On January 23, John Kiriakou, the CIA’s former director of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, was arraigned in federal court and charged with espionage, disclosing the identity of a covert operative, and lying to investigators. The charges stem from a conversation he allegedly had about waterboarding with a New York Times reporter, and he faces 30 years in prison for all of the allegations. His wife Heather, a top analyst with the spy agency, resigned several days after her husband was indicted.
Prior to President Obama’s election, espionage charges had only been filed three times when national security information had been leaked to the media. However, John Kiriakou is the sixth person in just three years the Obama Administration and the Department of Justice have charged with espionage for disclosing information to the press. The others are Jeffrey Sterling, Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, Thomas Drake, Steven Kim, and Shamai Lebowitz. According to Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist who argues for more vigorous protection of classified information, “Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon.”
