A lawyer and former FBI translator has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for leaking confidential documents.
Shamai Kedem Leibowitz, a Hebrew-English translator who also goes by the name Samuel Shamai Leibowitz, worked for the FBI in Maryland from January to August 2009. As a holder of top secret security clearance, he had access to highly sensitive intelligence information.
In December, he pleaded guilty to passing on five secret documents to a blogger, who then published them online.
Neither the content of the documents nor the identity of the blog author was revealed during the course of the trial. The blogger was simply referred to as "Recipient A."
Leibowitz claimed he had discovered an "abuse of power and a violation of the law" during the course of his work. He says he reported his suspicions to superiors, but no action was taken. He then decided to leak the information.
He said he was guilty of "bad judgment and made a terrible decision," but insisted he was "not motivated by greed, fame, personal ambition, or foreign interest." He said his only concern was "the best interests of the American people."
Some news sources in Jerusalem identified Leibowitz as a left-wing activist for the Palestinian cause. His grandfather was Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the late Orthodox Jewish scientist, philosopher and Torah scholar who controversially opposed Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security David Kris said that "willful disclosure of classified information to those not entitled to receive it is a serious crime."
23 May 2010
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