Micah Lee's comments on The Intercept's handling of Reality Winner's case can be found in "Working Securely", see pp. 2--3:
Sadly in both the Terry Albury and Reality Winner cases, I think there was little we could have done to prevent them from getting caught. In Reality’s case there’s a lot we should have done better, but even if we did it all perfectly, she almost certainly would still have gotten caught because of how things happened on her end that were outside of our control. In fact the affidavit against her doesn’t mention printer dots or anything like that.
I believe the lack of mention of specific identity tagging in affadavits is something of a red herring. Winner admitted in her interview with the FBI during the initial search to smuggling out the documents, as noted in the TAL re-enactment above. There's no need to go beyond the sufficient in establishing cause or belief.
NYT on The Intercept's handing of Winner's documents:
The startling carelessness about protecting Ms. Winner was particularly mystifying at an organization that had been founded on security. The Intercept had hired leaders in digital security, Ms. Clark and Micah Lee, for just such situations. [Intercept journalist] Mr. [Matthew] Cole did not involve them at all.
The Intercept has been sliding downhill for a while now. I'm not sure where Scahill was on the Glenn Greenwald exit. Although I do wish Glenn would jump from Substack to The Grayzone or Democracy Now!