Rep. King calls for DoJ to identify journalists, lawyers in Kiriakou CIA leak case

John Kiriakou

As the Department of Justice moves to prosecute an ex-Central Intelligence Agency officer for leaking the identities of fellow CIA operatives to the press and to terror detainees’ lawyers, the leader of the House Homeland Security Committee wants the identities of the journalists and lawyers involved made public.

Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, who is also a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a Jan. 23 statement that he wants to know how CIA operatives’ identity information ended up in the cells of al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo.

The DoJ on Jan. 23, charged ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou with leaking the names of covert operatives who interrogated suspected Al Qaeda financier Abu Zubaydah, as well as making photos of those operatives available to Zubaydah’s defense lawyers. Kiriakou served at the CIA from 1990 to 2004 at the agency’s Langley, VA headquarters and in various classified overseas assignments, said the department. He is also a former senior Democrat Senate aide to John Kerry and Huffington Post blogger on terrorism, a consultant at ABC News. According to a bio on the Huffington Post web site, Kiriakou gained nationwide attention in 2007 when he became the first CIA officer to acknowledge the waterboarding of Al Qaeda prisoners in US custody. According to the site, he was named executive assistant to the CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations, where he was intimately involved in the planning for the Iraq war, and where he served as principle Iraq briefer for the Director of Central Intelligence

The Justice Department said that the leaks endangered CIA personnel.

The charges against Kiriakou say he made illegal disclosures about two CIA employees and their involvement in classified operations to two journalists on multiple occasions between 2007 and 2009. The DoJ alleges that he revealed the identity of one current covert CIA officer and the name and contact information of another CIA employee, who participated in the classified operation  capture and question terrorism subject Abu Zubaydah in 2003.

“Kiriakou’s alleged disclosures occurred prior to a June 2008 front-page story in The New York Times disclosing [a CIA officer’s] alleged role in the Abu Zubaydah operation,” said the DoJ’s Jan. 23 statement. The charges, it said, resulted from an investigation triggered by a classified defense filing in January 2009, that contained classified information the defense hadn’t been given through official government channels and by the discovery of photographs of government employees and contractors in the materials of high-value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to the DoJ, the journalists that Kiriakou is alleged to have leaked classified information to disclosed that information to a defense team investigator. In turn, the information was reflected in the classified defense filing and enabled the defense team to take or obtain surveillance photographs of government personnel. DoJ, however, was careful to say that no allegations of criminal activity by any members of the defense team for the detainees.

King wants the DoJ to publicly disclose the journalist that received the leaked information, as well as the lawyers involved.

“If the charges filed against Kiriakou are indeed true, then he is guilty of absolutely despicable crimes,” said King on Jan 23.  “This disclosure clearly placed these officers and their families at great risk of harm,” he said.

“While the DOJ complaint argues that no crimes were committed by others, I call upon the Justice Department to identify the journalists and lawyers who were involved in this grave breach of wartime national security,” he said. “ Beyond criminal legal liability, there is the question of moral culpability for these journalists and lawyers.” 

“The American people deserve to know exactly who has willingly endangered the lives of American intelligence officers.  The Department of Justice will not have fully discharged its duties until it publicly identifies the journalists and criminal defense lawyers involved.”