DOJ Puts Another Leaker In Jail: The War On Whistleblowers Rolls On

from the no-leaks-allowed dept

You may recall that, prior to the whole Snowden affair, the DOJ was under fire for spying on the phone records of a bunch of Associated Press journalists. The issue was some details of the US disrupting a supposed plan by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to bomb a US-bound plane were leaked. The DOJ has now triumphantly announced a guilty plea for the leak from Donald Sachtleben, an ex-FBI agent, who apparently gave detailed info about the plot to AP journalists. Sachtleben was already dealing with charges for child porn, so this just piles on top of that. He's agreed to serve 43-months in jail for the leak, covering both a charge of disclosing national defense information as well as retaining classified info.

While this does seem like a case of more of a general "leak" rather than direct whistleblowing, it clearly fits in with the President's war on whistleblowers, whose architect loves to send people to jail to make an example of them.

It's still difficult to see how this justified spying on so many AP phone lines. While some keep insisting that the leak was really dangerous, as has been previously noted, now CIA boss (prior to being in that position) appeared to reveal a lot more about the "plot" that suggested that here was never any actual threat at all. Furthermore, the AP had agreed to hold off on publishing the info until the government had made it clear that there was no risk.

Filed Under: aqap, arrests, doj, donald sachtleben, leaks, surveillance
Companies: associated press