[snip]
This prosecution further chills the climate making it even more difficult for journalists to get sources to talk to them for national security stories. It also sends a message to former government employees to not talk to or share information with Guantanamo defense attorneys. His book also showed CIA torture to be regularly used so it sends a message to former employees involved in the ?war on terror? to be careful what they publish on counterterror operations for public consumption.
Kiriakou is the sixth person to be indicted under the Espionage Act by the Obama Administration. The previous five, all targeted in the span of a year, were: former NSA employee Thomas Drake, who shared details on the agency?s warrantless wiretapping program; former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who was charged with providing information with New York Times reporter James Risen on an operation that might have led to Iran getting information on how to build a nuclear bomb; former FBI linguist Shamai Leibowitz, who received twenty months in prison for who knows what exactly; former State Department arms expert Stephen Kim, who under assignment shared information with Fox News reporter James Rosen on North Korea?s possible response to criticism of the country?s nuclear program; and Pfc. Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked classified information to WikiLeaks that included the ?Collateral Murder? video, Afghan and Iraq War Logs, the US State Embassy cables, etc.
Peter Van Buren, another victim in the war on whistleblowing whom the State Department recently moved to fire for linking to a WikiLeaks cable in a blog post and publishing a tell-all book on the State Department?s Iraq reconstruction program, called the crackdown on whistleblowers ?free speech hypocrisy.? The US government condemns other countries like China, Iran or Syria for cracking down on journalists and others who speak out, but Americans who speak out here at home are harshly prosecuted....
