Ex-CIA official sentenced for disclosing classified information to journo
Washington, Jan 26 (ANI)
A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who admitted leaking an undercover colleague's name to a journalist was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
John Kiriakou, 48, become the first employee of the CIA sent to jail for releasing classified information to the media. He received the sentence from Judge Leonie Brinkema during a hearing at federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. According to Politico, Kiriakou entered a guilty plea last fall to a single felony count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by disclosing the name of the officer in email exchanges in 2008 with Matthew Cole, a journalist then working on a book. Kiriakou has described himself as a whistleblower, noting that he was the first current or former CIA officer to publicly talk about the use of waterboarding to interrogate terror suspects.
However, the judge emphatically rejected Kiriakou's claim to that title, the report said.
The judge said Kiriakou had "betrayed" the trust the CIA placed in him and put his colleagues at risk, the report added.