Revealed – Former C.I.A. Officer Is the First to Face Prison for a Classified Leak

The first C.I.A. officer to be
convicted of disclosing classified
information to a reporter in more
than six decades is scheduled to be
sentenced to 30 months in prison on
Jan. 25. John Kiriakou is to be
sentenced as part of a plea deal in
which he admitted e-mailing the name
of a covert officer to a
reporter.His prosecution, as well as
five others, has been lauded on
Capitol Hill as a long-overdue
response to a rash of dangerous
disclosures and defended by both
President Obama and Attorney General
Eric H. Holder Jr.Mr. Kiriakou is
remorseful, up to a point. “I
should never have provided the
name,” he said.Supporters say
Mr. Kiriakou neither intended to
damage national security nor did so.
Some see a dark paradox in the
impending imprisonment of Mr.
Kiriakou, who in a 2007 appearance
on ABC News defended the
C.I.A.’s use of desperate
measures to get information but also
said that he had come to believe
that waterboarding was torture and
should no longer be used.