Obama Adminstration: "Talk to the Press; go to jail"

A former CIA officer was charged under the Espionage Act on Monday with disclosing classified information to journalists, the latest prosecution in an unprecedented Obama administration crackdown on national security leaks.

If convicted, John Kiriakou could face decades in prison. He is accused of providing secrets, including the name and activities of one of his undercover colleagues, to unidentified reporters, according to a federal criminal complaint. One of the journalists is alleged to have turned over the name of the covert CIA officer to lawyers representing a Guantanamo Bay prisoner.

Separately, Kiriakou is accused of giving another reporter — whom the complaint makes clear is Scott Shane of the New York Times — information that Shane used in a 2008 story that identified CIA analyst Deuce Martinez as a key figure in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda logistics chief who was subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. Martinez was not working undercover, but his role was classified. The New York Times had no comment, spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said.
Kiriakou is also accused of trying to include classified information in his memoir by lying to the CIA's Publication Review Board, which reviews and approves all written material by former CIA officers. The book, published in 2010, was titled, "The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror."

The case against Kiriakou marks the fifth time since President Obama took office that charges of violating the Espionage Act have been leveled against current or former government officials who allegedly leaked information to journalists — a crackdown unmatched in any previous administration, said Steven Aftergood, who follows the intelligence community for the Federation of American Scientists.

Another former CIA officer, Jeffrey Sterling, is accused of leaking information to a New York Times reporter, and a State Department official, Stephen Kim, is charged with leaking information about North Korea to Fox News. An FBI translator, Shamai Leibowitz, was accused of leaking to a blogger. After pleading guilty in 2010, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

A sixth defendant, Bradley Manning, has been charged in connection with alleged disclosure of documents to the website Wikileaks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cia-officer-charged-2012012...