oldenGoldenDecoy's picture

    Fitzgerald and the Espionage Act?

    This all takes me back to where I posted a comment in Having Plame Withdrawals?  Aug 16, 2005.


    Now with either one of those hanging over one's head it would make a person surely... "give up the game." Specifically § 793.


    And lo-and-behold... Yesterday, from none other than the New York Times itself, comes the following back page article. And it even brings up a little bitty piece of information that the is possibly being considered within the scope of Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation (of course it is ... everything's being considered):

    WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case is exploring a range of possible crimes, lawyers in the case say, suggesting that the investigation has moved well beyond its initial focus on whether anyone in the Bush administration illegally disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. operative.

    [...]

    He has asked to meet on Tuesday with Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times who, after spending 85 days in jail, testified last week to the grand jury about her conversations with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

    The meeting is expected to focus on newly discovered notes compiled by Ms. Miller that refer to a conversation she had with Mr. Libby on June 25, 2003, according to a lawyer in the case who did not want to be named because Mr. Fitzgerald has cautioned against discussing the case. Until now, the only conversations known to have occurred between Ms. Miller and Mr. Libby were on July 8 and 12, 2003.

    [...]

    As he approaches the end of his 22-month inquiry, Mr. Fitzgerald appears to be exploring novel approaches to possible charges in the case.

    One legal theory the prosecutor has pursued, the lawyers said, is whether anyone violated a broadly worded federal statute that makes it a crime to "communicate" classified defense information to someone not authorized to receive it.

    Under the law, any government official or private citizen who transferred classified information could potentially be charged with a felony.

    Until recently, prosecutions under the espionage and censorship statute were rare. The law was invoked in May to charge Lawrence A. Franklin, a former defense analyst, with disclosing classified military secrets. The statute was employed again by prosecutors in August to charge Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former employees of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying organization, with turning over information from Mr. Franklin to the Israeli government.

    That case, and the prospect that prosecutors could increasingly turn to the statute as part of the government's efforts to stop leaks to news organizations and others, has stirred concern about cutting off the traditional flow of information among public officials, government contractors, lobbyists and journalists who routinely trade sensitive and sometimes classified information. 

    Prosecutor in Leak Case Is Exploring Range of Crimes  NYT - Oct 8, 2005

     

    Now, in the Plame case, you may question what the classified information is that may have been "communicated." . .

    Don't forget that lil' ol'  State Department Memo

    We'll know in time...


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