Like me, Mr. Biden kept classified information outside of secure facilities and shared it with the press to express concerns about U.S. policy. However, the prosecutor treated us completely differently.
In February, I was released from federal prison, where I served 33 months for violating the Espionage Act, after disclosing classified information detailing what I considered the high moral cost of an American drone assassination plot. He was released. Before I got used to the world behind concrete walls, I was shocked by the news of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report. [PDF] In it, he explained why he decided not to prosecute President Joe Biden for violating the law.
I’m always encouraged to listen to the Department of Justice whenever it decides to prohibit spying. By the time the ink dried on the 1917 law, it was already being used to silence voices of dissent across the country. At the time, thousands of people were rounded up and summarily convicted for opposing American involvement in the bloodiest conflict in human history.
Although some of the law’s worst aspects have since been revised, the Espionage Act remains the primary criminal law for prosecuting government officials who rely on the press to expose secret government wrongdoing to the public. It is. Justice Department officials’ decision to use the Espionage Act to pursue government whistleblowers makes clear that the next person who dares to speak to a reporter could face decades in prison. It was part of a joint effort to demonstrate that.
After reading Special Counsel Ho’s report, I became interested in finding similarities between my case and the investigation against the president. According to the report, President Biden kept classified information outside of the secure facilities of his home and office, and so did I. The president then spoke with reporters about the classified information he held, and so did I.
Both President Biden and I expressed to our respective reporters the concerns we have about official U.S. policy. President Biden (as Vice President) expressed concern about the failure of the 2009 insurgency in Afghanistan, and I expressed concern about the consequences of that policy. So why did we decide to prosecute one and not the other?
Hsu said the president would have been seen as too sympathetic by the jury in the case to find fault. That Mr. Hsu believes that Mr. Biden is a man of good faith and did not intend to cause harm by his actions is sufficient reason not to prosecute him. Now, compare this to what the government said at my sentencing, accusing me of endangering the public and comparing me to a heroin dealer. I was portrayed not as a person with good intentions, but as someone who was trying to “coop into reporters” to gain notoriety, rather than acting in the public interest.
Mr. Xu goes on to deftly sidestep the question of intent under the Espionage Act. Counterintuitively, the law does not require proof of intent to harm the United States, and does not require an unauthorized owner of national defense information to knowingly retain it and knowingly communicate it to a person not entitled to receive it. It only requires proof that it has been done.
Prosecutors typically prove this by showing a bunch of non-disclosure agreements that all permit holders must sign in order to continue employment. Since Mr. Biden had been elected, he may not have had to sign such an agreement, but apart from any level of sympathy, the evidence shows that he knew the disclosure of classified information was illegal. It wouldn’t have taken that long to do it.
Nevertheless, Biden is let off the hook because he meant no harm. In contrast, the government’s pretrial motion in my case argued that I was not allowed to present evidence of what was called my “good faith.” Because I was worried that my motives would appear too sympathetic to the jury, I, like other whistleblowers before me, was effectively rendered defenseless by legal technicalities in the way the law was written. I did. With no other option, I was forced to plead to avoid an expensive and unwinnable trial.
All in all, the guilt I professed for knowingly providing national defense information to journalists is nothing compared to the immense shame I felt for knowingly participating in the drone program. did. In 2021, just weeks after I was sentenced to federal prison, Zemari Ahmadi and nine of her family members, most of them young children, became victims of an errant U.S. drone strike. . The Pentagon called this a “justice attack” before the truth was known, quietly backed away, and conducted an internal investigation that found no one responsible for the innocent lives taken.
To this day, I am the only person involved in the drone program who has been held accountable. It’s not about my role in it, but about my efforts to reveal that deadly truth to the public with the help of journalists.
I’m really glad that President Biden was able to receive what so many others targeted by the Espionage Act have been denied: the benefit of the doubt. But if Joe Biden really wants to convey the ideals that helped secure him the presidency in the first place, he must use his powers as president to pardon whistleblowers and “targeted” killings. It will stop the fight against the global terrorist policy.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.