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<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"> WASHINGTON — Stephen J.
Kim, an arms expert who immigrated from South Korea as a child, spent a
decade briefing top government officials on the dangers posed by North
Korea. Then last August he was charged with violating the Espionage Act
— not by aiding some foreign adversary, but by revealing classified
information to a Fox News reporter.<br>
<br>
Stephen Kim, an arms expert, is accused of violating the Espionage Act
by giving classified information to a reporter.<br>
<br>
Mr. Kim’s case is next in line in the Obama administration’s
unprecedented crackdown on leaks, after the crumbling last week of the
case against a former National Security Agency official, Thomas A.
Drake. Accused of giving secrets to The Baltimore Sun, Mr. Drake
pleaded guilty to a minor charge and will serve no prison time and pay
no fine.<br>
<br>
The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to
punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal
cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all
previous presidents combined. This week, a grand jury in Virginia heard
testimony in a continuing investigation of WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy
group, a rare effort to prosecute those who publish secrets, rather
than those who leak them.<br>
<br>
The string of cases reflects a broad belief across two administrations
and in both parties in Congress that leaks have gotten out of hand,
endangering intelligence agents and exposing American spying methods.<br>
<br>
But Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at
the Federation of American Scientists, said the fizzling of the Drake
prosecution “ought to be a signal to the government to rethink its
approach to these cases.” He said the government had many options for
punishing leaks: stripping an official’s security clearance, firing him
or pursuing a misdemeanor charge. Instead, it “has been leaping to the
most extreme response, felony charges,” he said.<br>
<br>
In particular, critics of the leak prosecutions question the
appropriateness of using the Espionage Act, a World War I-era statute
first applied to leaks in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971. They say it
is misleading and unfair to lump the likes of Mr. Drake and Mr. Kim
with traitors like Aldrich Ames or Robert P. Hanssen, who sold secrets
to the Soviet Union.<br>
<br>
Few have taken a tougher public line against leaks than Gabriel
Schoenfeld, whose 2010 book “Necessary Secrets” argues that the news
media are far too cavalier about publishing classified information. But
he, too, called the espionage label unfortunate.<br>
<br>
“You’re accusing someone who’s doing something irresponsible and
wrong,” said Mr. Schoenfeld, of the Hudson Institute in Washington.
“But he might be a well-intentioned civil servant and he’s not trying
to betray his country.”<br>
<br>
Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University, said the
best option would be a new statute tailored to fit leaks to the media,
perhaps allowing defendants to argue that information disclosed should
never have been classified in the first place. But he said no such law
could pass in the current climate.<br>
<br>
The problems of perception that plagued the government’s pursuit of
Mr. Drake, who claimed to be a whistle-blower exposing a costly
National Security Agency boondoggle, may crop up again with Mr. Kim.
His personal story as a brainy, up-by-the-bootstraps immigrant is
compelling, even if the government is able to prove that he was far too
candid in talking to a reporter about intelligence in 2009 and then
lied to F.B.I. agents about the episode.<br>
<br>
Arriving with his family from Seoul and settling in the Bronx at the
age of 8, Mr. Kim excelled academically, earning degrees from
Georgetown and Harvard and a doctorate from Yale. He worked for
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Defense Department and the
State Department, focusing on North Korea’s weapons programs and
briefing then-Vice President Dick Cheney, among others.<br>
<br>
“I had the highest regard for him,” said Paula A. DeSutter, Mr. Kim’s
boss when she was an assistant secretary of state in the Bush
administration. “He had native Korean language and he’d been doing this
work forever.”<br>
<br>
Mr. Kim rarely spoke with reporters and sometimes expressed alarm
about leaks, colleagues say. But in March 2009, a State Department
press officer asked Mr. Kim to speak about North Korea to a Fox News
reporter, James Rosen, and the two began to talk and exchange e-mails.
Mr. Kim sent some e-mails under an online pseudonym, “Leo Grace.”<br>
<br>
On June 11, 2009, Mr. Rosen reported that “the Central Intelligence
Agency has learned, through sources inside North Korea,” that Pyongyang
was likely to respond to a United Nations resolution condemning its
nuclear and missile tests with more tests and other measures. The news
was no surprise, but C.I.A. officials were furious that a top-secret
analysis had been leaked almost instantly, according to a former
government official. (A Fox News spokesman said Mr. Rosen declined to
comment.)<br>
<br>
When F.B.I. agents questioned Mr. Kim, he claimed he had spoken to Mr.
Rosen only once. He admitted to more contacts only after agents
confronted him with evidence, according to court filings. His trial is
probably months away; if convicted, Mr. Kim, 43, could be sentenced to
15 years in prison.<br>
<br>
If there were any doubts inside the administration about proceeding
with the leak crackdown, they appear to have evaporated with the rise
to prominence last year of WikiLeaks, which invites disclosures by the
terabyte. The group’s efforts have only hardened officials’ conviction
that leaks must be deterred with the threat of prison.<br>
<br>
Lisa O. Monaco, a Justice Department official awaiting Senate
confirmation as head of the department’s national security division,
testified last month that “it would be my priority to continue the
aggressive pursuit of these investigations” because leaks do
“tremendous damage.” She noted that “twice as many” cases had been
pursued in 18 months than in all previous administrations. No committee
member questioned the effort.<br>
<br>
For Mr. Kim’s sister, Yuri Lustenberger-Kim, a corporate lawyer, the
charges against her brother are bitter recompense for his long service
to American national security, and the espionage label is especially
painful.<br>
<br>
“My brother has spent all of his professional life trying to be a help
to his country,” she said. “The idea that the prosecutors would think
he would do, or did do, anything to hurt the United States is the
farthest thing from reality they could charge.”<br>
<br>
No matter what happens, she said, the charges already have been
devastating for Mr. Kim, who has an 11-year-old son, and the rest of
his proud immigrant family.<br>
<br>
“This has sent my parents into deep sadness and anxiety, put more
strains on Stephen’s marriage than a couple can bear, and ruined all he
has worked for over his life,” she said. <br>
<br>
<br>
A version of this article appeared in print on June 18, 2011, on page
A1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Pressing Its
Crackdown Against Leaks.<br>
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