Glenn Greenwald has, in his column at Salon.com, recently pointed out that John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent, has been charged under a World-War-I era Espionage Act. Kiriakou is the sixth prosecution by the Obama administration in three years. To put that in perspective, in the 90 years the act has been on the books, only three other people have ever been charged. The actual crime of these dastardly six people? Leaking confidential information to the press – something government officials do on a regular basis.
Kiriakou made news in 2007 when he told ABC News that he led the team that captured accused Terrorist Abu Zubaydah and that the techniques to which Zubaydah was subjected, including waterboarding, clearly constituted “torture,” though he claimed they were effective and arguably justifiable. He’s also accused of being the source for a 2008 New York Times article that disclosed the name of one of Zubaydah’s CIA interrogators.
…This is all accomplished by characterizing disclosures in American newspapers about America’s wrongdoing as “aiding the enemy” (the alleged enemy being informed is Al Qaeda, but the actual concern is that the American people learn what their government is doing).
One of the four charges being leveled at John Kiriakou is that he lied to the CIA about the book he wrote so they would agree to let him publish it. They’re saying he falsified a form. Because of that, and because he dared tell the public that we were waterboarding prisoners, he may very well wind up in Gitmo with them.
Do you remember Valerie Plame? Our enemies still do, thanks to ex-Vice President Dick Cheney. But then, if the White House leaks, that’s just “politics”. It’s only when the government is doing something illegal that it must stay hidden. And what happened to those people in the White House who lied us into an illegal war? Obama said we should move forward and not look back. The things that Kiriakou is charged with were a lot less criminal than the charges that should have been brought against the Bush Administration, and they happened while Bush was president. What happened to Obama’s policy of moving forward and not looking back? It apparently only applies to the White House.
