Government officials disclose classified information to the press with some frequency, but only rarely are they prosecuted for it.
Such selective prosecution renders the law unfair, said attorney Abbe Lowell at the April 2 sentencing hearing of his client, Stephen Kim, who pled guilty to an unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
Mr. Kim, a former State Department Korea specialist who could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, received a 13 month jail sentence. The transcript of the April 2 sentencing hearing is now available here.
The fact that senior officials go unpunished for comparable or greater offenses “doesn’t mean that Mr. Kim didn’t violate the law,” said Mr. Lowell. But “it means that our system is out of balance.”
The “antiquated” Espionage Act that is used to prosecute leaks is “one very blunt tool,” Mr. Lowell said.
Still, “There’s some good that can come from this case,” Mr. Lowell suggested. He noted that it had already led the Department of Justice to revise its policy and practice on investigating or charging members of the news media.
In other leak-related news, the Obama Administration argued that there is no privilege that would excuse New York Times reporter James Risen from testifying in court as to the identity of the source who provided him with classified information. In an April 25 brief, the Administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Mr. Risen’s petition to review the matter.
Meanwhile, former Navy linguist James Hitselberger, who had been charged under the Espionage Act with unlawful retention of national defense information (18 USC 793e), pleaded guilty on April 25 to a lesser offense of unauthorized retention of classified information (18 USC 1924), which carries a sentence of up to one year in prison. He is to be sentenced on July 17. (More from Josh Gerstein in Politico.)
“One thing became increasingly clear: AI doesn’t simply introduce a new category of risk. It changes the speed, scale, complexity, and interaction of risks that already exist.”
In an ideal world, we would not have state or federal climate intervention research bans. We would have researchers and institutions that would not shy away from revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly of these technologies and doing so responsibly.
“What excites me is that it’s very tempting to be very discouraged, and say, ‘Oh, we’ve got these archaic institutions that are calcified and you could never change them.’ But I think we’re in the middle of a technological revolution that will upend lots of things, and does provide a window.”
Ask people what worries them most right now, and they’ll say the cost of living and their livelihoods, not climate change. But those concerns are not separate.