Waterboarding Whistleblower Indicted Under Espionage Act 338
wiredmikey writes "A former CIA officer was indicted on Thursday for allegedly disclosing classified information to journalists. The restricted disclosure included the name of a covert officer and information related to the role a CIA employee played in classified operations. The indictment charges John Kiriakou with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for allegedly illegally disclosing the identity of a covert officer and with three counts of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it. The count charging violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, as well as each count of violating the Espionage Act, carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, and making false statements carries a maximum prison term of five years. Each count carries a maximum fine of $250,000."
Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Hope and change (Score:3, Informative)
It would almost make you think that the politicians that were essentially calling GWB a war criminal might have been a bit less than wholly honest.
Well, sure. Congress gave him the power to do what he did: they could have reined him in, but they chose to go along for the ride.
Re:Hope and change (Score:5, Informative)
There are lots of differences between the parties—just no significant ones. All of the differences are with respect to issues that neither party can significantly affect without getting smacked down by the courts—abortion, for example—or differences that in theory make a difference but in practice do not—techniques for redistribution of wealth, for example. (Tax and spend versus borrow and spend both have the same net effect, but one causes inflation that reduces your paycheck's buying power, while the other causes your paycheck to look smaller numerically, thus reducing buying power without inflation.)
Re:What can I do? (Score:5, Informative)
Become an active member of Amnesty International. They do some awesome work and have saved hundreds of people from torture or "disappearing." Their reports are impartial and so well-researched that they serve as a standard that even governments cannot ignore them.
Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic (Score:5, Informative)
I see your Poe and Godwin and raise you Alinsky's 5th rule -- attack through humorous ridicule. As Saul said, it is almost impossible to counter with facts because the truth usually isn't as simple as a lie.
Take the ridicule against Palin. In an interview she said "There are places in Alaska from which one can see Russia." A TRUE statement. The Left "quoted" her as saying "I can see Russia from my house."., Being good researchers, some on the Left consulted maps and noticed that one can not see Russia from Palin's house. So the mockery began and was repeated endlessly and recycled in the forums and blogs on the Left. Repeat a lie often enough, Right or Left, and the faithful believe it as fact, even to the point of self-righteousness, quoting the lie as proof of their intelligence. It really gets interesting when psychological terms are thrown at "unbelievers". Terms like "denier", etc...
Presidential Medal of Freedom (Score:5, Informative)
That's what this guy should get.
Exposing crimes against humanity is every human's duty. Systematic torture is a war crime and covering it up makes you equally culpable. That's what the whole deal was with the Nuremburg Trials, remember?
The Nazis claimed they were just following orders, but that didn't spare them from the gallows. Every member of the American government who helped perpetrate this atrocity or who looked away should be locked up or face capital punishment according to their proximity and complicity.
It does look like at this point that the greater part of the American government was complicit, including almost all of Congress, the entirety of the Executive Branch, and the Judiciary, so we'd have to expunge nearly all of Washington DC with extreme prejudice.
And you know what? I'm really OK with that.
Re:when dick cheney did it he wasn't charged (Score:4, Informative)
IF you think that Scooter Libbiy did ANYTHING without the direction of Dicky then you are a complete moron
And, as you obviously know but are pretending not to so that you can hope to keep your narrative alive for uninformed people, Scooter Libby wasn't found to have disclosed the identity of Plame. That wasn't even on the docket in his trial, despite the special prosecuter's enormous expenditure of time and cash looking around for who turned out to be ... Richard Armitage, at the State Department (you know the guy who eventually 'fessed up). You know this, and everyone else knows this. The fact that you're mentioning Libby as the source shows how disingenuous and deliberately misleading you're trying to be. Not sure why, though. You must have vested interest in that particular fiction.
Re:Hope and change (Score:2, Informative)
Bush, definitely. It's a war crime to invade another country.
Only in your imagination. That's first of all. Second of all, the US has LEGAL authority to enter Iraq from the first Gulf War. But I guess something like facts simply are not important to you at all. I guess you're too busy eat the garbage fed to you, by whatever garbage media outlet you use, to realize Iraq was in violation of the cease fire from the first Gulf War. The US had legal right to re-enter Iraq at will. And all that's ignoring that the UN sided with the US, making it legal even if the US didn't already have legal right to do so from the first Gulf War (which it did). The pandering to the UN was political, pure and simple, which had absolutely nothing to do with legality.
Entering Afghanistan was under UN purview and is considered a completely legal act. Period.
So much for the stupidity of you and your crowd.
I really get annoyed when so many ignorant people insist of pandering their ignorance so as to recruit other, like minded, simpletons.
Re:Let this be a message to the unpatriotic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where's the whistleblower immunity? (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike killing another human being, U.S. law seems not to provide for an affirmative defense in crimes against the state. I could be wrong, but I can't think of any at the moment, anyway.
Jury Nullification is still legal, although you can be thrown in jail for saying so. http://reason.com/blog/2011/02/25/is-advocacy-of-jury-nullificat [reason.com]
Jury Nullification is not an affirmative defense. To raise a affirmative defense means to say something like, "Even if I did perform the acts of which I am accused and understood what I was doing, I am not guilty because of X". For example, self defense is an affirmative defense against a charge of murder because the accused says: "I may have killed him, but he was trying to kill or gravely injure me."
Such defenses are called affirmative because the accused affirms (asserts) that his actions where justified. They are called affirmative in order to distinguish them from the other broad category of defenses: negating defenses. A negating defense is an assertion that one or more of the essential elements of the crime is absent. For example a negating defense to charge of treason might be: "I did not know that the envelope which I was asked to deliver contained state secrets and that the recipient was an enemy agent."
Jury Nullification may be 'the citizens last defense against the oppressor', but it is not a defense in the sense which the AC meant.
Re:What can I do? (Score:2, Informative)
Help him fund a defence for starters:
http://www.defendjohnk.com/howtohelp.html