Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the prosecution does not need to show that the information Kim allegedly leaked could damage US national security or benefit a foreign power, even potentially. Her ruling went against the 1985 v. Morison case, in which Samuel L. Morison was convicted of unauthorized disclosure of satellite imagery to Jane’s Defence Weekly. Kollar-Kotelly said that she disagreed with the precedent it set, which required prosecution to prove harm to national security. “The Court declines to adopt the Morison court’s construction of information relating to the ‘national defense’ insofar as it requires the government to show that disclosure of the information would be potentially damaging to the United States or useful to an enemy of the United States,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote. That decision could well modify interpretation of the 1917 Espionage Act for future whistleblower cases. Kim’s legal defense says that without the need to prove harm done to national security, the Espionage Act is essentially converted into a “Government Secrets Act.”
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 08:35:35 +0000