Kiriakou was charged with five felonies: three counts under the Espionage Act, one under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and one count of making a false statement. He says the last of these is the count journalists never asked him about.[1]
The question in the conference room
In August 2012 he was sitting in a conference room at Akin Gump Strauss, a firm he describes as one of the most important in the world with something like fourteen thousand lawyers. One of the lawyers — the one he liked and trusted the most — observed that they had spent so much time on the espionage charges that they had never once discussed the false statement charge, and asked what exactly the false statement was supposed to have been.[2]
Everybody in the room looked at Kiriakou. He said he was not really sure.[2]
What he thinks it was
His best reconstruction is that it had something to do with his first book. When he sent the manuscript in for clearance he wrote to a friend about it and, in his own words, laid it on thick. The government interpreted that letter as meaning he had lied in order to get the book cleared.[3]
He denies lying to get the book cleared, and points out that the book was not cleared as written: ninety pages were cut out of it. No classified information was ever revealed in it; he went by the book and followed the rules.[3]
The cost
In the end the government could not defend the charge and simply withdrew it. That withdrawal did not return anything: Kiriakou says he still spent one to two hundred thousand dollars defending himself against that single count.[4] He fits it into the pattern he calls charge stacking — overcharge, wait for the defendant to go bankrupt, then drop four of the five counts and offer a plea.[1]