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WASHINGTON – When he arrived in Minneapolis in 2012, about 11 years after joining the FBI, Terry J. Albury became increasingly convinced that agents were abusing their powers and discriminating against minorities. racial and religious while they were looking for potential. the terrorists.
The son of an Ethiopian political refugee, Mr. Albury was the only African-American field officer assigned to an anti-terrorism squad to look closely at the Somali-American community in Minnesota. According to his lawyer, he was disappointed with the "widespread feelings of racism and xenophobia" in the office and the "discriminatory practices and policies that he observed and implemented".
In 2016, Mr. Albury began photographing secret documents describing F.B.I. powers to recruit potential informants and identify potential extremists. On Thursday, he was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty last year to the unauthorized disclosure of national security secrets for sending several documents to The Intercept, which published the records with a series entitled "The secret rules of the FBI ".
[[[[Read the court documents in the case of Mr. Albury.]
Before Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright announced the sentence, Mr. Albury spoke hesitantly in his audience hall of downtown St. Paul, stopping for a meeting. wipe your face and breathe deeply. He apologized to his former F.B.I. colleagues and said that he had been motivated to act through perceived injustices. With hindsight, he said, he would have regretted not having expressed his concerns through official channels, not the media.
"I really wanted to make a difference and never intended to put anyone in danger," said Albury.
The conviction – which also included three years of probation after Mr Albury's release from prison – ended the second leaked case under the Trump's Espionage Act after the Attorney General's wish Jeff Sessions last year. to fight against the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
On Thursday, Mr. Sessions triumphed, saying in a statement that the department "was perhaps leading the most aggressive campaign against leakage" in its history.
"Today's sentence should be a warning to all fugitives in the federal government: if they divulge classified information, they will pay a heavy price," he said.
The first leaked case ended in August when Reality Winner, a former National Security Agency company, was sentenced to more than five years in jail for disclosing a confidential document about Russia's attempts to hack the electoral systems of the state. Like Mr. Albury, Ms. Winter had sent her document to The Intercept.
Betsy Reed, editor of The Intercept, who released Thursday a lengthy profile of Mr. Albury, said in an email that it was easier for the government to track down sources of journalists at the same time. help with monitoring and internal control systems. She warned against the growing cold for investigative journalism.
"As former NSA Entrepreneur Reality Winner, who was also being prosecuted under the Espionage Act, Terry Albury was a conscientious whistleblower who was targeted not because It had undermined national security but because the revelations of this disclosure were embarrassing or embarrassing, "she said.
But the Justice Department rejected Mr. Albury's portrayal as a whistleblower, stating that he had done nothing internally to voice concerns about F.B.I. policies. When F.B.I. The officers raided his home last year and found digital copies of several dozen more classified files, according to court documents.
Judge Wright, a black man named by former President Barack Obama, has long criticized Albury after announcing the sentence. She said she understood her concerns about racism, but called her actions "silly race" that undermines national security.
"You have viewed your actions as honorable," said Justice Wright as Mr. Albury stood silently at the center of the courtroom, alongside his lawyers. "But it's a misunderstanding of the honor. That put our country in danger.
The conviction of Mr. Albury took place in the midst of a multitude of unrelated investigations related to leaks. On Monday, a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, James A. Wolfe, pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with a journalist during a F.B.I. incident. investigation of leaking classified information.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a Treasury official, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, and charged her with illegally showing a reporter secret information about suspicious wire transfers from Paul Manafort, former president of President Trump's campaign, and other people related to the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
The Trump Ministry of Justice's aggressive use of criminal prosecutions to prosecute officials suspected of disclosing unauthorized information to the public is a continuation of a practice that developed under the Bush administration and accelerated under the Obama administration.
For most of American history, flight suspects have been disciplined but not charged. But the electronic traces left by modern communications made it increasingly easy to determine which officials had access to the secrets and were in contact with the journalists who wrote about them, even in the aftermath of September. 11th century has generated many more government secrets about contested national security policies.
In this context, in the midst of the Bush administration, the Ministry of Justice has intensified the use of prosecutorial powers against escape suspects. This approach continued under the Obama administration, which eventually oversaw more criminal cases than all previous presidents combined.
The number of Trump administration leaks is also rising, although there is some ambiguity as to which cases to include in their count. In addition to Ms. Winner and Mr. Albury, he has indicted Joshua A. Schulte, a former C.I.A. software engineer, under the Espionage Act, for allegedly disclosing to WikiLeaks an archive of documents detailing the agency's hacking operations.
Ms. Edwards, by contrast, was charged under a different law prohibiting the unauthorized disclosure of confidential reports of suspicious financial activity. And while Mr. Wolfe's misrepresentation was involved in a leak investigation, he was not charged with a leak.
In a lawsuit, Mr. Albury's lawyer, Joshua Dratel, pointed to a disparity in how suspects in leak cases were handled, saying a "double standard" left senior officials to be caught. impose, while punishing the less qualified. He pointed out that Mr Albury was trying to be a whistleblower and not put the country at risk.
Prosecutors accused him of abusing his position of trust and treason that "endangered national security".
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