Earlier this week, David Petraeus — the former US military leader in Iraq and Afghanistan and former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — pled guilty to leaking highly classified material to his biographer who was also his lover. His sentence: Two years of probation and a US$100,000 fine; less than one of his speaking fees, as Glenn Greenwald Marcy Wheeler pointed out:
Judge Keesler thinks he sent a message by fining Petraeus 75% of one speaking fee for leaking covert IDs.
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 23, 2015
Meanwhile, Chelsea Manning remains in jail for leaking much less damaging information, former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling is facing a 24-year prison sentence for leaking classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen, and Edward Snowden remains charged with “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person” under the Espionage Act as well as simple theft.
In the case of Snowden — who remains in Russia under a residency permit that expires in 2017 — the US Justice Department has graciously pledged not to seek the death penalty.
As Michael S. Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo writing for the New York Times report, Petraeus was adamant about “close protection of classified information by government officials.” A mere month before he resigned as Director of the CIA Petraeus spoke about a CIA officer’s plea agreement for disclosing sensitive information:
“Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.”
The CIA officer in question and target of Petraeus’s comment received a 30-month sentence.
Schmidt and Apuzzo also report that while Petraeus lied to US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials about his leak, he was never charged for that crime. If convicted, Petraeus would have faced up to five years in prison.
Trevor Timm writing for the Freedom of the Press Foundation reports that the documents Petraeus leaked “represented some of the most compartmentalized secrets in government” citing the original indictment:
“[The books] collectively contained classified information regarding the identifies of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes, and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings… and discussions with the president of the United States.”