Minneapolis FBI agent charged with leaking classified information to reporter

[Blue_Tires]

Source: Minnesota Public Radio

A Minneapolis FBI agent who started his career with the agency as an intern in 2000 has been charged with leaking classified information to the news website The Intercept.

Terry James Albury's attorneys, JaneAnne Murray and Joshua Dratel, said in a statement that their client, the only African-American FBI field agent in Minnesota, was "driven by a conscientious commitment to long-term national security and addressing the well-documented systemic biases within the FBI."

Albury, who was assigned as Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport liaison working on counterterrorism matters, was charged this week by the Justice Department's National Security Division with one count of "knowingly and willfully" transmitting documents and information relating to national defense to a reporter for a national news organization. Albury was also charged with a second count of refusing to hand over documents to the government.

Albury is the second person charged with leaking secret documents to The Intercept. In June 2017, an intelligence contractor was charged with leaking a classified report about Russia's interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept, the first criminal leak under President Trump.

Read more: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/03/28/minneapolis-fbi-agent-charged-with-leaking-classified-information

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The Intercept failed to protect *another* source?

For fuck's sake I've seen homemade alt weeklies with higher levels of professionalism...

[Igel]

1. Read the article carefully.

It says this is the second person charged with leaking to the Intercept. MPR's the one who said it was the Intercept, based upon the materials that the Intercept published.

Finding out who grabbed the materials and what materials were grabbed came from search warrants. There's no implication that the Intercept actually divulged any personal information about the man.

The Intercept published materials, and in so doing told investigators a few things--not that the article says this, but because it's inevitably true. It identified the materials it had with a bit of detail--the alternative would be viewed as a cover-up, sitting on materials that it and others thought were publicity-worthy, but including information that might have come from several sources instead of pointing to the precise document might have been okay. Moreover, the set of documents it said it had also helps point to specific individuals, either because that person would necessarily have had access or because the documents' accession information could be reviewed and the intersection of the sets of people accessing each document was a singleton.

Strikes me, off hand, that the FBI agent involved was okay with all the policies, biases, etc., as long as he though they were being used by the good guys. But when Trump was elected, he assumed that now all those policies, etc., that could have been used for evil would be used for evil. In other words, "too much" power in the hands of a good government is okay, but the same amount in the hands of a bad government isn't. We see this kind of hypocrisy all over the place. "Trust me with this power, I believe in myself--but don't let the other side have it, because they're just bad." It's worth noting that the awesome bad thing that kicked off The Intercepts series was put out by the US government in 2011.


It's the same with all kinds of other policies. Heck, we saw it in 2013 and 2014--and before that, too--when it was proudly asserted that places like Russia or China or Pakistan were just protecting their "spheres of influence" and doing what was right; but if the US tried any of that, well, it would be wrong. It depends what group you're in solidarity with.

[Blue_Tires]

3. While the Intercept didn't directly blab the dude's name

Some of the very obvious steps they took to 'cover their tracks' like the retroactive FOIA request helped the Feds pinpoint the source...

[PaulX2]

2. Racism Is Still Alive And Well? - Just Don't Tell Anyone

It appears.

Love to see "all" the facts before making judgement.

[billh58]

4. Evidently, Albury is a "former" FBI Agent

A former FBI agent in Minnesota was motivated to leak classified information to The Intercept website, in part, because he is black. That’s according to lawyers for Terry James Albury, a former special agent who was charged in the leak case on Wednesday.

“Terry Albury served the U.S. with distinction both here at home and abroad in Iraq,” Albury attorneys JaneAnne Murray and Joshua Dratel said in a statement provided to the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.

“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.”

Between February 2016 and January 2017, Albury accessed classified documents regarding the FBI’s handling of confidential sources as well as to documents “relating to threats posed by certain individuals from a particular Middle Eastern country,” the Justice Department alleges.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/28/minnesota-fbi-the-intercept-leaks-terry-james-albury/

[More_Cowbell]

5. My job sometimes sucks...

But at least I can look at my computer without being surveilled, I think

"On three occasions in the summer of 2017, video surveillance captured Albury at his office at the airport, holding a digital camera and inserting what appears to be a memory card into the camera, according to the warrant. He then took photos of his computer screen which contained documents classified as secret."

[Blue_Tires]

6. Glenn is on fire again....

Link to tweet