by JAMES S. KIM | @james_s_kim
editor@charactermedia.com
The defense lawyer for Stephen Kim, a former State Department contractor who was imprisoned last year for giving classified information to a reporter, has asked federal prosecutors for the “immediate release” of his client, according to Yahoo News.
Abbe Lowell said that in light of the “relatively lenient treatment” of former CIA Director David Petraeus for similar conduct showed a “double standard” by prosecutors in leak cases. Lowell sent letters to Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and three other federal prosecutors who had pursued Kim.
“It is too late for us to undo the plea and seek the misdemeanor that Mr. Kim should have been offered,” Lowell wrote. “However, some justice and fairness can occur, even at this late date, by our at least joining to end his incarceration date.”
Kim received a 13-month sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty to a felony violation of the Espionage Act last April for leaking classified information to a Fox News reporter. He began serving his sentence in July 2014 at a federal prison in Maryland.
Lowell said the sentence doesn’t match up to Petraeus’s case, in which Petraeus pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information. Instead of jail time, Petraeus was charged a $40,000 fine for handing over notebooks he kept while serving as the top U.S. general in Afghanistan to his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell. There is no evidence that she used any classified information in her book.
In letters to Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and three other federal prosecutors who had worked to sentence Kim to 13 months in federal prison, Abbe Lowell said Petraeus admitted to disclosing information that was “at least as serious and damaging to national security as anything involved in Mr. Kim’s case.”
When Lowell tried to get a similar misdemeanor plea and no jail time for Kim, he was denied in large part to the fact that Kim had lied to FBI agents when he was confronted about his dealings with the Fox News reporter.
But Petraeus also admitted to lying to FBI agents, “falsely and knowingly denying he leaked any classified information” when he was questioned about it in October 2012, Lowell pointed out. The lawyer said this double standard irked him and prompted him to write the letter.
“Lower-level [government] employees like Mr. Kim are prosecuted under the Espionage Act because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back,” Lowell said. “[But] high-level officials leak classified information to forward their own agendas (or to impress their mistresses) with impunity.”
Stephen Kim’s sister, Yuri, also emphasized the imbalance in a statement to The Intercept: “Our family and our friends think it is just terribly unfair and not right that Stephen was given less consideration and different treatment for doing no more, and even less than General Petraeus. The general got the right result, but so should have Stephen. Stephen’s lawyers tried to get the Justice Department to address this disparity but they would not do so. We want others to know this.”
Lowell acknowledged he doesn’t expect a positive response to the letters he sent to the Department of Justice, but he pointed out several examples of high-level officials who avoided jail time for offenses related to classified information, including former CIA director Leon Pannetta; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former CIA director John Deutch and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger.
The issue of the differing treatment of leakers is expected to gain more public exposure in a number of upcoming trials. John Sterling, a former CIA official convicted of releasing classified information to a New York Times reporter, is to be sentenced next month, and his lawyers have confirmed they will cite the Petraeus case.
The DOJ is also considering whether to file charges against Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—another high-level official. His lawyer denies the charges: leaking classified information about a joint U.S.-Israeli effort to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program with a computer virus to a New York Times reporter.
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