“You can go to prison for having given an investigative reporter a tip that led him to chase down classified information about that tip and then publish it in an article or book,” Marcy Wheeler writes in a Salon piece that was illustrated with this AP photo of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling and his wife Holly.
In a major loss for press freedom and the right of citizens to be informed about what their government is doing, CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling was convicted this week on nine felony counts related to his supposed exposure of a bungled CIA operation. Potentially, he could be sentenced to as much as 80 years in prison for crimes that amount to helping to inform the public about an arguably dangerous intelligence operation.
As reporter Marcy Wheeler (Salon, 1/28/15) notes, Sterling’s conviction was based on circumstantial evidence–the government never provided hard proof that he had actually given classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen. But the leaks Sterling was accused of concern an operation that was designed to trick Iran by giving it misleading information about how to build a nuclear bomb–but which may have actually backfired, bringing Iran closer to knowing how to construct atomic weapons.
Troublingly, Sterling was convicted not just of passing classified information, but causing Risen to write about the information. These charges were brought under the Espionage Act–a law designed to punish people for selling secrets to enemy nations, but here used to bring multiple charges against Sterling for Risen reporting on the Iran fiasco both in the Times and in his book State of War. Yes, in the United States today, you can face prison time not just for revealing a secret, but for encouraging someone to write a book about that secret.
Marcy Wheeler and FAIR associate Norman Solomon argued in The Nation (10/27/14) that Sterling was prosecuted in large part because the Justice Department and intelligence establishment have never forgiven Risen for revealing the government’s warrantless wiretapping and torture programs. What better way to shut down an investigative journalist than by prominently ruining the life of one of their sources? The attacks on journalists and whistleblowers alike, Wheeler and Solomon write, are “undermining press freedom, precluding the informed consent of the governed and hiding crucial aspects of US foreign policy.”
