"The Sorry Case of Jeffrey Sterling" by Richard Sale

 
     The injection of the political realm into the moral realm degrades both. When matters of moral value are seen through a political lens, what one sees is distorted and contaminated. The moral value is never free of conditional circumstances, but it tries not to be enslaved by them.  A moral value shines by its integrity, its repudiation of expedience, its shunning of the half truth because of its allegiance and obedience to accurate fact. 

     Those were my thoughts as I read about the case of former CIA official Jeffrey Sterling who was recently convicted of espionage by a federal court in Alexandria, VA. 

     However, there are things to keep in mind as we consider this case. 

     By the year 2000, Iran had for years obtained expertise from Russia and Chinese nuclear specialists equipped to study any blue prints submitted to Iran by countries eager to help Tehran expand its nuclear program. Iran had for years had obtained from the black-market network of the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, plans for developing nuclear weapons.  Until 2003, Iran had a strategic goal in developing such a weapon – it was to be a deterrent, not against Israel, but the nuclear forces of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

      To be plain, Iran certainly was capable of discerning a fake nuclear blueprint from a genuine one. 

     The CIA’s targets at the time were North Korea, Iraq, and Iran.    

     After 9/11, Iran was conspicuously efficient in supporting the U.S. / Northern Alliance against the Taliban, which Iran deeply hated, helping the U.S. to rescue its downed pilots, even giving U.S. forces maps on which Taliban targets were to be bombed. 

     This changed.  Under President George Bush, Iran was now a member of “the Axis of Evil.” The earlier smiley face of Iran had been replaced by a harsh face of murder terrorism and exploitation. The designation, “the Axis of Evil," has always had for me the crudity of a cartoon. In addition, it was wrong. Even then, in 2003, Iran was making efforts to hand over to the U.S. top al Qaeda lieutenants, including a son of Osama bin Laden. 

Plans 

     Since the Clinton years, low level US and Iranian talks had been taking in Vienna. 

     The Counterproliferation Division of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations now came up with what they thought was an ingenious plan. Find a prospect, a Russian that could act as an intermediary, vet him, cross-examine him, and use him to transport nuclear plans to Iran in order to sabotage its program. The highlight of this operation was the insertion of defects into the plans that would be passed on to the Iranians.  In other words, the aim of this was to send Iran off on a wild goose chase. 

     (It has an old idea:  you implant defects into a weapon for an enemy, and when war comes and he throws the switch, nothing happens.  The CIA had already executed such a plan against the Soviets, and we are doing the same thing to China today.) 

     Then something unspeakable happened. 

    A scandal occurred. A CIA official told Jim Risen of The New York Times about the plan, and the pitiless furies of “national security” arguments were unleashed, aimed at proving that Risen was the source of articles about the plan printed in The New York Times.  Of course, the burden of proving espionage lies with the government.  A government should not be allowed to use mere proximity,  tangential conversations or vague-mails to prove espionage. In the Sterling case, such encounters are merely circumstantial. They are not proof. A government may infer that something bad happened, but that is mere supposition. the government didn’t make its case.  It had facts on peripheral issues e-mails, et, but there was no one piece of evidence that make clear that Sterling was Risen’s source. 

Sadly, Sterling was charged with espionage.  In making such charges, the burden of proof is always on the government making the charge. In the Sterling trial, The CIA official who allegedly spoke to Risen, Jeffrey Sterling was indicted and for seven years, the federal government brought pitiless pressure on Risen to name Sterling as his source. 

   One principle of journalism is always honored, one ideal is impetrative stands above all the rest – that is, never give up the name of a source, and unless they are dead and their family gives the reporter permission to the name. 

    I have read only news accounts of the case, but one fact strikes one as extremely curious. The Iranians never took the bait.  One can infer that the Iranian officials thought the US-manufactured nuclear plans bogus. In spite of the CIA’s plan, the Iranians never stirred a hair. 

     This brings us to the National Intelligence Estimate of 2007.  That document said, “We assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons. 

    “We judge with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years. (Because of intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in this Estimate, however, DOE and the NIC assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran's entire nuclear weapons program.) 

   “We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.” 

     No matter, and never mind.

     According to news accounts, Sterling was initially charged with committing ten felonies, seven of which fall under the Espionage Act. The other charges were mail fraud and obstruction of justice. The mail fraud charge was dismissed by the judge last week before deliberation.

     Sterling’s case was the first case involving an alleged leak to the press to proceed to a full trial in thirty years. The last case involved Samuel L. Morison, a Navy civilian analyst who was charged under President Ronald Reagan for leaking photographs of Soviet ships to alert America to what he perceived as a new threat.

     Notably, Morison’s case was one of the first cases where the Justice Department used the Espionage Act to criminalize a leak. (Morison was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.)

     The conviction of Sterling seems to me to be a vast mistake, the wrong thing done for the wrong reasons.

     A news account quoted Jesselyn Radack, a Justice Department whistleblower, attorney and director of the Government Accountability Project’s National Security and Human Rights Division. She said, “It is a new low in the war on whistleblowers and government hypocrisy that CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling was convicted in a purely circumstantial case of ‘leaking.’ It shows how far an embarrassed government will go to punish those who dare to commit the truth.”

Sterling will remain free on bond until his sentencing, which is scheduled for April 24. His defense is working to “seek to have the verdict thrown out” and, if that does not happen, they will appeal. 

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks Richard for another helpful analysis!

[J]

Colonel,

Did you see Stein's article regarding former FBI Agent Mark Rossini and the case of:

"Why the CIA refused to share information with the FBI (or any other agency) about the arrival of at least two well-known Al-Qaeda operatives in the United States in 2000, even though the spy agency had been tracking them closely for years. That the CIA did block him and Doug Miller, a fellow FBI agent assigned to the “Alec Station,” the cover name for CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, from notifying bureau headquarters about the terrorists has been told before, most notably in a 2009 Nova documentary on PBS, “The Spy Factory.” Rossini and Miller related how they learned earlier from the CIA that one of the terrorists (and future hijacker), Khalid al-Mihdhar, had multi-entry visas on a Saudi passport to enter the United States. When Miller drafted a report for FBI headquarters, a CIA manager in the top-secret unit told him to hold off. "

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/23/information-could-have-stopped-911-299148.html

[Lars]

I am starting to see accounts regarding this travesty in the online media and they are rather uniform in their condemnation of this. Typically, these matters migrate to the mainstream media and I suspect eventually the government will end up looking a lot worse. It seems Mr. Sterling was railroaded in what appears to be a kangaroo court.

[LeaNder]

Norman Salomon created a petition for Jeffrey Sterling, "the invisible man":

https://exposefacts.org/the-invisible-man-jeffrey-sterling-cia-whistleblower/

direct link to petition, works for me only in InternetExplorer:
act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=10707

[Harper]

From carefully studying the case and being familiar with the Eastern District of Virginia "rocket docket," based on government-friendly jury pools of government workers, family of government workers, neighbors of government, workers, etc., I think it is shameful that the Judge did not issue a directed verdict and throw the case out because the government did not prove the case and did not even prove jurisdition. If the government contaminated the Judge through secret briefings about evidence withheld from the defense, all the more reason to toss the case out. The Obama Justice Department has waged a war against legitimate whistle blowers (and by extension the journalism profession) with a viciousness that is unprecedented--eat your heart out Dick Cheney.

[optimax]

And no trial for Patraeus. There's one law for the powerful and well connected, another for the rest of us. The idea that America is a nation of laws and not people is no longer true. The bottom will fall out when most people realize the system is rigged.

[Jack]

So for Mr.Sterling no Al Sharpton or Obama or Holder who have identified with Trayvon Martin & Garner, etc making any noise. Where's the black man solidarity? None it seems when it comes to the National Security Surveillance state.

[William R. Cumming]

IMO the BIG ONES like the collapse of the SOVIET UNION have all been missed by the CIA. It probably all starts with the myth that the OSS was an effective organization in WWII.

Now the CIA is used to bypass DoD and the military Chain-of-Command and thus enhance the DEEP STATE and personal frivolity of Presidents. THIS IS NOT A SERIOUS ORGANIZATION. Many reasons but a audit of language abilities and cultural knowledge within CIA officialdom would make one wonder if the movie THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR 919750 nailed this problem cold.

[William R. Cumming]

Agree! But the real problem with Eric Holder as AG is that anyone providing opinions on critical policies and cases with which this toady disagreed was purged or put on the shelf in DoJ.

When will the Judiciary Committees hold hearings on DoJ incompetence?

[William R. Cumming]

Based on some informal info I received some of the nation's best legal talent is lining up to help with the Skilling appeal.

[turcopolier]

WRC

Good! Sterling, not Skilling. pl

[Margaret Steinfels]

Is it possible that Holder had to prosecute an African-American to show that he is "impartial"? Just a passing thought.

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks P.L.! My mind still stuck on ENRON!

[Imagine]

It is now common knowledge, that is, everyone knows that everyone knows that, the Iranians are building hundreds of nuclear bombs in a secret underground factory to wipe Israel off the map. (See http://www.antiwar.com/orig/norouzi.php?articleid=11025).

But how do we know this?

Why, the neocons and Israelis have conveniently told us, again and again, for the past two decades. And it is what we (paranoid frat-boys) know that we would do if WE were Iranians. It just makes so much sense.

These wouldn't be the same Israelis who are actually building hundreds of nukes in a secret underground factory and are actively trying to wipe Iraq and Iran off the map, would it? Who receive billions each year in protection money against potential threats?

But what if the premise were wrong?

Nima Shirazi documents over a hundred instances that the leaders of Iran have decried building nukes over religious, practical, and strategic grounds ("Ignoring Decades of Iranian Statements on Nuclear Weapons for the Sake of Propaganda"):
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2012/10/the-goldberg-predilections-ignoring.html

The clincher is the game-theoretic strategic argument. According to Ahmadinejad, it would make no sense for Iran to even attempt to build an atom bomb or two against the thousands that America has, and the hundreds that Israel has.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-ahmadinejad-interview-part-2/
http://gwynnedyer.com/2011/iran-here-we-go-again/
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2011/06/two-smart-fellows.html

Iran is going out of its way to stop even the perception that it MIGHT want nuclear weapons:
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2014/09/iran-nuclear-perception-zarif.html

and, of course, both the US and Mossad Intelligence communities say Iran has NO nuke weapons program.
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2013/03/us-intel-chief-says-iran-isnt-building-nukes.html

However, this has not stopped the constant drumbeat of propaganda towards a war.
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2010/12/phantom-menace-fantasies-falsehoods-and.html
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2014/11/iran-nuclear-ticking-clock.html

(Side note: Internal analyses in Iran have Iran running out of oil in just a few decades, although one American believes less than one decade: http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1073968.html
so stable alternative energy is an existential threat.)

Iran is inspected almost daily by the U.N.; Israel has yet to join the NPT. Iran proposes a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone; Israel and the U.S. block it.

None of this has ever mattered for the past two decades. Netanyahu speaks English fluently, arguably controls Congress, and has successfully set the narrative for America for decades. Iran has less P.R. presence than most high schools. It is toast.

The neocons caused over $4T damage to the U.S. in our last grand adventure to wipe out Israel's competition. Iran is 4x the size of Iraq in 2000. The rest of the world sees what America is doing, and remembers. None of this matters. Mr. Sterling's sad case is merely a tiny piece in a much larger, long-term game. Looks to me like we will soon start another multi-trillion-dollar, million-death war of choice.

[tv]

Question:
If Sterling was NOT Risen's source, why didn't Risen say so?
He's only bound to not disclose sources.

[turcopolier]

TV

Risen said he had many sources. pl

[tv]

So Risen didn't eliminate Sterling as a source, thereby giving credence (no matter how circumstantial) to the prosecution?
If Sterling didn't deliver secrets to Risen and Risen didn't explicitly say that, then that makes Risen...a total scumbag.

[turcopolier]

tv

yes. pl