This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 11, 2011 - The government argues that former CIA agent Jeffrey A. Sterling should be locked up while awaiting trial on espionage because he poses a danger to CIA agents, a CIA intelligence asset and to national security.
In a motion unsealed on Monday, the Justice Department argued that Sterling's leak of classified information to a newspaper was "even more pernicious" than the typical espionage case in which a spy sells information to an enemy government. The reason it is more pernicious, the government maintained, is that "every foreign adversary" stood to benefit from publication of the information in the media.
The government's motion to keep Sterling in detention was unsealed at the end of a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Terry Adelman at which Sterling agreed to return to Virginia for a hearing on his detention. Sterling, a Washington University Law School graduate, has been indicted on 10 criminal counts for leaking classified information to a newspaper reporter -- apparently James Risen of the New York Times. Risen wrote a book describing a botched CIA intelligence operation involving Iran's nuclear program.
Wearing orange prison garb, Sterling limped into court and stared down into his lap while he waited for the judge. He glanced once toward his wife who was in the courtroom. Also in the courtroom were a few co-workers, friends and family. Sterling's lawyer, Edward McMahon, explained that Sterling had recently had a knee replacement and concerns about blood clotting could delay his return to Virginia.
In its motion to keep Sterling in jail, the government argued that he "poses a danger to certain individuals and the community at large, and there is no combination of conditions that can reasonably assure the safety of the community. Put simply, the indictment alleges that when the Central Intelligence Agency took legal positions perceived by the defendant as adverse to his interests in various administrative and civil actions filed by the defendant, the defendant retaliated against the CIA by leaking highly classified information."
Sterling went to work for the CIA in 1993 after law school and after being in the St. Louis Public Defender's Office. He was in charge of an intelligence asset -- Human Asset No. 1. According to Risen's account, Human Asset No. 1 was a former Russian nuclear scientist given the job of providing Iran with false information about triggering a nuclear weapon. The information was so obviously false that the Russian scientist told Iran about the mistake. Risen's account suggests Iran could have ended up getting usable information that helped its program.
In 2000, Sterling brought racial discrimination claims against the CIA stating that a supervisor had said he was too big and black to run intelligence assets in the Middle East. Sterling also sought permission from the CIA's Publications Review Board to publish his memoirs. The publication board said no and the CIA turned down Sterling's proposals to settle the race discrimination complaints.
"The defendant's anger and resentment grew over the CIA's decision on these matters,' the motion stated. "For example, on Jan. 7, 2003 he told a Publications Review Board member he would come at the CIA 'with everything at his disposal.'" After that threat he had repeated email and telephone exchanges with "Author A," apparently Risen, the motion maintained.
The contacts with Author A continued even after Sterling moved back to his native Missouri, remarried and got a job at WellPoint, the motion stated. When his wife was out of town for the weekend, Author A came to visit. Sterling provided him with enough information that Author A could travel abroad to put together the story on Asset No. 1. That story endangered Asset No. 1's life, the government claimed, and did so for the "selfish and vindictive motivations" of getting money from the CIA.
"Given the defendant's pattern and propensity of illegally disclosing classified information when the government takes adverse actions against him," Sterling's freedom threatens not only Asset No. 1 but also current and former CIA agents whose identities he knows.
Even if Sterling's location and activities were electronically monitored, he has been taught the "tradecraft" of using the telephone and computer in a way that can avoid detection, the motion stated.
Kathleen Clark of the Washington University Law School said over the weekend that she was concerned that the government was claiming Sterling was disgruntled in part to keep natural legal allies of whistleblowers from coming to his defense. Clark met Sterling and invited him to present his race discrimination case to her class in the early 2000s.
In general, government employees who leak classified information to disclose government ineptitude or wrongdoing have not faced the same kind of social ridicule or legal consequences as spies who sell information to an enemy. But the unsealed motion stated that Sterling's actions "may be viewed as more pernicious than the typical espionage case where a spy sells classified information for money. Unlike the typical espionage case where a single foreign country or intelligence agency may be the beneficiary of unauthorized disclosure of classified information, this defendant elected to disclose the classified information through the mass media. Thus every foreign adversary stood to benefit ... thus posing an even greater threat to society."
William H. Freivogel is director of the School of Journalism at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a professor at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.