and looking for an honorable out from the CIA, he filed a discrimination suit. The Agency did not appreciate that, and revoked his security clearance - effectively firing him in March 2001. Later in 2002, after the Agency denied his complaint and officially terminated him in January 2002, Sterling first communicated by e-mail with Risen at The NYT.
The Sterling matter has some parallels with the Bush-Cheney Administration's outing of CIA/CPD where Sterling and Plame had worked. In June 2001, Richard Armitage leaked to The Financial Times of London that the US had learned about AQ Khan's nuclear proliferation network. That effectively tipped off the Pakistanis and the rest of Khan's network. This was followed by Scooter Libby's outing of Valerie Plame (who had worked in the same unit - CIA/Counter-Proliferation Division), which was not fully cooperative with the Bush-Cheney White House's efforts to "sex up" evidence of an Iraqi WMD program. In July 2003, the Plame Affair became public, and after the 2004 election, Risen published his book, which exposed the botched Merlin operation.
Sterling has detailed first-hand knowledge of many of the details of CIA/CPD's work in Iran, as well as the AQ Khan network that would be embarrassing to the Agency and shed light on the Bush-Cheney's outing of the unit and of Plame. The invocation of State Secrets and the subpoena of Risen now is an effort to put those genies back in the bottle and damage containment with a chilling effect on any corporate media that would still report these sort of things.
Operation Merlin Wiki:
Operation Merlin is an alleged United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a flawed design for building a nuclear weapon in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.
History
In his book State of War, author and intelligence correspondent for The New York Times, James Risen claims that the CIA chose a defected Russian nuclear scientist to provide deliberately flawed nuclear warhead blueprints to Iranian officials in February 2000. Operation Merlin backfired when the nervous Russian scientist noticed the flaws and pointed them out to the Iranians, hoping to enhance his credibility and to protect himself against retaliation by the Iranians, while still advancing what he thought was the CIA plan to use him as a double agent inside Iran. Instead, the book alleges, Operation Merlin may have accelerated Iran's nuclear program by providing useful information, once the flaws were identified, and the plans compared with other sources, such as those presumed to have been provided to the Iranians by A. Q. Khan.
Indictment of former CIA-officer
In late 2010, former CIA-officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling was indicted for revealing to James Risen the transfer of the nuclear blueprints by the CIA to Iran.<1>
Jeffrey Sterling Wiki:
CIA employment
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling joined the CIA on 14 May 1993, and in 1995 became Operations Officer in the Iran Task force of CIA's Near East and South Asia division. He held a Top Secret security clearance and had access to Sensitive Compartmented Information, including classified cables, CIA informants and operations. After training in Persian in 1997 he was sent first to Bonn, Germany, and two years later to New York City to recruit Iranian nationals as agents for the CIA, as part of a secret intelligence operation related to the weapons capabilities of Iran. In April 2000, Sterling filed a complaint about racial discrimination practices by CIA management with CIA's Equal Employment Office. The CIA subsequently revoked Sterling's authorization to receive or possess classified documents concerning the secret operation, and placed him on administrative leave in March 2001.<3><4> After the failure of two settlement attempts, his contract with the CIA was terminated on 31. January 2002.<5>
Equal Employment law suit
Sterling's law suit accusing CIA officials of racial discrimination was dismissed by the judge invoking the State secrets privilege, as the litigation would have required the disclosure of classified information. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, ruling in 2005 that “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.”<6><7><8><9>
Indictment and arrest under the Espionage Act
Between 2002 and 2004 the U.S. federal government intercepted several interstate emails to and from Sterling, which were "(...) routed through a server located in the Eastern District of Virginia (...)". The authorities also traced telephone calls between Sterling and - according to a senior government official<1> - the journalist and book author James Risen. In the intercepted communications Sterling allegedly revealed national defense information to an unauthorized person.<5>
On 22 Dec 2010, U.S. attorney Neil H. MacBride filed an indictment against Jeffrey Alexander Sterling on the Unlawful Retention and Unauthorized Disclosure of National Defense Information, Mail Fraud, Unauthorized Conveyance of Government Property, and Obstruction of Justice. Sterling was arrested on 6 January 2011.<5> Sterling became the fifth individual in the history of the United States who has been charged under the Espionage Act with mishandling national defense information.<10><11><12><2>
In a hearing at the U.S. District Court on 14 Jan 2011, Sterling's defense attorney Edward MacMahon entered a not guilty plea.<13><14> MacMahon reported to the court that he was still waiting for clearance to discuss the case in detail with his client.<15>
Valerie Plame Wiki:
Beginning in 1997, Plame's primary assignment was shifted to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The CIA’s Ishmael Jones confirmed her status as a NOC or “deep cover officer” and remarked that she was talented and highly intelligent, but decried the fact that her career largely featured US-based Headquarters service, typical of most CIA officers.<25>
She married Wilson in 1998 and gave birth to their twins in (January) 2000,<26> and resumed travel overseas in 2001, 2002, and 2003 as part of her cover job. She met with workers in the nuclear industry, cultivated sources, and managed spies.<27> She was involved in ensuring that Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons.<28>(Note: that Plame may have been on maternity leave at the time that Merlin went bad)
During this time, part of her work concerned the determination of the use of aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq.<29> CIA analysts prior to the Iraq invasion were quoted by the White House as believing that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear weapons and that these aluminum tubes could be used in a centrifuge for nuclear enrichment.<30><31> However, David Corn and Michael Isikoff argued that the undercover work being done by Plame and her CIA colleagues in the Directorate of Central Intelligence Nonproliferation Center strongly contradicted such a claim.<29>
"Plamegate"
Flow of Valerie Plame Information
Main articles: CIA leak grand jury investigation, Plame affair, and Plame affair criminal investigation
On July 14, 2003, Washington Post journalist Robert Novak, from information obtained from Richard Armitage at the US State Department, effectively ended Valerie Plame's career with the CIA (from which she later resigned in December 2005) by revealing in his column her identity as a CIA operative.<32><33> Legal documents published in the course of the CIA leak grand jury investigation, United States v. Libby, and Congressional investigations, allegedly establish her classified employment as a covert officer for the CIA at the time that Novak's column was published in July 2003.<33><34><35>
In his press conference of October 28, 2005, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald explained in considerable detail the necessity of "secrecy" about his grand jury investigation that began in the fall of 2003 — "when it was clear that Valerie Wilson's cover had been blown" — and the background and consequences of the indictment of Lewis Libby as it pertains to Valerie E. Wilson.<15>
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