Former CIA official convicted of a leak. “He broke state secrets” – Interia

a federal court in Virginia sentenced a former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling for three and a half years in prison for handing over the journalist ‘New York Times’ James Risenowi information about the CIA secret mission in Iran.

A jury in January found that 47-year-old Sterling, a former lawyer and an employee of the CIA, had broken state secrecy what the prosecution accuses him under the Espionage Act, for which he was punished even more than 20 years in prison.

The defense, however, argued that the punishment should not be too distant from that which were imposed on former CIA director David Petraeus. Last month, he heard a suspended sentence for passing classified information biografce and his mistress.

According to the prosecution Sterling, he passed secret information journalist “NYT” Risenowi, and he used it in his book “State of War” (2006.). Longtime journalist “NYT” and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner wrote in her secret, failed CIA operation in Iran aimed at torpedoing the Iranian nuclear program.

testifying in the process was adviser to the US President. National Security Condoleezza Rice said that the mission was one of the best kept secrets in the period when she worked at the White House.

Case Sterling was very noisy, mainly because the administration of President Barack Obama, known for its exceptional severity when it comes to punishing leaks relating to breach of state secrecy for many years demanded from the Risen disclosing the source of the information described in the book . This refused to cooperate, even when twice prosecutors summoned him to testify in court under threat of penalty. For contempt of court, which would be a judgment nakazującemu failure to disclose the identity of the source, the journalist would risk even imprisonment. To defend himself, Risen appealed to the Supreme Court, but this one decided in June 2014 that it would not deal with this issue.

It was only in December concern is that a journalist can be charged and convicted, dispelled then-Attorney General Eric Holder, announcing that the prosecution continues to pursue him and compelled to reveal their sources. In the proceedings to the process of preparing Sterling journalist “NYT” he repeated under oath that the work on his book benefited from a number of sources, but will not disclose any of them.