The Intercept is the investigative news outlet, home to Jeremy Scahill, that published Daniel Hale’s drone leak as The Drone Papers.[1] John Kiriakou says the outlet “has gotten a lot of people caught” and points to Matthew Cole — “the guy that got you busted works there… and he’s the same guy that got Reality Winner busted.”[2] Reality Winner, interviewed on Kiriakou’s own show, says she was never read her Miranda rights during the FBI’s 2017 arrest that followed the leak. But Kiriakou — who says he is “happy to be the first one to point the finger at the Intercept” — insists the outlet did nothing sloppy in Hale’s case: “they didn’t blow his identity,” Hale “decided that he was going to go public and be public about the drone program.”[3][4]
Kiriakou has put a number on the pattern in a separate interview: he says The Intercept was “either directly or indirectly responsible for the arrest of five whistleblowers,” a record he attributes to bad tradecraft — despite the outlet actively soliciting classified leaks through a published encryption key on its own website.[5] He cites one specific case: an FBI agent who leaked evidence of fraud inside the FBI to The Intercept was arrested after the outlet was careless with his identity, and pleaded guilty to espionage, facing up to ten years in prison.[6]