This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Dori Berinstein: Welcome to episode two.

[0:01] Sally Horchow: Who is Reality?

[0:08] Dori Berinstein: I'm Dori Berinstein.

[0:10] Sally Horchow: And I'm Sally Horchow, and we are the producers of Is This a Room on Broadway.

[0:14] Dori Berinstein: On June 3rd, 2017, 11 FBI agents appeared at the home of Reality Winner, a 25-year-old Air Force linguist, to interrogate her about leaking a classified document proving Russian interference in the 2016 election.

[0:31] Sally Horchow: Is This a Room, the critically acclaimed Broadway play, reenacts the verbatim transcript of that interrogation.

[0:39] Dori Berinstein: When we started the journey of bringing Is This a Room to Broadway, we knew there was so much the public didn't know about Reality's story.

[0:46] Sally Horchow: So we created the podcast This Is Reality to provide a deeper look inside the very important and very timely story of Reality Winner.

[1:00] Dori Berinstein: Welcome to episode two of This Is Reality.

[1:04] Sally Horchow: Last week's episode set the scene, establishing how a 25-year-old Air Force linguist was arrested and prosecuted for leaking classified documents about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

[1:17] Dori Berinstein: Today we'll get to know Reality Winner and learn how her personality traits and her sense of humor were twisted and used against her by the prosecution during her trial.

[1:29] Sally Horchow: Now, Reality Winner, her real name, was best known as a fitness enthusiast who posted videos online of her exploits.

[1:38] Dori Berinstein: Yes.

[1:39] Sally Horchow: But now the 25-year-old Jim Rutt faces prosecution under the espionage law for sending top-secret documents to an internet website called the Intercept.

[1:48] Dori Berinstein: Who is Reality Winner?

[1:49] Sally Horchow: Today we'll hear from the two people who know her best.

[1:52] Dori Berinstein: Her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, and her best friend and older sister, Brittany Winner.

[1:57] Sally Horchow: But first, the question everyone asks.

[2:00] Dori Berinstein: How did Reality get her name?

[2:02] Sally Horchow: Reality's mom, Billie Winner-Davis, explains.

[2:05] Billie Winner-Davis: I always like to blame her dad because he was the one that named her.

[2:11] Billie Winner-Davis: When I became pregnant with Reality, her dad, of course, said, "You named the first child, I get to name the second child."

[2:18] Billie Winner-Davis: And I said, "Yes, it's a deal."

[2:21] Billie Winner-Davis: As the pregnancy went on, and we found out that she was a girl, he said that he was going to name her Reality because he wanted a real Winner.

[2:30] Billie Winner-Davis: So we chose the name Reality Winner.

[2:34] Billie Winner-Davis: It fits her.

[2:37] Brittany Winner: I'm Reality's older sister.

[2:39] Brittany Winner: My name's Brittany.

[2:40] Brittany Winner: A lot of people point out the fact that my name is so normal.

[2:43] Brittany Winner: How do you get Brittany and then Reality?

[2:45] Brittany Winner: So that's always been kind of a running joke in our family, and now the world gets to kind of be in on that joke a little bit now that they know about Reality.

[2:53] Brittany Winner: Having the name Reality Winner has proven to be challenging along the way, particularly during Reality's six years in the Air Force.

[3:01] Brittany Winner: She would tell me stories about when she was in the service, about how difficult it was to have the name Reality Winner, and how in some of the systems it wouldn't even take her name.

[3:13] Brittany Winner: Reality even had to create an alias to have food delivered because restaurants would think she was a prankster if she used her real name.

[3:20] Brittany Winner: She also had trouble setting up social media accounts.

[3:23] Brittany Winner: Facebook would not allow her to have her name be Reality because it said that wasn't a real name.

[3:30] Brittany Winner: She actually had to send in a photo of her driver's license to have them, you know, approve of her using her real name on Facebook.

[3:39] Brittany Winner: I know that throughout her life that she's had some challenges because of her name, and then, of course, when the national media picked up on her story, unfortunately, some of the stories just became about her name.

[3:55] Brittany Winner: 25-year-old Reality Winner.

[3:58] Brittany Winner: Reality Winner was—I thought that was her screen name.

[4:01] Brittany Winner: That's her real name.

[4:02] Brittany Winner: It's been a little bit difficult, and it actually prevented us from, you know, getting the attention that we wanted that we needed because there were people out there that said they didn't believe the story because they didn't believe that that was a real person.

[4:18] Brittany Winner: But Reality is real and very aptly named.

[4:21] Billie Winner-Davis: Billy shares more about Reality's childhood in Alice, Texas.

[4:26] Billie Winner-Davis: So Brittany and Reality are very close in age.

[4:30] Billie Winner-Davis: They're about 15 months apart.

[4:31] Billie Winner-Davis: So it was like having twins.

[4:34] Billie Winner-Davis: Reality, I mean, she just had the ability to figure things out, and she just excelled at everything.

[4:44] Billie Winner-Davis: She was an extremely happy child, extremely happy baby.

[4:49] Billie Winner-Davis: But of course, when she hit her terrible twos, she developed her temper, and that has stayed with her for her entire life.

[4:57] Billie Winner-Davis: She's always been extremely passionate and curious.

[5:02] Billie Winner-Davis: She was one that would read constantly.

[5:05] Billie Winner-Davis: She was always exploring things and artistic and always trying new things.

[5:13] Billie Winner-Davis: I've always been so very, very proud of her.

[5:16] Billie Winner-Davis: In high school, she was top 10.

[5:19] Billie Winner-Davis: She was always athletic.

[5:21] Billie Winner-Davis: She played tennis.

[5:23] Billie Winner-Davis: She was on the varsity soccer team.

[5:26] Billie Winner-Davis: She just excelled at everything that she did.

[5:29] Brittany Winner: Brittany tells us more about what it was like growing up with Reality.

[5:33] Brittany Winner: We grew up playing together out in the country.

[5:36] Brittany Winner: So we lived way out there in Southeast Texas, and there's not a whole lot to do.

[5:41] Brittany Winner: We went out in the back pasture and we would just kind of play, climb up on the well, climb up on the roof, you know.

[5:48] Brittany Winner: Normal, normal kids stuff.

[5:49] Brittany Winner: One of our favorite shows that we would watch as kids was Spongebob SquarePants, and it was kind of like around the time that it came out that we were just like obsessed with it.

[5:59] Brittany Winner: I mean, it's so dumb, but we still quote it to each other daily.

[6:04] Brittany Winner: Since they were so close in age, there was also a bit of sibling rivalry.

[6:08] Brittany Winner: There was a lot of competition, but the teachers had me first.

[6:11] Brittany Winner: So they had these expectations of Reality, and Reality doesn't like being put into a box.

[6:16] Brittany Winner: That's another important thing to know about her is that if you think she's one way and if you kind of announce your expectations to her, the first thing that she wants to do is defy them.

[6:27] Brittany Winner: She always tended to go the opposite direction that her sister took.

[6:32] Brittany Winner: So, like her sister was the academic, she had to be the athlete, even though she was academic as well, but she always chose a different path than her sister to really be herself, to shine on her own instead of being in her sister's shadow.

[6:49] Brittany Winner: Reality's family believes that her need to be different from her sister drove a lot of her decisions.

[6:54] Brittany Winner: I actually thought that she decided to join the Air Force and not go to college because I had gone to college.

[7:00] Brittany Winner: She can't follow in my footsteps again.

[7:02] Brittany Winner: She can't just walk the same beaten path that everybody else does.

[7:06] Brittany Winner: And I think that I've always kind of appreciated that about her is that she does the unexpected thing.

[7:12] Brittany Winner: She doesn't always do the easiest thing or the thing that most people would predict that she's going to do.

[7:18] Brittany Winner: She wanted to do something that mattered.

[7:22] Brittany Winner: And you know, that's who Reality has always been.

[7:25] Brittany Winner: She also has a stepbrother, my husband's oldest son, who joined the Air Force, and she saw him having a career as a linguist.

[7:34] Brittany Winner: He's a Russian linguist, and she started teaching herself Arabic while she was in high school.

[7:39] Brittany Winner: The climate that we were living in after 9/11 also kind of shaped her ideas as far as what she wanted to do with her life.

[7:49] Brittany Winner: She wanted to make a difference and help and do something that would help protect us and would also help in the bigger picture.

[8:00] Brittany Winner: Unfortunately, Reality's quest for knowledge and desire to learn Arabic would later be used against her during the trial.

[8:08] Brittany Winner: Evidence presented by the prosecution that Reality Winner has a fascination with the Middle East and Islamic terrorism.

[8:15] Brittany Winner: And the judge said that in part was one reason he did not want to grant her bail or even give her the chance to put up money.

[8:22] Brittany Winner: But in fact, Reality was a dedicated Air Force veteran who loved her time in the Air Force.

[8:27] Brittany Winner: Calling from jail in 2018, she spoke to CBS about what her time in the Air Force meant to her.

[8:33] Reality Winner: My service to the Air Force was everything I've ever wanted, and it was amazing.

[8:38] Reality Winner: It was the best six years of my life.

[8:40] Reality Winner: I do.

[8:40] Billie Winner-Davis: I love my country. I'm a patriot. I care about this country, and I want to make it. In 2016, Reality decided to discharge from the Air Force, as her dream of being deployed to Afghanistan for humanitarian aid work was remote at that time. So she decided to take a job with the NSA as a private contractor. I think that she saw the job there with that private agency there at the NSA as kind of a stepping stone to get a position where she could actually go to Afghanistan to be deployed and to help over there. She talked a lot about the damage that had been done in this war, both to our country and the veterans like herself who served, and then also the damage that was done over in Afghanistan to the people there. But the time leading up to starting her new job was also marked by some difficult moments in her personal life.

[9:40] Billie Winner-Davis: So then she came home for Christmas, December 2016. And unfortunately, her dad passed away just before Christmas that year. That was something that she also had to deal with. You know, getting out of the military, moving, having the loss of her father, who she loved very, very much, and then having to start a brand new job and a brand new life outside of the military. It was during this challenging time in her life that Reality started to work at the NSA. Six months later, she would be arrested for leaking classified documents to The Intercept, proving Russian interference in the 2016 election. Her goal? Instead, she was labeled a traitor with a hidden agenda.

[10:26] Billie Winner-Davis: They say Reality Winner has two faces: one an Air Force veteran, a loving daughter, and a yoga instructor; the other, a person who had taken a keen interest in the Middle East with suspicious motives. The media used Reality's Twitter account to build the case of public opinion against her. Quote, "the most dangerous entry to this country was the orange fascist we led into the White House." She later tweeted that Kanye West, quote, "you should make a shirt that says being white is terrorism." She retweeted Kurt Eichenwald, remember him? His tweet demanding a redo of the election and suggesting that Trump had KKK sympathies. Quote, "why burn a flag? Donald Trump thinks crosses burn much better." Now, this is obviously an intemperate political activist. How did she get a security clearance? Well, you could ask the same question. The government also used phone conversations and text messages between Brittany and Reality to paint Reality as a terrorist.

[11:21] Brittany Winner: In another phone conversation, they say she told her sister that she would cry in court and play the pretty white cute card. But as Brittany explains, the Winner family has always used humor to persevere during difficult times. Our sense of humor was very heavily scrutinized later, but we said some things in that call. Even though we knew that it was recorded, we just wanted to have a heart-to-heart conversation. Reality needed her big sister, and I needed to know that she was going to be okay. So we talked, and she probably revealed a little bit more than she meant to or that she should have. And those were the kind of things that were thrown back in our faces when Reality was up for bail, or when the prosecution was making a case against her.

[12:15] Brittany Winner: The one thing that gave me the most hope was realizing that Reality is still the same person that she was. I mean, there are a lot of things about her that have changed. Obviously, anybody who has spent four years incarcerated or in federal prison for any amount of time is going to change. But underneath it all, underneath all the protective layers that she had to build up, she's still my baby sister. And we still talk about stupid things and we still make stupid jokes, but we're very sarcastic. We say just ridiculous things, even though everything has been very heavily monitored.

[12:51] Billie Winner-Davis: At her sentencing, Reality read a personal statement revealing her deep commitment to protect, defend, and serve our country. In an interview with Democracy Now, I describe the statement that Reality gave. Reality had a pretty lengthy statement that she had worked on. She let the court know, you know, a little bit about who she was. She basically went through her childhood, her relationship with her father, how 9/11 had affected her as a child, how she followed her stepbrother's footsteps to go into the Air Force to be a linguist. She really had the desire to protect and defend and serve her country. I think she was trying to let the court know that although in some statements with texting with her sister, she did indicate that she hates America, that that's not really who she was.

[13:45] Billie Winner-Davis: She also apologized to the court. She apologized to the government for the breach of trust. She apologized to the court and the government for the expense that she has cost them. She apologized to her family. She indicated that she knew that what she had done was wrong. She indicated that she was willing to accept the consequences of her actions. In a 2018 interview with CBS This Morning, given from the Lincoln County Jail, Reality shared her regret of leaking the document. After you were arrested, you said you didn't think about the consequences of what you did. Now that you know the consequences, do you regret leaking those documents? Yes, deeply. And what would you tell anybody else who is in a similar position to the one you were in? Go volunteer in your community. You can change the world before breakfast just by being kind to somebody.

[14:45] Billie Winner-Davis: I mean, there's no way, no way that she would ever betray her country. She did everything she could to protect us. And then, you know, when you look at the information that she leaked, the document that she leaked, she leaked information to Americans that we were under attack from Russia. That's a person who's again trying to protect her country, trying to serve her country, trying to make sure that we know the truth when the truth was being hidden from us. Reality was sentenced to five years and three months, the longest ever imposed for leaking classified documents to the media.

[15:26] Dori Berinstein: In our next episode, we will learn more about how the United States was able to prosecute Reality under the Espionage Act of 1917. You can support Reality by signing her petition for clemency at standwithReality.org. Please join us for the next episode of This Is Reality. And for more information and tickets to all productions of Is This a Room, visit BPN.fm/ThisIsReality. And make sure to check out all the podcasts on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[16:02] Dori Berinstein: Thanks to our very special guests, Billie Winner-Davis and Brittany Winner. We're also very grateful to the Is This a Room cast, Emily Davis, Becca Blackwell, Will Cobbs, and Pete Simpson, and the entire Is This a Room Company. This podcast is created, written, and produced by Dori Berinstein, Sally Horchow, Rebecca Aparicio, and the Broadway Podcast Network. Sound engineers are Alan Seales and Kimberly Garris. Podcast editor is Alan Seales.

[16:41] Dori Berinstein: Lead producers of Is This a Room on Broadway are Dori Berinstein, Sally Horchow, and Matt Ross. Please join us for our next episode of This Is Reality by following and finding out more information on BPN.fm/ThisIsReality. And finally, special thanks to Bea Westby, Katie Rosen, Ayanna Prescott, and the rest of the team at the Broadway Podcast Network.