The Washington Postreported on possible candidates to replace long-time FBI Director Robert Mueller. Three of those candidates share a troubling enthusiasm for prosecuting so-called leakers, who are usually whistleblowers.
It's bad enough the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is being run by the former Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI - read: torture) team. FBI Director candidates Lisa Monaco, Brennan replacement as counterterrorism adviser and former head of the National Security Division at the Justice Department; Patrick J. Fitzgerald, former U.S. attorney in Chicago; and Neil MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia all have "leak" baggage that should give the public pause about them heading the FBI.
Monaco touted the Obama administration's aggressive policy and record-breaking number of Espionage Act prosecutions against whistleblowers when testifying before Congress in 2011.
While Fitzgerald handled the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's name (a disclosure that was not whistleblowing, as I explained here), he also headed the years-long investigation into the ACLU and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) attorneys defending Guantanamo prisoners. That investigation eventually landed on CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who is the only CIA official to go to jail in relation to the Bush-era torture program despite the facts that Kiriakou refused to participate in torture and helped expose it. (Read Steve Coll's New Yorker article for details on the disconcerting way the investigation developed).
When Fitzgerald spontaneously abandoned the Kiriakou case, MacBride picked it up with renewed vigor, using the Kiriakou case to complete a duo of Espionage Act prosecutions. MacBride also prosecuted CIA officer Jeffery Sterling (and in the process has been fighting to compel New York Times reporter and author Jim Risen to testify about his sources).