Federal criminal charges filed in Minnesota this week reveal the Justice Department has charged a former FBI agent, who aimed to blow the whistle on the bureau’s “systemic biases,” for leaking a secret document to the media.
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Star Tribune reports:
The charges, filed by prosecutors for the Justice Department’s National Security Division, are the first to come in Minnesota since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a broad crackdown on government leaks last year.
A two-page felony information, a charging document that typically signals an imminent guilty plea, outlines two counts filed against Terry James Albury of unlawfully disclosing and retaining national defense information.
Albury is accused of sharing a document on assessing confidential human sources — otherwise referred to as informants — and a document “relating to threats posed by certain individuals from a particular Middle Eastern country” with a reporter for a national media organization.
The second count charged against Albury alleged that he failed to turn over a document “relating to the use of an online platform for recruitment by a specific terrorist group” last year.
The charges do not name the reporter or news organization but specify that Albury allegedly possessed and shared the information between February 2016 and Jan. 31, 2017 — the same date that the Intercept published an entryto its “FBI’s Secret Rules” series on how the bureau assesses potential informants. The report drew upon a secret document obtained by the Intercept that has the same publication date described in the charges against Albury.
On Wednesday, Albury’s lawyers, JaneAnne Murray and Joshua Dratel, released a statement on behalf of their client.
“Terry Albury served the U.S. with distinction both here at home and abroad in Iraq,” said the statement.
“He accepts full responsibility for the conduct set forth in the Information. We would like to add that as the only African-American FBI field agent in Minnesota, Mr. Albury’s actions were driven by a conscientious commitment to long-term national security and addressing the well-documented systemic biases within the FBI.”
