Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for sending classified material to a news organization, poses in a picture posted to her Instagram account. Reality Winner / Instagram via Reuters

"Its a new kind of insider threat that the agency cant defend against," Aid said.

And its getting worse, he added, in part because "Donald Trump and the change in the political scene in America has created an environment for a lot of people who feel that they have to DO something. You become an instant activist."

Winner was vocal in her opposition to Trump on social media, but her motives are unclear. According to federal charging documents, she admitted to mailing a Top Secret document detailing Russian hacking intelligence to the news media. She faces one count of "gathering, transmitting or losing defense information."

The lines are blurry, but Winner and those like her seem in a different class than the Washington insiders who have always leaked to settle internal scores or to make policy points. They are small fries, far from the nations power centers, inside a vast intelligence apparatus who decide the public needs to know what they do. Manning leaked from Baghdad; Snowden was based in Hawaii; Winner was in Georgia.

"These are people who have a greater sense of loyalty to some outside cause than to the organization they are working in, and thats a new thing for the intelligence community," said a former senior NSA official, who asked not to be named so he could speak more candidly about sensitive topics.

There is another dimension, another former NSA official said: Too much information is classified, and everyone working in intelligence knows it.

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Indeed, the document Winner allegedly leaked did not seem, on its face, to be terribly sensitive. The U.S. government, after all, was perfectly willing to acknowledge its authenticity by charging Winner barely an hour after the story broke on The Intercept, as if to send a message. The charging documents dont link the case to The Intercept, but officials quickly did so in background comments to reporters.

Her attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, said Winner has yet to enter a plea, although a detention hearing is scheduled for Thursday. She remains jailed in Lincoln County.

"A week ago today she was living her life," he said. "Now shes in the middle of a political whirlwind."

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How Did Accused NSA Leaker Reality Winner Get Security Clearance? - NBCNews.com