Feds ready whistleblower trial

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/feds_prep_whistleblower_trial/singleton/


John Krikaou (Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer John Kiriakou — the sixth whistleblower the Obama administration has indicted under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information — was arraigned this morning in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. As expected, Kiriakou pleaded “not guilty” to all the charges. No-nonsense U.S District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema set a pre-trial motions hearing for July 20, 2012 and trial for November 26, 2012.

The arraignment was more notable for who was not present than for who was there. Conspicuously absent was the esteemed Patrick Fitzgerald — well-known as the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation of theValerie Plame CIA leak case, which led to the prosecution and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff for perjury—whose name graces the Indictment. Instead the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent four junior-level attorneys, making it a distinct possibility that DOJ knows its case if full of gaping holes. Judge Brinkema even pointed out that one of the DOJ attorneys “had not practiced before this court much” (paraphrased), which was just one of her choice one-liners during the proceedings.

The green DOJ attorneys seem an uneven match for Kiriakou’s formidable defense team, which included legal Titan Plato Cacheris and his partner Bob Trout, were it not for the fact that the DOJ attorneys have the full resources of the entire Executive Branch, including it’s not-so-secret weapon — secrecy — which was no more evident than when Judge Brinkema forced DOJ to reveal that it still had “lots” of classified discovery to hand over to the defense even though Kiriakou had been charged nearly three months ago (something she also noted).

Judge Brinkema’s No-Nonsense Approach

Judge Brinkema is no stranger to national security cases. She presided over the case against 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and is currently presiding over the Espionage Act case against another former CIA whistleblower, Jeffery Sterling. In the Sterling case, Judge Brinkema rebuffed the government’s third attempt to subpoena New York Times reporter James Risen to testify about his source, writing in July 2011 that “A criminal trial subpoena is not a free pass for the government to rifle through a reporter’s notebook.” DOJ appealed her ruling to the 4th Circuit.