifying marks.

So it was easy to figure out who she was.

So anyway, she was the one who was caught.

She got five years and three months for violating the Espionage Act.

Nobody at CIA, nobody at the ODNI were caught for punishment, nobody.

So one of the things I think what I would like to see us do in the leak department is encourage FBI, justice, and whoever else may be involved in here to be thinking about disinformation leaks

as not only national security issue, Espionage Act issues, but also Hatch Act issues.

So for some of your viewers, the Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities.

So when you're doing leaks that are really disinformation and you're doing them for partisan political reasons, that, it seems to me, becomes hatchet material.

Well, it's a good question.

I mean, you know, we've got, you know, how do you reverse a century worth of, you know, of Soviet Marxist propaganda?

Well, it's a long, you know, long haul, long, long process.