Four Years For Leaking

In St. Paul yesterday, a former FBI agent was sentenced to four years in prison for leaking classified information to a media outlet:

[Terry] Albury, 39, who joined the bureau in 2000 and was most recently assigned as an airport liaison, was sentenced Thursday in the federal courthouse in downtown St. Paul. He had previously pleaded guilty to making an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and unlawful retention of national defense information. His date to report to prison has not been scheduled.

Prosecutors say Albury shared documents — some considered classified — on evaluating potential informants, along with a document “relating to threats posed by certain individuals from a particular Middle Eastern country.”

Albury said he leaked the documents because he was unhappy about the FBI’s treatment of minorities:

Confronted with what he saw as the FBI’s mistreatment of minorities, former Minneapolis special agent Terry Albury said he felt the need to act.

Leakers always act from “higher motives.” Always.

It strikes me that there are some far more senior present and former FBI officials who deserve imprisonment considerably more than Mr. Albury. Let’s hope prosecutions like this one scare them and cause them to cooperate with prosecutors, as well as deterring future would-be leakers.

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