Leaks

Former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake pleaded guilty to a dramatically lower charge on Friday – the 10 felony charges against him were thrown-out -- in the highly publicized leak case that was set to go to trial Monday in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

The U.S. Department of Justice issued a subpoena yesterday for the testimony of a New York Times reporter in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA operations officer accused of leaking classified information, highlighting a trend of government attempts to use journalists’ testimony in cases against government employees who reveal government information in exchange for anonymity.

A district court decision that disclosing information about fraud or securities violations to the media is not protected under the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was affirmed on Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco (9th Cir.), sitting in Seattle.

A federal judge ended a lengthy legal battle that centered around a reporter's confidential sources yesterday when he dismissed a former federal prosecutor’s lawsuit against the Department of Justice.

Failures in the security system set up to protect the U.S. Department of Defense's central database of classified and secret information enabled the alleged leaking to WikiLeaks of classified information by Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, witnesses said during a U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing Thursday.

A former CIA officer was indicted last month for allegedly providing a New York Times reporter with classified information. He is the latest in a string of leakers prosecuted by the Obama administration.

Jeffrey Sterling, 43, of O’Fallon, Mo., was indicted on 10 counts, including six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of obstruction of justice. He was arrested Thursday in St. Louis.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged a former high-ranking National Security Agency official with lying and obstruction of justice relating to an investigation into leaks made to an unidentified newspaper, The Associated Press reported.

A Michigan federal court today ruled that Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter properly asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination, allowing him to keep the identities of confidential sources a secret.

The plaintiff, former U.S. prosecutor Richard Convertino, had been seeking the names of Ashenfelter's Justice Department sources since 2006 for a Privacy Act lawsuit.

The Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn the administrative subpoena it served to travel journalist Christopher Elliott after he published a new security directive issued by TSA on his personal website.

A representative from the Transportation Security Administration visited the home of a second blogger this week to serve a subpoeana seeking the source of a security directive that was posted on the blogger's Web site, Wired reported.