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11 who leaked to news media ... and faced espionage charges

Under President Obama, seven people have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for leaking classified documents to the news media, compared with three during all previous presidencies. Here's a breakdown of prosecutions by administration.

4. The Obama administration

Patrick Semansky/AP/File
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning appears outside a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., after a hearing in his court-martial on Aug. 20, 2013. Manning, who wishes to live as a woman named Chelsea and wants to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible, was sentenced the next day to 35 years in prison for sending classified material to the WikiLeaks website.

2010: Shamai Leibowitz

In May, Mr. Leibowitz, a former FBI contract linguist, pleaded guilty to charges of leaking FBI surveillance transcripts to a blogger. He was sentenced to as many as 20 months in prison, according to The Washington Post.

2010: Stephen Kim

In August, Mr. Kim, a nuclear-proliferation expert on contract with the State Department, pleaded not guilty to charges of leaking information about North Korea to Fox News. The case has not gone to trial.

2010: Jeffrey Sterling

In December, Mr. Sterling, a former CIA agent, pleaded not guilty to charges of disclosing US covert activities to undermine Iran's nuclear weapons program. The case is stalled pending resolution of whether James Risen, a New York Times reporter, will have to testify at trial.

2011: Thomas Drake

Mr. Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, was charged in 2010 with leaking classified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter about an NSA surveillance program. Prosecutors dropped all charges in June 2011, and Drake pleaded guilty to one unrelated misdemeanor charge of exceeding authorized use of a computer.

2012: John Kiriakou

The former CIA officer was charged in January with five counts of revealing classified information, including waterboarding practices and names of intelligence officers involved in US interrogation of terrorism suspects, to The New York Times and two other unnamed outlets. He pleaded guilty in October to one count of passing classified information to the media. Three months later Mr. Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

2013: Edward Snowden

In June, the former NSA contractor was charged with leaking 'top secret' files on agency surveillance programs that he claims are illegal, giving them to The Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper. He is now a fugitive granted temporary asylum in Russia.

2013: Bradley Manning

Arrested in May 2010, the US Army private is charged with 'aiding the enemy' and six counts of espionage for giving hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic files to WikiLeaks, intending for them to be published on the Internet. A military judge in July 2013 convicted him of the espionage charges but not of aiding the enemy. He was sentenced Aug. 21 to 35 years in prison.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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