Senior Aide to Democrat Senator Kerry Charged With Leaking Classified Information

The Justice Department has charged John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and former senior Democrat Senate aide to John Kerry with being the source of major media leaks compromising national security, disclosing the identity of an undercover officer and lying to the CIA about the origin of other sensitive material he published in a book. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Kiriakou is also a popular Huffington Post columnist.Or was, at any rate.

He first surfaced in the public eye in a 2007 interview with ABC News, where he claimed to have played a major role as a CIA agent in the capture and interrogation of al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded. He was a huge source for the 'waterboarding is torture' crowd.

Three years, when he published a book about his CIA experiences (and presumably after he cashed his advance check), he admitted on the second to last page that he hadn't participated at all in the capture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, but just relied on what he'd heard about it.

The charges of disclosing the identity of an undercover officer came about because information Kiriakou supplied to journalists at Guantanamo Bay enabled defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of terrorist detainees.

A real prince, no?

I can't help but wonder if the Obama Administration is planning on prosecuting the journalists and defense attorneys who aided and abetted - not to mention the editors and publishers. I doubt it, but it would certainly be fair and just to do so.

Do you get the feeling Kiriakou learned about ethics and patriotism from his old boss Senator Kerry, who met with the North Vietnamese in Paris during the Vietnam War to plot strategy on how to undermine the US war effort?