From the Christian Science Monitor, I got this tidbit about the coming prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, accused of leaking classified information to a reporter. The tidbit is this: In 2003, the courts said Sterling couldn’t pursue a discrimination case against the CIA because the case would expose state secrets.
Now, to prosecute him for the alleged leak, the government will probably expose some of that same information.
Sterling, who is black, said he was denied certain undercover assignments at the agency because, officials allegedly told him, he was “too big and black” to function effectively as a covert intelligence officer overseas.
A federal judge granted the government’s request and immediately dismissed Sterling’s civil rights case under the state secrets doctrine. The Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.
“We recognize that our decision places … a burden on Sterling that he alone must bear,” the Fourth Circuit said in an August 2005 decision. But the court concluded: “There is no way for Sterling to prove employment discrimination without exposing at least some classified details of the covert employment that gives context to his claim.”
Sterling’s prosecution will likely involve disclosure of some of the same highly sensitive information that prompted the government’s earlier invocation of the state secrets privilege.
The bigger debate about classified info, journalism and what one analyst called the Obama Administration’s “paranoia” about leaks is not something I’m gonna tangle with here. But this case right now sounds like a pretty nasty turn of the legal tables against one guy, not something we’re taught to believe American justice is about.
Then again, not much of that secondary school history turned out to be all that true, did it?
