An ex-CIA officer who helped track down and capture a top al-Qaeda figure was charged on Monday with disclosing classified secrets, including the role of one of his associates on that covert mission, in the latest of a series of US prosecutions of suspected leakers.
John Kiriakou, 47, is charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and the Espionage Act. A federal judge ordered Kiriakou to be released on a US$250,000 unsecured bond.
Kiriakou declined to comment as he left the courthouse on Monday.
According to authorities, Kiriakou divulged to three journalists, including a New York Times reporter, the role of “Officer B,” who worked with Kiriakou on the capture of suspected al-Qaeda financier Abu Zubaydah in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times, and his case has been made an example by those who believe the interrogation technique should be outlawed. And Kiriakou’s public discussions of Zubaydah’s waterboarding were a key part of the debate.
In a separate accusation, Kiriakou is alleged to have disclosed the identity of a covert operator to an unidentified journalist. Authorities say that journalist then gave the officer’s name to a team of defense lawyers representing a suspect the US held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. When the lawyers included information about the officer in a sealed legal brief in 2009, the CIA became suspicious and the government began to investigate.
The affidavit states that the defense lawyers were found to have done nothing wrong. According to the affidavit, FBI agents interviewed Kiriakou last week, and he denied leaking the information. When specifically asked whether he had provided the Zubaydah interrogator’s name to the Times for a 2008 article, he replied, “Heavens, no.”
A New York Times spokeswoman declined to comment.
Kiriakou’s attorney, Plato Cacheris, told reporters after the hearing that his client would plead not guilty. He also said a potential defense argument could be that the charges criminalize conduct that has been common between reporters and government sources for decades.
If convicted, Kiriakou could face up to 30 years in prison and a US$1 million fine.
The case was secretly investigated by a top federal prosecutor, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is best known for his successful prosecutions of Scooter Libby, former US vice president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for perjury and of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich for corruption.
Kiriakou has worked as a consultant to ABC News, although he hasn’t appeared on the network since early 2009.
The charges also accuse Kiriakou of lying about his actions in an effort to convince the CIA to let him publish a book, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror, in 2010.
The Department of Justice’s campaign to prosecute leakers has been very aggressive under US President Barack Obama.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the