SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2014, Issue No. 77
November 19, 2014

Secrecy News Blog: http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/

REP. MORAN URGES PRESIDENTIAL PARDON FOR JOHN KIRIAKOU

Rep. James P. Moran this week called on President Obama to pardon John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer who was convicted of disclosing the name of an undercover intelligence officer and who is currently serving a prison sentence in the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania.

"Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask for a Presidential pardon for John Kiriakou," said Rep. Moran (D-VA), who is retiring from Congress, in a statement entered in the Congressional Record. "Mr. Kiriakou is an American hero."

"John Kiriakou is a whistleblower, as well. The first American intelligence officer to officially and on-record reveal that the U.S. was in the torture business as a matter of White House policy under President Bush. In confirming what the American media and policymakers were hearing whispered--that waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques were a matter of standard military and intelligence procedures--he helped begin an intense and overdue debate over whether torture violated international law, tarnished our higher American principles and undermined the critical need for reliable, actionable information," Rep. Moran said.

"And John Kiriakou is a convicted felon, serving a 2\1/2\ year plea bargained sentence in a Pennsylvania federal prison. The charge against him is violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, whereby John answered a question from a U.S. reporter who was duplicitously fronting for lawyers defending Al Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and in the process unintentionally confirmed the classified identity of a CIA colleague. A colleague who, by the way, was being erroneously labeled as an enhanced interrogation techniques torturer."

"The real issue here is the extremely selective prosecution of John and the ongoing efforts to intimidate him from talking about our intelligence community's misfires," he said.

"Whatever John's misdeeds--and he admits that answering that reporter's questions was ill-advised and naive--he has more than paid for them. After fifteen years of service to his country, the personal risks and costs of a life in the intelligence world, the legal double-standard applied, and now two years in prison John Kiriakou deserves a Presidential pardon so his record can be cleared, just as this country is trying to heal from a dark chapter in its history," Rep. Moran said.

Rep. Moran's statement does not constitute an application for a presidential pardon, and Mr. Kiriakou would not normally be eligible for such a pardon until at least 5 years after his impending release from prison.

The Moran statement does, however, represent a rare congressional expression of sympathy for a convicted leaker, and an unusual gesture of respect for an incarcerated American of any kind.

And in fact, there is some precedent for a pardon, even among the small cohort of convicted leakers of classified information.

In January 2001, President Clinton formally pardoned Samuel Loring Morison, the first person to be convicted of unauthorized disclosure of classified information to the press. A copy of the certificate of clemency is here:

"What is remarkable is not the crime," wrote Sen. Patrick Moynihan in a 1998 letter to the President about the Morison case, "but that he is the only one convicted of an activity which has become a routine aspect of government life: leaking information to the press in order to bring pressure to bear on a policy question."

"A presidential pardon is a sign of forgiveness," wrote Justice Department pardon attorney Roger C. Adams at the time. "It does not erase or expunge the record of conviction and does not indicate innocence."

SEN. MARKEY TO DOE: WHAT ABOUT THE JAMES DOYLE CASE?

Senator Edward J. Markey asked the Secretary of Energy this week to expedite the investigation of the firing of James Doyle from Los Alamos National Laboratory, which occurred after Doyle published an analysis critical of U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

"I write to urge you in the strongest possible terms to quickly conclude your investigation into the recent termination of Dr. James E. Doyle, a nuclear security and non-proliferation specialist who had been employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for 17 years," Sen. Markey wrote.

"Dr. Doyle was terminated after an article he published crticizing the deterrence value of nuclear weapons was retroactively classified. At best, the Department of Energy's (DOE) classification procedures are too vague to be uniformly applied. At worst, it appears that these classification procedures were used to silence and retaliate against those who express dissenting opinions," he wrote.

The Doyle case generated significant controversy among his colleagues and others concerned with nuclear security policy.

In response to public concerns, the Department of Energy said it had initiated an Inspector General review of the case. But there has been no known follow-up to date.

AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE: NO HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION HERE

In the United States Air Force, "intelligence components do not engage in experimentation involving human subjects for intelligence purposes."

That unsolicited assurance was reiterated in the latest revision of Air Force Instruction 14-104, Oversight of Intelligence Activities, November 5, 2014.

"For purposes of this instruction, the term 'human subjects' includes any person, whether or not such person is a US person. No prisoners of war, civilian internees, retained, and detained personnel as covered under the Geneva Conventions of 1949 may be the subjects of human experimentation."

The Instruction also addressed domestic imagery collection, reporting of "questionable intelligence activities," and other topics.

SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF EPA ACTIONS, AND MORE FROM CRS

Noteworthy new products from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.

U.S. Trade Concepts, Performance, and Policy: Frequently Asked Questions, November 17, 2014:

Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument in Federal Whistleblower Case, CRS Legal Sidebar, November 14, 2014:

Scientific Basis of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Actions: H.R. 1422 and H.R. 4012, CRS Insights, November 17, 2014:

International Climate Change Financing: The Green Climate Fund (GCF), November 17, 2014:

The Battle over Cable Boxes, CRS Insights, November 14, 2014:

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative: Lessons Learned and Issues for Policy Makers, November 14, 2014:

Keystone XL Pipeline: Overview and Recent Developments, November 13, 2014:

Federal Proposals to Tax Marijuana: An Economic Analysis, November 13, 2014:

Childhood Overweight and Obesity: Data Brief, November 13, 2014:

Veterans and Homelessness, November 13, 2014:

When Will DOD Modernize its Electronic Health Records Systems?, CRS Insights, November 13, 2014:

President Obama's November 2014 Visit to China: The Bilateral Agreements, CRS Insights, November 13, 2014:

Defense: FY2015 Authorization and Appropriations, November 13, 2014:

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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

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