Waterboarding Whistleblower Indicted Under Espionage Act

wiredmikey writes "A former CIA officer was indicted on Thursday for allegedly disclosing classified information to journalists. The restricted disclosure included the name of a covert officer and information related to the role a CIA employee played in classified operations. The indictment charges John Kiriakou with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for allegedly illegally disclosing the identity of a covert officer and with three counts of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it. The count charging violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, as well as each count of violating the Espionage Act, carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, and making false statements carries a maximum prison term of five years. Each count carries a maximum fine of $250,000."

Comments

Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[crazyjj]

Until you men realize that the U.S. does not, and cannot, commit any war crimes--then you will be suitably punished. For those of you patriots who accept that all U.S. action is lawful, by virtue of it being U.S. action, then prosperity and salvation await. For all others, who would engage with the socialist press and outside agitators in conspiring to disparage this flawless nation, only purgatory and a jail cell await you.

Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[toetagger]

I didn't know Romney had a /. account

Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[ScrewMaster]

Double-whoosh. The second poster caught the original poster's drift, and merely expanded upon it. Apparently you missed that.

Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[Jerry]

I see your Poe and Godwin and raise you Alinsky's 5th rule -- attack through humorous ridicule. As Saul said, it is almost impossible to counter with facts because the truth usually isn't as simple as a lie.

Take the ridicule against Palin. In an interview she said "There are places in Alaska from which one can see Russia." A TRUE statement. The Left "quoted" her as saying "I can see Russia from my house."., Being good researchers, some on the Left consulted maps and noticed that one can not see Russia from Palin's house. So the mockery began and was repeated endlessly and recycled in the forums and blogs on the Left. Repeat a lie often enough, Right or Left, and the faithful believe it as fact, even to the point of self-righteousness, quoting the lie as proof of their intelligence. It really gets interesting when psychological terms are thrown at "unbelievers". Terms like "denier", etc...

Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[willaien]

Still worthy of ridicule, due to the context of the statement. That you can, in just the right places, see Russia from Alaska does not equate to Foreign Policy experience.

Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[mcgrew]

I realise that's sarcasm, but there are a whole lot of people who actually do think like that. Did the guy commit a crime? Yes, but committing that crime was a patriotic thing to do, and damned brave if you aske me. The guy should get a CMH for his bravery, or at least a silver star (I know a guy who got two silver stars and doesn't believe that he should have; "I didn't do anything anybody else woudn't have," he said.)

The guy in TFS is a patriot and hero. The people pressing charges should be in front of a firing squad for treason -- because waterboarding IS unamerican, as is lying about it.

We're supposed to be the good guys. Can't we even try to be?

Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[TheRaven64]

The mockery was not directed at Palin for being able to see Russia or not being able to see Russia, it was directed at Palin for claiming that being able to see the tip of Russia, about as far away from Moscow as New York is from Paris, had anything to do with her competence with regard to foreign policy.

Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[element-o.p.]

That's great, in the case where you know that the guy you are torturing knows the information. Unfortunately, that's never -- or at least close enough to "never" to be essentially the same thing.

One problem occurs when you grabbed an innocent bystander. You can torture him until the sun explodes in a giant supernova explosion (yes, I know...our sun isn't supposed to go supernova, but you understand what I'm saying anyway, don't you?), but you aren't going to get the information you want because he doesn't have it. And he can tell you that. Every. Single. Time. but you will have no way of knowing it's the truth, based on torture alone.

To illustrate a second problem, let's expand upon your password example. In my organization, when an employee leaves the company, their account password -- and any shared account passwords -- are changed, so that they no longer have access to the systems. In a military or paramilitary organization, I would expect that similar policies would be in place, expanded to include those who are MIA. So you capture an enemy combatant and start torturing him to provide The Password. He gives it to you. You test it. It fails, and so you continue to torture him because you asked a good question, tested the result, and it failed, so obviously, he's lying. In fact, however, he isn't lying. He gave you the right information, but the information has changed since his capture.

Your entire conclusion is wrong. Torture might work, in some cases, some of the time, if you are lucky. But you don't know -- and in fact, you CAN'T know -- when the intel you have received through torture is correct but has changed, when the intel you have received through torture is false and simply turning up the pressure will give you the answers you want or when the guy is just an innocent bystander who doesn't know squat. To you, they all look the same. So, yeah, you can prove a positive, but you can't prove a negative no matter how brutal you become. Consequently, torture is BOTH a question of ethics and effectiveness. IMHO, it is unethical and ineffective.

Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic

[element-o.p.]

"None of us can be free while others are oppressed."

Intentionally inflicting physical harm on someone else in anything other than self-defense is oppression, and is evil. Period. You might try to argue that torturing an enemy combatant in a time of war is "self-defense" but I'd argue that you are stretching that definition to -- if not beyond -- the breaking point.

If you can rationalize brutality to someone because they aren't "one of you" perhaps you are not human.

If your goal is so precious that you are willing to discard ethical considerations to obtain it, perhaps your goal isn't nearly as noble as you believe.

Killing or injuring someone who is doing their level best to do the same to you is distasteful, but sometimes necessary. Doing so to someone who is bound, restrained and no longer in a position to pose a threat to you is, indeed, far worse. You can attempt to rationalize, but I, for one, have no desire to accept the ethical quagmire to which you apparently subscribe

Hope and change

[HBI]

Well, not for John Kiriakou, at least. It is interesting how the policies of the USG - let's confine this to defense and intelligence, shall we? - have essentially changed only in rhetorical ways since the 2008 election. Gitmo remains open. People are still being prosecuted over talking to journalists about waterboarding and rendition.
We're still assassinating people. It would almost make you think that the politicians that were essentially calling GWB a war criminal might have been a bit less than wholly honest.

Re:Hope and change

[Nadaka]

Someone is a war criminal.

Bush? maybe. Cheney? definitely.

But yes, Obama isn't much better.

I don't have anyone I can vote for any more.

Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, Reform. All are putrid vulgar fools. There isn't a single party that offers rational solutions to any of the problems we face and respects the principals that were supposed to make America a shining beacon of liberty. No matter what happens, this country is doomed.

Re:Hope and change

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see that speech, but I always kindof assumed this was the case.

We saw harsh 180's on a lot of things Obama promised repeatedly, in very clear language. Domestic spying was going to stop. Guantanamo was going to stop operating the way it does. The list goes on.

Then he got in office, pulled an about-face on all of it, and signed an EO allowing snatch & grab detention of US citizens without a warrant or trial, if someone, somewhere, thinks that citizen might be somehow connected with terrorism-like activities.

He learned something when he took office. Something scary. Because otherwise he just burned a ton of political capital (with every intention of running for a second turn) for no reason. That doesn't make sense for a capable, career politician.

Re:Hope and change

[dgatwood]

There are lots of differences between the parties—just no significant ones. All of the differences are with respect to issues that neither party can significantly affect without getting smacked down by the courts—abortion, for example—or differences that in theory make a difference but in practice do not—techniques for redistribution of wealth, for example. (Tax and spend versus borrow and spend both have the same net effect, but one causes inflation that reduces your paycheck's buying power, while the other causes your paycheck to look smaller numerically, thus reducing buying power without inflation.)

Where's the whistleblower immunity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exposing crimes against humanity and they charge him with treason?
I for one applaud his decision, it was and will forever be, the correct choice.
I also hope that we as Americans will stand up for him and against his persecutors.

Re:Where's the whistleblower immunity?

[David Chappell]

Unlike killing another human being, U.S. law seems not to provide for an affirmative defense in crimes against the state. I could be wrong, but I can't think of any at the moment, anyway.

Jury Nullification is still legal, although you can be thrown in jail for saying so. http://reason.com/blog/2011/02/25/is-advocacy-of-jury-nullificat

Jury Nullification is not an affirmative defense. To raise a affirmative defense means to say something like, "Even if I did perform the acts of which I am accused and understood what I was doing, I am not guilty because of X". For example, self defense is an affirmative defense against a charge of murder because the accused says: "I may have killed him, but he was trying to kill or gravely injure me."

Such defenses are called affirmative because the accused affirms (asserts) that his actions where justified. They are called affirmative in order to distinguish them from the other broad category of defenses: negating defenses. A negating defense is an assertion that one or more of the essential elements of the crime is absent. For example a negating defense to charge of treason might be: "I did not know that the envelope which I was asked to deliver contained state secrets and that the recipient was an enemy agent."

Jury Nullification may be 'the citizens last defense against the oppressor', but it is not a defense in the sense which the AC meant.

this is how fascism works

[Dan667]

make what is illegal legal and legally prosecute anyone that exposes it.

Re:when dick cheney did it he wasn't charged

[sneakyimp]

Oh c'mon silly! Everyone knows he just did that because he didn't have a heart. Now they got him one! Everything is going to be fine now -- or at least for the next five years til they have to murder another young athlete to get him a new heart.

What can I do?

[i kan reed]

This, to me, might well be the final straw. What can I do to reverse this? I'm not apathetic, I'm willing to work to change this, but thanks to the majority of the voting public, I feel the simplest solutions will not work. What can I do to stop this?

Re:What can I do?

[aaaaaaargh!]

Become an active member of Amnesty International. They do some awesome work and have saved hundreds of people from torture or "disappearing." Their reports are impartial and so well-researched that they serve as a standard that even governments cannot ignore them.

I wish he did 1 thing differently

[s.petry]

If he had not disclosed names which does put people at risk, I would have no problem with what he did. That one thing makes a huge difference, and for that reason it's difficult to defend him.

Exposing the activity alone should have been enough to open an investigation. Let the courts find the names relevant. He could have waited until a Grand Jury was opened, and exposed all the names he thought important to the courts.

I'm not trying to imply that the right people would have been prosecuted under those circumstances. Just that since he put people at risk by giving names to media the whole things gets a big question mark.

Presidential Medal of Freedom

[Phoenix666]

That's what this guy should get.

Exposing crimes against humanity is every human's duty. Systematic torture is a war crime and covering it up makes you equally culpable. That's what the whole deal was with the Nuremburg Trials, remember?

The Nazis claimed they were just following orders, but that didn't spare them from the gallows. Every member of the American government who helped perpetrate this atrocity or who looked away should be locked up or face capital punishment according to their proximity and complicity.

It does look like at this point that the greater part of the American government was complicit, including almost all of Congress, the entirety of the Executive Branch, and the Judiciary, so we'd have to expunge nearly all of Washington DC with extreme prejudice.

And you know what? I'm really OK with that.