This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Dori Berinstein: Welcome to episode 7, Reality's Reality Part 1.

[0:08] Dori Berinstein: How and why did a 25-year-old with a Pikachu bedspread become the number one terrorist in the United States?

[0:15] Dori Berinstein: In 2017, Reality Winner, a highly decorated former Air Force linguist, was charged with leaking proof of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

[0:26] Dori Berinstein: Her goal to help protect democracy.

[0:29] Dori Berinstein: Reality received the longest sentence ever imposed for unauthorized release of government information.

[0:35] Dori Berinstein: Five years and three months.

[1:10] Dori Berinstein: And I'm Dori Berinstein.

[1:12] Dori Berinstein: And this is Reality.

[1:29] Dori Berinstein: And now we will be shifting gears for the next few episodes, as Reality is finally able to tell the world her story in her own words.

[1:38] Dori Berinstein: Let's start at the beginning.

[1:40] Reality Winner: I grew up in a small town in rural Texas with my parents and older sister Brittany.

[1:45] Reality Winner: I definitely didn't have a conventional childhood. Um, my mother was working. She was a workaholic for child protective services.

[1:55] Reality Winner: And my father was stay-at-home. He had a back injury. Um, back in the 90s, there was no opioid epidemic, but we were, you know, some of the first families affected.

[2:06] Reality Winner: He was a drug addict. You know, I guess you could say it was tumultuous at times. He left in 1997.

[2:12] Reality Winner: And within three years, mom had married my stepdad, Gary, which I mean, he was the greatest thing to ever happen to our family.

[2:20] Reality Winner: Gary's my dad, I love him. So it was like from start to finish, just always having that special bond with Gary.

[2:27] Reality Winner: I shared a special relationship with my older sister, Brittany.

[2:31] Reality Winner: Brittany and I, we were so uncannily close when we were children.

[2:35] Reality Winner: We do not have neighbors in Ricardo, Texas. So most of our childhood was spent in our own little world, creating worlds out here, exploring.

[2:45] Reality Winner: But as Brittany explained, there was also a bit of sibling rivalry between us.

[2:51] Reality Winner: There was a lot of competition. The teachers had me first.

[2:53] Reality Winner: So they had these expectations of Reality, and um, Reality doesn't like being put into a box.

[3:00] Reality Winner: That's another important thing to know about me is that if you think I'm one way and if you kind of announce your expectations to me, the first thing that I want to do is defy them.

[3:10] Reality Winner: Growing up, I was a gifted student and athlete playing tennis, volleyball, and soccer.

[3:16] Reality Winner: I developed a love of language and had a deep responsibility to help people.

[3:20] Reality Winner: So I joined the Air Force as a crypto-linguist.

[3:23] Reality Winner: There's a quote that I'll never forget, and it's uh basically to learn another language is to gain another soul.

[3:31] Reality Winner: And so I had always looked at national security through the human interaction and understanding, and that it was through a cultural understanding that was where the peace was going to happen, as opposed to just continually waging war and just dominating people.

[3:51] Reality Winner: And that's where I really wanted to start learning Middle Eastern and North African languages because there was this wave of extremism coming out in the early 2000s.

[4:02] Reality Winner: So I really thought that linguist meant that you are speaking and using that language with people, and it was a humanitarian type job.

[4:12] Reality Winner: And it actually turned out to be most of the time sitting in dark rooms, NSA stuff that I can't talk about, and certainly not feeling as though you were actually part of the solution.

[4:25] Reality Winner: But I was always thinking about the bigger picture, and I always wanted more.

[4:30] Reality Winner: After six years, I chose to leave the Air Force to pursue humanitarian aid work.

[4:35] Reality Winner: So I remember looking at ways to work for the UN, the refugee center, uh, work for the Red Cross, work for USAID, all these NGOs.

[4:47] Reality Winner: And it was like either you have to be able to afford to live for a year in country by yourself, doing a free internship, or you have to have like a master's degree and seven years of international experience to get the entry-level positions.

[5:11] Reality Winner: It was very privileged, it was not like people on the ground handing out blankets out of the goodness of their hearts.

[5:19] Reality Winner: I became really disillusioned in that whole aspect in that whole world.

[5:25] Reality Winner: So shortly after my discharge, I took a higher paying job with the NSA in Augusta, Georgia, to shore up my bank account for my future and humanitarian work.

[5:34] Reality Winner: So that's how I wound up working in Georgia.

[5:36] Reality Winner: It was really just like one more rung on the ladder, trying to get into a world of humanitarian aid that I didn't have the privilege or the financial backing to get into.

[5:50] Reality Winner: You know, a lot of people ask, like, how did you wind up there?

[5:53] Reality Winner: I just wanted to be somebody impressive enough to go pass out blankets at a refugee camp.

[6:00] Reality Winner: And I don't know, be that one person that changed a life.

[6:03] Reality Winner: And that's why I guess I was vulnerable at the time to do something so impulsive, you know, because I was still thinking about this bigger picture as opposed to what this one action would mean.

[6:41] Reality Winner: So I decided it was imperative to share this information with the American people.

[6:46] Reality Winner: It was very much about helping and filling in a void of information in May 2017.

[6:54] Reality Winner: You know, I always refer to it as the big question mark that was ripping our nation in half and just giving an answer, giving an answer that couldn't be spun, either which way, good or bad.

[7:07] Reality Winner: When I did what I did, I was just so gung-ho that anybody looking at this would see the altruism, and that my character would not be questioned the way that it was.

[7:20] Reality Winner: And I did not expect to be made out to be like an enemy of the people.

[7:25] Reality Winner: To me, the act was so pure that anybody looking at it, even if they didn't agree, would say, Oh yeah, she definitely just made a huge mistake.

[7:34] Reality Winner: And I almost thought I would be protected by that, by how simple everything was.

[7:41] Reality Winner: But my actions set off a series of events that were far from simple.

[7:45] Reality Winner: I recall the moment 11 armed FBI agents surprised me at my home in June of 2017.

[7:53] Reality Winner: So I had groceries, so I actually parked perpendicular to the front of the house. And before I had even gotten out of the car, they had pulled up right behind me and came out. And I was just like, okay, like, and then they asked to search the house. And I said, you know, in my mind, I was like, well, there's nothing in the house. So that did not bother me. I didn't view that as this huge thing. But what I started noticing is that all these cars came out of nowhere. And then all of a sudden there was caution tape. Like that happened instantly. And in my mind, I was not thinking I'd be in jail that night. So I was asking for permission to put my groceries up, or would y'all do it for me, or would y'all watch me?

And I thought when the FBI show up, you're done. Like that's it. Yeah, I had no idea what to do, but I knew there were a lot of them. I knew they were armed. And I was terrified. And by coming clean almost immediately with the FBI, it was like, if I just tell them right now, are they just going to shoot me right now? How are they going to shoot me here? How are they going to shoot me there? They keep letting me go to the bathroom, but they haven't secured the weapons. Is this a setup? They're all gonna run in and shoot me when I'm on the toilet and say something about the weapons in the bedroom. Like I just remember like asking them, like, please secure the weapons. Like, do you all want to watch me pee?

Do you why are you letting me go to the restroom alone? Like, can somebody come with me? Like, it was one of those times where like you realize how small you are and just how easily everything about you can be twisted and how quickly your life can be ended, and nobody will ever know the truth. And the truth was complicated. In all honesty, this was not something that was premeditated. This was, I mean, I didn't do my research. I vaguely knew who Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were, but like they had they being the intelligence community, kind of give you a fear of knowing about them. You don't go home, you don't look them up, you don't read the Washington Post articles about them, you're not allowed to.

So I had no idea about either of them. I didn't know who Daniel Ellsberg was in 2019, somebody sent me the Pentagon papers. So I didn't know there was an American history behind this kind of act, other than these two other people who were obviously demonized and not good, and I wasn't anything like them. It was just one simple act. I didn't even think to have an attorney, right? Didn't do my homework, did this super impulsively, but to have someone say that you had been planning it for the past six and a half years, it was just insane. And that to shape everything I've ever done in my life through something that I honestly truly did not think about. It was just like you start to believe it. You dwell on it so much.

And it's taken me so long to realize like, no, you didn't think about this. I didn't think this through. This wasn't a plan. I didn't want to be a hero. I didn't want anybody to know my name. One of the most shocking details of reality's arrest is that she was never read her Miranda rights. Then the survival plan was okay, like it was me, but what's gonna happen? Um, that was when I started asking, like, am I under arrest? And they kept saying, We don't know yet. And again, we don't know yet. So I didn't know if I was under arrest. So no matter how many times I asked if I was under arrest, I always read my Miranda rights. Like I didn't have an attorney. Like this was not something in my mind.

Like, I committed a crime, I need to have a defense. That was never in my mind. It was just I committed this act, and anybody who would see it would see that I intended only good. And now, fast forward to I'm scared for my life, they're not telling me if I'm under arrest. And now they finally said, we have to take you in. They didn't say the word arrest. And now they're saying, We're sorry, Miss Winter. Uh no, he said, I'm gonna have to apologize. It's gonna be a bit of a drive. So again, I didn't know this was simply a criminal matter that this would go to a normal court that an attorney would have actually helped me with. But when like non-uniformed FBI show up, like then it was like I'm racking my brain, like, oh my god, they're gonna drive me to Quantico tonight, and I'm gonna be disappeared.

And then saying, Oh, well, it's okay, we're gonna, you know, cuff your hands to the front, you'll be in the backseat with me. I'm like, that doesn't make me feel better, bro, but okay, like, but they never said the word arrest. And so it wasn't until I guess he went on, got on his cell phone for a minute, and then was talking, he's like, okay, no, we have to go get a female to do the body search, and uh a female officer will make the arrest. So it would the word arrest, the time that it became clear to me that this really is a criminal matter, and I'm going to a normal jail was only made like as a side comment to explain why we were waiting for a female to come, because up until that time there were 11 men in and around my house.

After her arrest, the media painted reality as a terrorist. She was never given the chance to tell her side of the story. I enlisted to prevent the next 9-11. Simply because I didn't want it to happen again. But honestly, like the entire six years, that's what I thought I was doing, that I was actually fighting terrorism. That's what it meant to me. And it meant that somebody would have to understand these languages on a much deeper level in order to prevent the next serious attack on the homeland. In our next episode, reality shares what happened after her arrest, how she was held without bail for over a year, why she accepted a plea deal and the horrors she faced while incarcerated. 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 make sure to check out all the podcasts on the Broadway Podcast Network. Reality's interrogation by the FBI was captured in the critically acclaimed Broadway show, Is This a Room, conceived and directed by Tina Satter. We're incredibly grateful to our special guests, Reality Winner, Billy Winter Davis, and Brittany Winner. 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. Executive producer is Liz Armstrong. This is Reality is part of the Gotham's Fiscal Sponsorship Program under the Sound and Light Project. Please join us for our next episode of This Is Reality by following and finding out more information on BPN.fm slash This Is Reality. And finally, special thanks to Bea Westby, Katie Rosen, Ayana Prescott, and the rest of the team at the Broadway Podcast Network.