She was a Farsi and Urdu/Pashto cryptolinguist (similar languages so easy teach at same time) out of Ft. Meade. The USAF got her clearance. It was cheaper for the contractor to transfer her TS SCI clearance than start a new one for a new employee.
If you look at timing...she had six years in the AF. She got her original clearance when she arrived at the language school. Being 18 at the time, there’s very little for them to investigate or clear. That lasted five years. They would have started the new investigation around the middle of the 4th year. That was in a non-political period, and she probably didn’t get all hyped up until spring of 2016 with the Bernie campaign. Clearance would have been wrapped up and she would have passed. Her ‘stupid’ comments probably all come after November of 2016, after the renewed clearance.
If you compare against Snowden and Manning....it’s another case of someone on a ‘mission to save the world’ and divulging classified is their purpose in life. The days of worrying about Soviet spies or people selling info? Long gone. You need to worry about people on purpose in life to save the world.
I'm still at a loss as to how with those credentials, Ms. Winner had access to classified documents regarding an ongoing counter intelligence investigation involving the Russians.
Doesn't NSA compartmentalize their data so specialists in one area are limited to accessing only information pertaining to their specialty?