AP PHOTO/JACQUELYN MARTIN
ONE OF Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s last cases
as one of the nation’s most prominent
U.S. attorneys may turn out to be a misfire.
John Kiriakou is a 14-year CIA veteran
who, until his indictment, was best known
for publicly rejecting the Bush administration’s Orwellian doublespeak about
“enhanced interrogation.” In a 2007 ABC
News interview, Kiriakou became the first
person directly involved in the handling
of terror suspects to call waterboarding at
the CIA’s hands what it was — torture.
But in April, Fitzgerald charged
Kiriakou with five criminal
counts, including three violations
of the Espionage Act — a 1917 law
intended to punish officials for
aiding the enemy — for allegedly
disclosing national security information to reporters about CIA
agents and their role in those interrogations to reporters.
Fitzgerald’s use of the Espionage
Act is in keeping with the Department of Justice’s crackdown on
leaks to reporters. And the Obama
administration has now used the
Espionage Act six times to prosecute disclosures to journalists —
more than all previous presidential
administrations combined.
But the severity of the charges
facing Kiriakou — especially in
contrast with the lack of prosecutions related to the interrogations
themselves — has outraged human
rights activists and good-government groups, who said they see the
scapegoating of a whistleblower.
“They are going after someone
who blew the whistle on torture
and waterboarding,” said Jesselyn
Radack, national security and human rights director at the Government Accountability Project, which
represents whistleblowers, “while
at the same time, the people who
wrote the memos and issued the or-