Feds seek potential 'second Snowden' gov doc leaker – report

Hang on, Ed wasn't here when we compiled THIS document

A worker at a US government contractor is suspected of being the second leaker who turned over sensitive documents on the US government's terrorist watch list to journalist Glenn Greenwald, according to recent reports.

The FBI reportedly searched the suspect's home and opened a criminal case, according to unnamed law enforcement and intelligence sources, Michael Isikoff – who broke the story at Yahoo News – reports. According to the report, top Justice Department officials are "reluctant to bring criminal charges involving unauthorized disclosures to the news media" – because of criticisms of the tactics used in recent leak investigations. Seven criminal prosecutions for national security leaks were instigated during the first five years of Barack Obama's presidency.

Last year, it emerged that prosecutors had secretly subpoenaed phone records from the Associated Press as well as threatening an Espionage Act prosecution against a Fox New reporter as part of leak investigation. New guidelines on seeking information from the media in leak investigations were reportedly introduced in September 2013.

Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the Justice Department, declined to comment on the ongoing investigation into the watch-list leak, instead offering a general comment about whistle-blowing and public disclosure cases. "We're certainly going to follow the evidence wherever it leads us and take appropriate action," he said. An unnamed source said the terror database leak-case was ongoing and that prosecutors were simply unready to proceed with charges as yet.

The case stems from an article in August published by investigative news outlet, The Intercept, that revealed nearly half the people on the US government terrorists watch-list database had "no recognised terrorist affiliation". As we noted at the time, some of the leaked documents used to support the story dated from August 2013, months after Edward Snowden fled the US and outed himself as the leaker of secret documents about many NSA and GCHQ surveillance programmes.

A new documentary about Snowden, Citizenfour, directed by filmmaker Laura Poitras, features Greenwald telling Snowden about a new source in the US intelligence community leaking documents. The source was "motivated by what you did," Greenwald told Snowden.

More on the "second leaker" story can be found in a story by RT here. ®