Days before John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer convicted of a classified leak, is scheduled to be sentenced to thirty months in jail, support for him is growing. Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, Joan Claybrook, a lawyer who once served as president of Public Citizen and Bruce Fein, lawyer active on civil [...]

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou is not only the first CIA officer to be convicted of a classified leak but he also can be considered the first successful leak prosecution by the administration of President Barack Obama. A few days ago, I posted videos of a discussion I had with NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake on [...]

On Sunday, New York Times journalist Scott Shane published a feature story on the Justice Department’s prosecution of John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer convicted of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) by revealing the name of an undercover officer. It was the first successful conviction of someone for a disclosure since President Barack Obama was [...]

Reporter for the New York Times, Scott Shane, wrote a feature story on the case of former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who is the first from the agency to face jail time for a classified leak. He is to be sentenced to 30 months of jail on January 25. Kiriakou pled guilty to the charge [...]

Though most of the anti-leaks proposals in the Senate were droppedfrom the intelligence authorization bill, one provision remains in the bill that could potentially encourage selective leaking. One section of the bill requires government officials “responsible for making certain authorized disclosures of national intelligence or intelligence related to national security to notify congressional intelligence committees on a [...]

An interagency Insider Threat Task Force has established “minimum standards” for responding to threats, according to a memo signed by President Barack Obama. The “standards” include policies to prevent “unauthorized disclosures” of information. The released memo instructed departments and agencies to set up policies or procedures for gathering, integrating, and centrally analyzing and responding to “key [...]

President Barack Obama has issued and signed a secret presidential directive that the Washington Post reports is “the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an ‘offensive’ and a ‘defensive’ action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism.” The directive—Presidential Policy Directive 20—will reportedly make it possible for [...]

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has placed a public hold on the intelligence authorization bill to prevent anti-leaks provisions from passing without any meaningful debate or amendments because he believes they would “inhibit free speech and damage the news media’s ability to report on national security issues.” On the Senate floor, Wyden declared, “Congress [...]

Ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on torture authorized by the administration of President George W. Bush, is accused of leaking classified information to journalists on the identities of a “covert CIA officer” and details on the other role of “another CIA employee in classified activities.” He was indicted in April on charges [...]

The House of Representatives passed a whistleblower protection bill by unanimous consent on September 28. It expanded protection for disclosures of government wrongdoing and reformed certain government processes for review of whistleblower retaliation claims. But, the House removed an entire section of the legislation that would have provided some degree of protection for intelligence officials. [...]