Former FBI agent to plead guilty in leak to AP
Source: Washington Post
A former FBI bomb technician who later worked as a contractor for the bureau has agreed to plead guilty to disclosing national defense information to the Associated Press about a disrupted terrorist plot to bring down a civilian airliner headed for the United States, the Justice Department said Monday.
Officials described the disclosure as one of the most serious national security leaks in history, saying it came in the middle of a sensitive intelligence operation. The case led to the Justice Department’s controversial decision to secretly subpoena two months’ worth of phone records from the Associated Press.
Donald John Sachtleben, 55, of Carmel, Ind., provided information to an AP reporter about the disruption of the plot by the Yemen-based terrorist organization al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Sachtleben also told the news agency that the United States had recovered a bomb during the investigation of the April 2012 plot and that it was being examined at an FBI lab in Quantico where he sometimes worked, according to Justice Department officials and court documents filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.
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“This unauthorized and unjustifiable disclosure severely jeopardized national security and put lives at risk,” Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole said. “To keep the country safe, the department must enforce the law against such critical and dangerous leaks, while respecting the important role of the press under the department’s media guidelines and any shield law enacted by Congress.”
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ex-fbi-agent-to-plead-guilty-in-leak-to-ap/2013/09/23/4a17a3ce-2491-11e3-b3e9-d97fb087acd6_story.html
For people who were curious what ever happened with that AP subpoena, this is that case.
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