SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Justice Dept. charges former Minnesota FBI agent with leaking secret document to news outlet

A former Minneapolis FBI agent who sought to expose what he called "systemic biases" within the bureau has been charged after allegedly leaking secret documents to a national news reporter, according to federal criminal charges filed in Minnesota this week.

The charges, filed by prosecutors for the Justice Department's National Security Division, are the first to come in Minnesota since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a broad crackdown on government leaks last year.

A two-page felony information, a charging document that typically signals an imminent guilty plea, outlines two counts filed against Terry James Albury of unlawfully disclosing and retaining national defense information.

Albury is alleged to have unlawfully disclosed classified information between February 2016 and January 31, 2017. The Intercept published a series of stories, The FBI's Secret Rules, on January 31, 2017:

The FBI Gives Itself Lots of Rope to Pull in Informants

Over two previous presidential administrations, the FBI, enabled by complacent congressional oversight in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, has transformed itself from a criminal law enforcement organization into an intelligence-gathering operation whose methods are more similar to those of the CIA and NSA. With 35,000 employees and more than 15,000 informants, today's FBI is an intelligence agency without a historical peer in the United States.

Recruiting and managing informants, known in the FBI's parlance as "confidential human sources," is one of the most crucial ways in which the bureau gathers intelligence. Confidential FBI documents obtained exclusively by The Intercept reveal for the first time how the bureau approaches those tasks — including its use of a number of tactics that raise concerns about the civil liberties of those being targeted for recruitment.

Original Submission