# From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Espionage Act

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Espionage Act," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/from-alien-and-sedition-to-espionage/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*A lineage John Kiriakou endorsed on the In Limine podcast: that language was lifted from the Alien and Sedition Acts into the Espionage Act of 1917 during the anti-radical hysteria of that period, making a straight line from the earliest American political prosecutions to the statute used against modern whistleblowers.*

- **Origin:** Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798
- **Successor:** Espionage Act of 1917
- **Claimed link:** Language lifted from one into the other
- **Period context:** Wartime hysteria and the anti-radical raids

**From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Espionage Act** describes a historical lineage put to [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) on the *In Limine* podcast in 2023, and which he endorsed without qualification.

## The claim

The host, a criminal defence lawyer who had researched the history of the [Espionage Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/espionage-act), argued that a straight line can be drawn from the Alien and Sedition Acts — which he characterised as wholly political prosecutions — to the modern statute, because some of the 1798 language was lifted into the Espionage Act when it was written in 1917 amid hysteria about radicals and foreign agitators.[1] Kiriakou agreed: *"a hundred percent political."*[1]

The point matters to him because it locates the Espionage Act's origin in the suppression of speech rather than in counter-espionage, which is the ground on which he argues the statute is unconstitutionally broad and unconstitutionally vague.

## The period it came from

The conversation ran on into the era that produced the law's enforcement machinery. Both men noted that the First Amendment case law of the period grows out of the same moment, running up to *Abrams*, and that Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's house in Washington was bombed — Kiriakou mentions having gone to look at the spot a few weekends earlier, having read about it all his life, and finding it to be simply somebody's house.[2]

Nobody was ever caught for the bombing, and the crackdown fell instead on figures such as Emma Goldman. The young official who led the resulting investigation for what was then the Bureau of Investigation was [J. Edgar Hoover](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/j-edgar-hoover).[2]

## See also

- [Espionage Act](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/espionage-act)
- [J. Edgar Hoover](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/j-edgar-hoover)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. In Limine — John Kiriakou (2023-02-06), at 19:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aud096a018e9&t=1198s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-02-06-in-limine-podcast-in-limine-john-kiriakou/
2. In Limine — John Kiriakou (2023-02-06), at 20:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aud096a018e9&t=1234s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-02-06-in-limine-podcast-in-limine-john-kiriakou/

---

From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/from-alien-and-sedition-to-espionage/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt