The Justice Department on Monday charged a former CIA officer with repeatedly leaking classified information, including the identities of agency operatives involved in the capture and interrogation of alleged terrorists.
© ABC News/AP
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who told reporters he participated in the interrogation of terrorist Abu Zubaydah, has been charged with leaking classified secrets about CIA operatives and other information to reporters.
The case against John Kiriakou, who also served as a senior Senate aide, extends the Obama administration's crackdown on disclosures of national security secrets. Kiriakou, 47, is the sixth target of a leaks-related prosecution since President Obama took office, exceeding the total number of comparable prosecutions under all previous administrations combined, legal experts said.
Kiriakou, who was among the first to go public with details about the CIA's use of water-boarding and other harsh interrogation measures, was charged with disclosing classified information to reporters and lying to the agency about the origin of other sensitive material he published in a book. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
In its criminal filing, the Justice Department obscured many of the details of Kiriakou's alleged disclosures. But the document suggests that Kiriakou, 47, was a source for stories by
The New York Times and other news organizations in 2008 and 2009 about some of the agency's most sensitive operations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. These include the capture of alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida and the interrogation of the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The Justice Department said that the information Kiriakou supplied to journalists also contributed to a subsequent security breach at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, enabling defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in harsh interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of high-value detainees.
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