[Peace-discuss] freedom of the oppression -dont mess with the evil empire.

["E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森"]

  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.

Stephen Kim, an arms expert, is accused of violating the Espionage Act 
by giving classified information to a reporter.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  “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.”

  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.

  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.

  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.

  “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.”

  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.”

  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.)

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  “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.”

  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.

  “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.


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.
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