A former FBI agent has agreed to plead guilty to leaking secret government information about a bomb plot to The Associated Press, the Justice Department said on Monday.
Donald John Sachtleben, a former FBI bomb technician and government contractor for the agency, pleaded guilty to unlawfully disclosing national defense information relating to a disrupted al-Qaeda suicide bomb plot targeting a plane bound for the U.S.
Sachtleben left the FBI in 2008 after a 25-year-career. He served on some of the nation's highest profile terrorism cases, including the Unabomber case, the USS Cole bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks.
“This prosecution demonstrates our deep resolve to hold accountable anyone who would violate their solemn duty to protect our nation's secrets and to prevent future, potentially devastating leaks by those who would wantonly ignore their obligations to safeguard classified information," said Ronald Machen Jr., U.S. attorney for the District of Colombia, according to a Department of Justice statement released Monday.
The Obama administration has aggressively investigated leaks to the media, indicting six individuals altogether, more than under all previous presidents combined.
As part of a plea agreement, Sachtleben agreed to a prison sentence of three years and seven months, in addition to a separate sentence, consecutive of eight years, one month for unrelated child-pornography charges, the department said.
The plea agreements for both the national security and child pornography charges call for a total sentence of 11 years and 8 months, including a consecutive 97-month term for the child pornography charges.
The AP says it believes the Justice Department was tipped off to Sachtleben's identity during its two-month probe of AP reporters, which the news agency has called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion."
Late Monday, the DOJ appeared to confirm the AP's suspicions. "Sachtleben was identified as a suspect in the case of this unauthorized disclosure only after toll records for phone numbers related to the reporter were obtained through a subpoena and compared to other evidence collected during the leak investigation," the department said in a statement. "This allowed investigators to obtain a search warrant authorizing a more exhaustive search of Sachtleben’s cell phone, computer, and other electronic media, which were in the possession of federal investigators due to the child pornography investigation."
In May the AP revealed that the government had obtained weeks of phone records from more than 100 of its reporters. Although the government would not say why it sought the records, officials previously said in public testimony that the government is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in an AP story about a foiled terror plot.
The investigation concerned an American operative who had successfully infiltrated a terrorist cell in Yemen. He told the terrorist cell he wanted to blow up an American airplane and was given an underwear bomb for this purpose.
His plan was to turn the bomb over to his American handlers and then tell his terrorist contacts that the bomb had failed to go off. That would have allowed him to continue providing intelligence to the U.S. government. But the AP caught wind of the plot and reported that it had been foiled by the United States.
Although the AP didn't disclose that the man was actually a U.S. agent, government sources told the Los Angeles Times that the report led to the agent's cover being blown.
The AP says it delayed publication of the story until it was given government clearance.
Civil libertarians have argued that leaks to the media provide an important check on the government's power and its control over the public's access to information.