David Petraeus
==============

David Petraeus is a retired U.S. Army general who served as director of the CIA. John Kiriakou cites him as the central example of selective prosecution in national-security cases.

Ten covert operatives, no charge

Per Kiriakou, while he was defending himself against the charge that he had confirmed a single colleague's surname, a name that was never made public, CIA Director Petraeus "confirmed the names of ten covert CIA officers to his biographer and girlfriend and was never charged."

Kiriakou groups Petraeus with Leon Panetta, who he says publicly identified the Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty, and a disgruntled former CIA officer in Bethesda, Maryland, who outed seven covert operatives on his personal website. None of the three was charged.

"Why were you selectively prosecuted?"

When Kiriakou asked his attorney why these men walked free while he was prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the answer was: "because they didn't blow the whistle on the torture program and embarrass the agency." Kiriakou's own framing: "I had aired the CIA's dirty laundry in public, and that was something that to the CIA was unforgivable."

Ten names, no charge (Scott Michael Nathan)

John Kiriakou contrasts his own prosecution with David Petraeus, who as CIA director revealed the names of ten covert operatives and was never charged, evidence, Kiriakou argues, that his own case was really punishment for whistleblowing, not for confirming a single unpublished surname.

The black books and the misdemeanor plea

In several other interviews, Kiriakou gives a more specific account that qualifies his "never charged" framing above. He says Petraeus was ultimately forced to resign as CIA Director not over disclosing classified information to the press, but for giving his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell, access to the CIA's "black books", the president's daily briefing materials, among the most highly classified documents the agency produces. Kiriakou notes the timing: on the day of his own sentencing, Petraeus sent an all-hands email to every CIA employee worldwide declaring that oaths matter and that violators would be prosecuted, then, two hours after hitting send, lied to two FBI officers in his office, denying he had ever given Broadwell classified information.

Petraeus was never charged with making a false statement to federal officers. When investigators later confronted him with proof that he had in fact revealed the identities of ten covert CIA officers to Broadwell and given her access to the black books, he pleaded to a misdemeanor, variously described as misuse or failure to secure classified information, paid a fine, and received 18 months of unsupervised probation and no jail time; at sentencing, the judge came down from the bench to shake his hand and thank him for his service.

The charges against Kiriakou

Kiriakou attributes the original charge sheet against him to Petraeus directly, saying that the government piled on charges, including espionage, at the insistence of the then CIA director.

The argument he builds on that is about due process. If the government genuinely believed he had committed the crimes charged, he asks, why did it not insist on going to trial? Why did it make five different plea offers, and why did it drop four of the five charges? His answer in each case is that the charges were not serious ones.

The consequence outlasted the charges. Because the Bureau of Prisons determines security designation from what a defendant was originally accused of rather than what he was convicted of, the dropped espionage counts still produced the public safety factor that kept Kiriakou out of a minimum-security camp for his entire sentence.

The comparison Kiriakou draws

What Kiriakou says stung most while he was awaiting trial was that the sitting director of the CIA revealed the names of ten undercover CIA operatives to his girlfriend and biographer, was charged with a single misdemeanour, and received eighteen months of unsupervised probation, after which the judge came down from the bench at the sentencing hearing to shake his hand and thank him for his service to the country. Kiriakou's own charge under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act concerned a single name, confirmed rather than disclosed, which never became public at the time.

The oath exchange

When Kiriakou agreed in October 2012 to plead guilty in exchange for the remaining charges being dropped, Petraeus, then Director of the CIA, issued a statement saying that the conviction showed "we have to take our oaths seriously." Kiriakou''s reply, given publicly the following January, accepted the premise and turned it: "Well, I took my oath seriously. My oath was to the Constitution. On my first day in the CIA I put my right hand up and I swore to uphold the Constitution, and to me torture is unconstitutional, and it''s something that we should not be in the business of doing."

The comparison Kiriakou's lawyers would not dispute

Kiriakou sets his own prosecution against two cases that produced nothing. He was charged with confirming the name of a former CIA colleague, "that name was never made public." Meanwhile a disgruntled former CIA officer in Bethesda, Maryland, thrown out of the agency, "had a website in which he named seven former CIA officers and was never arrested." And Petraeus, as Director of Central Intelligence, "confirmed the name of 10 covert CIA officers to his adulterous girlfriend. He was never prosecuted for that."

"And I said to my lawyers at the time: well, why aren't they charged with this crime? And the quick answer was, because they didn't blow the whistle on the torture program."

He adds that the day after his own arrest the Washington Times carried an anonymous FBI agent calling him "a bad actor" who was "working on behalf of the terrorists", a charge he answers in one line: "ridiculous. I had blown the whistle on an illegal, immoral and unethical program."

The two sentencings

Kiriakou uses the Petraeus case as the fixed point against which he measures his own. The conduct, as he states it, was that "the CIA director, David Petraeus, revealed the names of 10 CIA covert operatives to his adulterous girlfriend. He was never charged with that, but they charged me with a felony", for confirming a single last name in an email, a name that was never made public and which he still declines to say.

What Petraeus did receive was "a misdemeanor count of improperly securing classified information" and "18 months of unsupervised probation." The detail Kiriakou returns to is not the sentence but the ceremony: "at his sentencing, the judge came down from the bench to shake his hand and thank him for his service to the country." Asked whether his own judge had done the same, his answer is the contrast the story exists for: "The judge said to me, 'If I could give you 10 years, I would.'"

The second man who was not charged

Kiriakou usually cites Petraeus alone. In May 2017 he cited him as the first of a pair, and the second name is the one that carries his argument, because it comes from his own case rather than from a famous one.

The first: Petraeus "gave the names of 10 covert officers to his adulterous girlfriend and was not prosecuted."

The second: "in my case there was another CIA officer, a disgruntled former CIA officer, who provided this reporter with the names of seven covert officers." That officer supplied seven names to the same journalist to whom Kiriakou confirmed one, and faced nothing. Kiriakou's explanation of the difference is a single clause, and it is not about the conduct: "he was not prosecuted, because he didn't blow the whistle on the torture program."

See also

- Intelligence Identities Protection Act
- Leon Panetta
- John Brennan
- John Kiriakou
