The business-card espionage charges
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The business-card espionage charges were two of the three counts brought against John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act, and the pair he uses to argue that the government knew its espionage case was empty.

What was charged

The conduct underlying both counts was the same act. Kiriakou had given a former CIA colleague's business card to two reporters, one at ABC and one at The New York Times. The colleague was no longer in the CIA, and, Kiriakou stresses, had never been undercover.

He sets them beside the third count, which rested on his having disclosed top-secret compartmented information about a CIA programme to The New York Times, the information in question being that the CIA had a programme to capture or kill al-Qaeda members.

The exchange in court

Kiriakou's account of how the two counts collapsed is a short scene he reports in direct speech. His attorney told the judge that the man had never been undercover and that all his client had done was pass along a business card the man was handing out to everybody.

The judge answered: "I find that very hard to believe." She then turned to the prosecutors and asked whether it was true. The prosecutor's reply, in Kiriakou's telling, conceded the point without conceding it: "well, Your Honor, Mr. Kiriakou really should have been more careful." She turned back to the defence and said she would entertain a motion to dismiss those charges.

All three espionage counts were eventually dropped.

What he takes from it

Kiriakou treats the weakness of these counts as the explanation for the undercover operation run against him beforehand. The FBI knew the espionage case was weak to non-existent because he had not committed espionage, so what they wanted was to catch him actually committing it, which is why they sent in a man posing as a Japanese diplomat.

See also

- Espionage Act
- Japanese diplomat FBI sting
- Intelligence Identities Protection Act
- Eastern District of Virginia
- Federal plea coercion
