A former FBI agent has agreed to plead guilty to divulging secret government information about a supposed bomb plot in Yemen to the Associated Press, the US Department of Justice said Monday.
Donald John Sachtleben agreed to a sentence of three years and
seven months for the leak, as part of a plea agreement filed in
the US District Court in Indiana. A separate sentence for
unrelated child pornography charges was included, according to
the Justice Department (DOJ).
In May 2012, AP reported on a US operation in Yemen to stop a
plan to bomb an airliner. The news agency had agreed to hold the story at the request of the government, yet
printed it before receiving an official go-ahead from the Obama
administration - which said the leak compromised national
security. Soon after, US Attorney General Eric Holder ordered an
investigation into the matter.
It was later revealed that the potential "bomber" was a US
agent working within Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula. Officials suggested to Reuters that the leak ended an
"operation which they hoped could have continued for weeks or
longer."
In a Monday statement, the DOJ continued to assert national
security harm from the leak.
"This unauthorized and unjustifiable disclosure severely
jeopardized national security and put lives at risk," Deputy
Attorney General James Cole said.
The leak, which Holder called one of the most grave in US
history, led the DOJ to collect phone records of AP reporters in an effort
to snuff out the culprit - again exposing the Obama
administration’s punitive crackdown on leaking. Following the
spying revelations, the DOJ recalibrated its standard for surveilling press
outlets.
The DOJ claims the subpoena of AP phone records helped lead to
the consideration of Sachtleben.
"Sachtleben was identified as a suspect in the case of this
unauthorized disclosure only after toll records for phone numbers
related to the reporter were obtained through a subpoena and
compared to other evidence collected during the leak
investigation," the statement said.
The DOJ said the records "allowed investigators to obtain a
search warrant authorizing a more exhaustive search of
Sachtleben’s cell phone, computer, and other electronic
media" - which was all in DOJ possession from the child
pornography investigation.
AP refused to comment Monday on the guilty plea.
Sachtleben retired in 2008 after working for the Federal Bureau
of Investigation for about 25 years, though he continued
employment with the agency as a bomb analyst on a contract basis.
He agreed to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized disclosure
of national defense information and one count of unauthorized
possession and retention of national defense information.
Should the judge accept the agreement, the sentence would be the
longest ever from a civilian court for a leak of classified
information to a reporter.