General David Petraeus with his lover, Paula Broadwell, to whom the former CIA chief leaked secret material that would likely have landed a civilian in prison for life.
General and former CIA director David Petraeus shared damaging information with his lover/biographer, and will receive what amounts to a slap on the wrist for his indiscretion. So why do whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden face such bleak prison sentences, or worse, for what the US classifies as Espionage Act offenses?
Trevor Timm from Freedom of the Press Foundation in the Guardian today:
The sweetheart deal the Justice Department gave to for leaking top secret information compared to the stiff jail sentences other low-level leakers have received under the Obama administration has led to renewed calls for leniency for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. And no one makes the case better than famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
Ellsberg, the first person ever charged under the Espionage Act or any other statute for leaking the Pentagon Papers to Congress and seventeen newspapers, told me on Thursday: “The factual charges against [Edward Snowden] are not more serious, as violations of the classification regulations and non-disclosure agreements, than those Petraeus has admitted to, which are actually quite spectacular.”
It’s hard to overstate the shocking nature of the government’s case against Petraeus. The information that he gave Paula Broadwell, his friendly biographer with whom he was then having an extramarital affair, was among the most sensitive in the US government. According to the indictment, Petraeus gave Broadwell eight black books containing “classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings … and [his personal] discussions with the president of the United States.”
Much of this was Top Secret, and some was SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) higher than Top Secret – and he admitted in his plea to lying to the FBI about his leaks, knowing that doing so was a crime in itself.
Petraeus won’t serve a day in jail for his leaks. Edward Snowden shouldn’t either [comment is free]