"...up to 80 years on circumstantial evidence" Marcy Wheeler

"...  the jury convicted Sterling based entirely on circumstantial evidence: there was not one shred of evidence showing Sterling handing Risen classified information on the operation, the Russian asset, or the letter that Risen found but FBI could not.

The evidence consisted of 57 phone calls between Sterling and Risen (some on their own phones, some on a phone Sterling had access to) between March 2003 and November 2005, the content of which we know nothing. It included a handful of emails, some of which indicate (in 2004, before Risen submitted his book proposal) Risen wanted to continue to talk to Sterling and wanted to send him something. One March 10, 2003 email, which Sterling deleted sometime in 2006, possibly after FBI subpoenaed him in this investigation, showed that Sterling had sent Risen the link to a CNN article claiming Iran had a very advanced nuclear weapons program. “All the more reason to wonder…” Sterling said in the email. The evidence showed that in March 2003, as the Bush Administration started a disastrous war based on claims of a dangerous nuclear program, Sterling used proper legal channels to raise concerns about the operation (citing “current events” to explain the timing of his concern) at the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Perhaps the most damning evidence, which was not submitted as a fact but as to the scope of the investigation, was CIA special agent Ashley Hunt’s revelation that in the initial leak referral CIA relayed a warning – from lawyers she would later learn were the lawyers handling Sterling’s Equal Opportunity complaint – that one of their clients had ”voiced his concerns about an operation that was nuclear in nature, and he threatened to go to the media.” In spite of this tip from the CIA, however, Hunt did not consider Sterling a likely candidate to be the leaker in the early stage of the investigation; she — and CIA press seretary Bill Harlow — thought Senate Intelligence Committee staffers were behind it.  Marcy Wheeler

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/28/this_is_how_a_police_state_protects_secrets_jeffrey_sterling_the_cia_and_up_to_80_years_on_circumstantial_evidence/

Comments

[Basilisk]

This is more precisely FBI Special Agent Ashley Hunt, not CIA.

[turcopolier]

Basilisk

Yup. I was in court when she testified. pl

[LeaNder]

Forceful, Marcy.

But highly interesting the lawyers. I understand they cannot really do anything for him in the equal opportunity case since matters are classified. ... note, when irritated about matters breath deeply before you talk to your lawyers.

Strictly I consider it possible that he grasped for straws, trying to explain how he suddenly got problems:

https://exposefacts.org/cias-small-world-at-the-jeffrey-sterling-trial-racial-profiling-and-leaked-identities/

"On Friday, former high ranking CIA officer David Cohen — who headed up the New York office while Sterling was there — described how he removed Sterling from the Merlin case because he didn’t believe Sterling was performing well at his job (an opinion neither his deputy, Charles Seidel, nor Bob S shared, at least according to their testimony). “His performance was extremely sub-par,” Cohen testified. Cohen also seemed to disdain what might be called political correctness, which if true may have exacerbated Sterling’s increasing sense of being discriminated against for being African American"

[turcopolier]

LeAnder

"Charles Seidel, nor Bob S shared, at least according to their testimony) His performance was extremely sub-par." Not true. I was there when they testified and they said the opposite. pl

[LeaNder]

Pat, the bracket insertion can easily be misread. Marcy is aware that neither of them, at least not publicly, shared that opinion.

The above cited paragraph ending with this ?insinuation?, I can judge, I wasn't there:

"Cohen also seemed to disdain what might be called political correctness, which if true may have exacerbated Sterling’s increasing sense of being discriminated against for being African American"

is followed by this detail on Cohen's further career:

"That would be consistent with the action for which Cohen has received more press in recent years: setting up the New York Police Department’s intelligence program that profiles the area’s Muslim community. In the wake of 9/11, Cohen moved from the CIA to the NYPD. In 2002, he got a federal court to relax the Handschu guidelines, which had been set up in 1985 in response to NYPD’s targeting of people for their political speech. Handschu required specific evidence before using informants to investigate a group. But, as an article from the Pulitzer Prize winning AP series described it, “Cohen told a federal judge that those guidelines made it ‘virtually impossible’ to detect terrorist plots.” After getting the rules relaxed, Cohen created teams of informants that infiltrated mosques and had officers catalog Muslim-owned restaurants, shops, and even schools. “Cohen said he wanted the squad to ‘rake the coals, looking for hot spots,'” the AP reported in 2011."

[William R. Cumming]

If I was a lawyer for Sterling I would file a request for entering a JUDGMENT NOTWITHSTANDING THE VERDICT!

[LeaNder]

WRC, did I get this correctly somewhere in passing, you are a lawyer, a former judge?