No wonder 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been silent as a churchmouse about Karl Rove while her Democratic colleagues call for his prosecution for leaking classified information about CIA employee Valerie Plame.
Turns out - in the only case in U.S. history of a person successfully prosecuted for leaking classified information to the press - Hillary's husband pardoned the guilty party.
On January 20, 2001, President Clinton pardoned Samuel Loring Morison, a civilian analyst with the Office of Naval Intelligence. In 1984, Morison had been convicted of providing classified satellite photos of an under-construction Soviet nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Britain's Jane's Defence Weekly.
He received a two-year jail sentence.
In pardoning Morison, Clinton dismissed the advice of the CIA.
"We said we were obviously opposed - it was a vigorous 'Hell, no,'" one senior intelligence official told the Washington Post at the time. "We think ... giving pardons to people who are convicted of doing that sends the wrong signal to people who are currently entrusted with classified information."
Morison is the only person ever successfully prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, the law invoked by Democrats who want to nail Rove after it became clear that he didn't violate the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
No comments:
Post a Comment