FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Former Senate Intelligence Staffer Indicted—Watch Out, McCabe!
June 10, 2018 (EIRNS)—James Wolfe, long-time security director for the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSIC), was indicted last week on three charges of making false statements to FBI criminal investigators —a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1001—about his contacts with specific reporters who have published classified material, for which he could face serious jail time. He was arrested the night of June 7 at his home, released from custody June 8, and must appear at FBI headquarters on June 11 for booking.
Wolfe was placed on leave last December, after being questioned by the FBI about his contacts with four reporters, which he denied. Last week’s indictment charges that he met regularly and clandestinely in person with some of them, communicating with others through encrypted messages, etc. One of the reporters was a onetime lover, Ali Watkins, a former BuzzFeed journalist, now with the New York Times, who had published an article on April 3, 2017 naming Carter Page as having received Russian intelligence, only weeks after SSIC had received a classified document, held under Wolfe’s custody, in which Page was named.
President Trump welcomed the arrest, commenting from Canada that “I am a very big believer in freedom of the press, but I’m also a believer that you cannot leak classified information.”
Wolfe’s indictment sent “shockwaves around Washington,” constitutional expert Jonathan Turley reported in The Hill yesterday, hitting as “a cautionary tale for many [Capitol Hill] members, staffers and journalists,” that the Justice Department has been quietly tracking down the sources of classified material appearing in the press.
The person who should be most worried, Turley wrote, is former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, for whom the leak “spells disaster.” The Justice Department Inspector General referred McCabe to a judge for possible indictment on the same criminal charges with which Wolfe is now charged, that he knowingly lied to investigators about leaking to the media.
