I did hear, on a podcast the other day, how Reality Winner was caught. When
the Intercept checked with the NSA to ensure that the documents were valid
and to tell them that the story would be printed, the reporter carelessly
showed the original documents to the NSA and they had a stamp identifying
Reality Winner on them. I imagine that it was invisible or something, but
apparently journalists doing this kind of work are supposed to know about
these things and protect their sources.
Miriam
Sessions v. Winner, It's Just the Beginning
By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
29 June 18
Reality Winner, the former NSA contract employee who allegedly provided a
classified document to two journalists at The Intercept, agreed on Tuesday
to change her plea to "guilty" and to accept a sentence of 63 months in
prison, three years of "supervised release" and forfeiture of her electronic
devices. The plea was made to one count of "espionage," which, since my case
in 2012, has been interpreted as "the provision of national defense
information to any person not entitled to receive it." The sentence is
unprecedentedly harsh and Winner was brought into the court literally in
chains.
There are several differences between Winner's case and those of other
national security whistleblowers, including Tom Drake, Jeffrey Sterling, and
me. First, prosecutors went after Winner's social media, focusing on one
post immediately after Donald Trump's election in which she wrote "#RESIST,"
"#NoFuckingWall," and "#NeverMyPresident." The judge in her case interpreted
this to mean that Winner "hates America" and would be a flight risk if she
were to have been granted bail. Instead, she was held for more than a year
without bail, the same condition set for murderers, terrorists, and violent
pedophiles.
Second, the rest of us were charged and tried in either the Eastern District
of Virginia (Sterling and me) or the District of Maryland (Drake). Winner
was charged in the Southern District of Georgia, which had never before had
a national security case.
Third, Sterling, Drake, and I had access to some of the best national
security defense attorneys in the country. They were experienced,
knowledgeable, and knew their way around a courtroom. Winner's attorney was
local. And he had never before handled a national security case.
I've written in the past about tactics that the Justice Department uses to
convict whistleblowers of espionage. They use the tactic of "charge
stacking," in which they file multiple felony charges against a defendant
(nine for Sterling, nine for Drake, and five for me), they wait until you go
bankrupt trying to pay your $1000-an-hour attorneys, and then they approach
you and offer to drop all the charges but one if you agree to plead guilty
to a felony. Knowing the federal government wins 98.2 percent of its cases,
you really have no alternative other than to take a plea. It's an economic
decision. As one of my lawyers told me when I said I would reject the plea
and go to trial, "This can be a blip in your life or it can be the defining
event of your life. Make it the blip."
The other tactic is "venue shopping." The Justice Department will seek to
charge you in the district where they think you will get the severest
sentence. That's usually the Eastern District of Virginia. This is sometimes
a stretch, but it's something that the Justice Department gets away with all
the time.
Look at Jeffrey Sterling as an example. Jeffrey was a CIA officer accused of
providing classified information to a New York Times reporter. He was
adamant about his innocence. He never wavered. And he went to trial rather
than take a plea. Jeffrey was living in Missouri at the time that he was
accused of passing the information. That's the Eastern District of Missouri.
He was working remotely for a firm in New York, which is the Southern
District of New York. The reporter lived in the federal District of Maryland
and worked in Washington, DC, which is the federal District of the District
of Columbia. But Jeffrey was charged in the Eastern District of Virginia,
the "espionage court." How did the feds get away with that? An FBI agent
went to a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Arlington, Virgina, bought the
reporter's book, which allegedly contained information provided by Jeffrey,
said that that constituted a crime in the district, and issued the charge.
It's all smoke and mirrors and there's nothing you can do about it.
(Conversely, if you're one of the privileged class, you get this treatment:
Former general and CIA director David Petreaus gave the names of ten covert
CIA officers to his girlfriend, who was also writing his hagiography, and he
also gave her access to the president's "black books," literally the most
highly-classified information the US government possesses. He was charged
with one misdemeanor count of "failure to secure classified information" in
the Western District of North Carolina. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced
to 18 months of probation. When sentencing was done, the judge came down
from his bench to thank Petraeus for his service to the country. Pretty nice
treatment, right?)
With that said, all of these cases took place during the Obama
administration. I have complained relentlessly about Barack Obama's war on
whistleblowers and his Nixonian obsession with leaks. I had hope that Donald
Trump would be better. I actually said publicly that he couldn't be worse.
But he is. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the Justice Department
is investigating three times the number of national security leaks that were
investigated under Obama. Reality Winner is the first person sentenced in
that witch hunt. She got more than double what Jeffrey Sterling and I got.
It's a harbinger of things to come.
There's only one solution. It is to amend the Espionage Act to allow for an
affirmative defense. If the revelation was in service to the American people
it should not be a crime. Remember, it's illegal to classify a crime. So if
a person reveals, say, the CIA's torture program, that's technically not
classified because torture is a criminal action. The Whistleblower
Protection Act also must be amended to include protections for national
security whistleblowers, who are currently exempted from its coverage.
The problem is, though, that there are no constituent votes to be won by
amending the Espionage Act or the Whistleblower Protection Act. Can you
imagine going before a crowd at a political rally and promising that, if
elected, you'll weaken the Espionage Act? Neither can I.
In the meantime, buckle your seatbelts. Jeff Sessions has a lot planned.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior
investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the
sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage
Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a
result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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