Jesselyn Radack is the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project. www.pinterest.com/jesselynradack 

If there was not reason enough already to commute the sentence of CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, then surely CIA heir apparent Michael Vickers leaking the restricted name of a U.S. Special Operations Command officer--to Hollywood filmmakers--should be it.

The blatant hypocrisy of the war on whistleblowers like my clients Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou--while the government leaks high-level sources and methods like a sieve--is infuriating.  But to have the Defense Department's top civilian military intelligence official, Michael Vickers, leak the name of a U.S. Special Operations Command officer with impunity, just to sex up a propagandist movie, is abhorrent.

 

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou pleaded guilty to giving the name of a CIA officer involved in the torture and rendition program to an investigator for Gitmo detainees' lawyers.

But now it turns out the the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) concluded that Vickers--Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence--1) leaked classified information to the makers of propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty; 2) the leak was serious enough for the IG to refer it to to the Justice Department, and 3) the Justice Department has not launched a criminal prosecution.

This is the height of hypocrisy. Kiriakou revealed that torture was a CIA program, not a pastime; he called waterboarding torture; and he said it was wrong.  These disclosures are obviously of tremendous public value. Vicker's leak was to jazz up a controversial movie that had already received unprecedented White House and CIA assistance (the subject of a number of other blogs.)