Ex-CIA officer charged with leaking info

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- A former CIA officer was charged Monday with leaking classified information to journalists and lying to a CIA panel, the U.S. Justice Department said.

The former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, 47, of Arlington, Va., was charged with repeatedly providing classified information from 2007 to 2009 to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee in classified activities, Justice Department officials said in a release.

Kiriakou was charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and the Espionage Act. He also was charged with making false statements for allegedly lying to the CIA Publications Review Board in an unsuccessful bid to fool the CIA into allowing him to include classified information in a book he was trying to publish, the Justice Department said.

The criminal complaint, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, alleged in one case Kiriakou allegedly disclosed the then-classified name and contact information of an employee who participated in the capture and questioning of terrorism subject Abu Zubaydah in 2002. Kiriakou's alleged disclosures occurred before a June 2008 story in The New York Times in which the officer's alleged role in the Zubaydah operation was revealed.

The investigation also determined that classified information Kiriakou allegedly disclosed to a journalist was provided by the journalist to a defense investigator in a matter involving Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison detainees. The probe concludes the defense team committed no criminal violations.