The pillow talk leak case
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John Kiriakou uses this case as his benchmark for proportionate treatment of a classified disclosure, and he watched it happen from the adjacent desk.

"At the CIA in the 1990s I sat next to a woman who was having an affair with a man who used to be a senior CIA officer. He had retired and he had gone to CNN as a terrorism consultant, and in the course of pillow talk she relayed classified information to him. He went on CNN and repeated the classified information."

The investigation was quick and the outcome was administrative. "The CIA began an investigation. They immediately tied it right back to her. She was not charged with espionage. What they did was they wrote a strongly worded letter and put it in her personnel file. They suspended her without pay for two weeks, and she was ineligible for a promotion for a period of one year."

His conclusion is stated as a rule: "that''s how you handle the misuse of classified information." He applies it in both directions, to the boxes in Joe Biden''s garage and to the documents at Mar-a-Lago alike: "shame on you, you should have a strongly worded letter put in your personnel file. But espionage? Sorry."

See also

- Dont Charge Trump With Espionage Oped
- Espionage Act
- CIA adultery culture
- Classification compartments
- CIA media revolving door
