Marine admits illegally passing state secrets

and will continue with the likely prosecution of several reserve officers. Surprised the national media has missed this entirely. Something to be careful of in this line of work, and why you should pay heed to your attorneys (if they're worth their salt).

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stori...&zIndex=115267

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In late 2003, Froboese said, the relationship turned cloak and dagger when he helped Richards steal state secrets. Richards was a reservist who had returned to civilian law-enforcement work by then, and he allegedly shared the pilfered information about surveillance of potential terrorists with the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group.
Froboese pleaded guilty to his crime during a court session yesterday at Camp Pendleton, admitting that he delivered CIA documents to Richards on six occasions.
“I should have stopped the information from going to Col. Richards, and I should have reported” it, Froboese said.
Froboese is the latest Marine prosecuted for an intelligence breach that might have lasted for years. Some of the documents dealt with the monitoring of suspects, such as certain Arabs or Muslims, in San Diego and other parts of Southern California.
In general, regulations ban, restrict or slow the flow of such information from federal agencies to local law-enforcement groups.
The intelligence-breach case started in 2006, when Marine reservist Gary Maziarz pleaded guilty to stealing government property and giving secret documents to Richards. Maziarz spent nearly two years in the brig.
He accused other Marines of being accomplices, including Richards, a sheriff's deputy and co-founder of the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group; David Litaker, a retired Marine reserve colonel and member of the Los Angeles Police Department; Marine Maj. Mark Lowe; and Navy Cmdr. Lauren Martin.
None of these individuals has been charged.

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I suspect this story will get "legs", based on "lessons learned" from long ago (60s & 70s). But first, short consideration of a topic near & dear to both of us:

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from Boon...
... and why you should pay heed to your attorneys (if they're worth their salt).

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I have no grasp of what % of JAG officers are well acquainted with intel law. I expect you could enlighten me on that. Nor, do I have any stats on the % of civilian lawyers who are intel law aware. I suspect they are rare. The ABA has a Standing Committee on Law and National Security, which is a general practice group in the very broad area of National Security Law, including "the restructuring of the intelligence community and its role in law enforcement."[*]

Giving legal advice in this kind of situation, by any but an aware practioner, would seem to me dangerous to the client. What we have here is something of the "accidental spy" (to paraphrase Kilcullen's concept of the accidental guerrilla). The Marine did what he did because the intel was going to a recognized organization (the Wiki on the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group is sketchy - suffice that LAPD LT John Sullivan is a key person & anyone who has searched the SWJ Reference Library will know his articles on gangs and terrs), which is on the same side of the conflict. Based on the articles, the Marine was operating without base motives.

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The Expected Blowback

The LA Times also ran the story, with this sidebar:

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The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to determine if the intelligence included spying on civilians, particularly Southern California Muslims and their mosques. Formed in 1996, the Terrorism Early Warning Group was meant to bring together intelligence analysts from local, state and federal agencies. It remains unclear why the group, even after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, apparently did not have access to intelligence collected by other agencies.

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The ACLU view of the Vietnam Era intel sharing programs - and their predecessors going back to WWI - can be found in Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance (1980; Donner was a leading ACLU attorney). I'd expect that history will repeat itself here.

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[*] The ABA website led me to an article that I will have to read and discuss in War Crimes. In short, National Security Law includes many sub-areas of practice - including detainees, on one hand; and interactions between intel and LE agencies, on the other hand.

It seems to me there are two issues here. The first pertains to the political, civil liberties, and intelligence law issues regarding intelligence sharing between foreign intelligence community and domestic law enforcement agencies.

The second pertains to the very good security reasons why you don't pass on compartmentalized information to other folks, even if you think it would be useful/they ought to have it/you like them/they are buddies. Leaving aside the perennial problem of false flag recruitment of sources, it is not always the case that a consumer is fully aware of why something bears the restrictions it has, or what collection means or assets could be compromised by its broader dissemination.

This isn't to say that there isn't a problem in sharing information that is sharable across agencies. There is. However, this is an issue that needs to be resolved at a policy level, not by individuals "doing their own thing."

JMM, my last line was a bit of a throw away. I'm guessing they didn't reach out to what ever attorneys were in support of their work (and I don't really know where this responsibility would fall in the USMC JA community). But I think it does show the importance of people in this field having enough awareness to know when to ask for legal support. That's both a responsiblity of the operator, and a responsibility of their attorneys to educate them on what to be aware of.

I dabble in this line of work now, but by no means am I an expert, but I have learned enough to know when something needs to be vetted a bit more, and to reach out to the SME's. As for my active time, I never came across any of this work, or knew of anyone who had, though I'd assume if something like this had come up where I was, we'd reach up to HQMC JA and almost certainly the DON Counsel's office for assistance. The key is not necessarily to have the answer at hand, but to be able to spot the issue early.

As to why they are hammering these Marines so hard, I don't have any idea where the pressure is coming from or if there are some facts behind the scenes that haven't been made public yet.

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from Boon ...
The key is not necessarily to have the answer at hand, but to be able to spot the issue early.

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a key from the lawyer's standpoint. Yet, it is surprising how many clients walk in having the assumption that, because the sign says "lawyer", "their lawyer" should know all of the "law" (a daunting task indeed). The lawyer can fake it; or tell the truth (have to look it up; refer to a SME; etc.). In the first case, the client has a bad lawyer; in the second, a good one - although many people apparently prefer the first kind.

As to this...

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As to why they are hammering these Marines so hard, I don't have any idea where the pressure is coming from or if there are some facts behind the scenes that haven't been made public yet.

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neither do I. It may be as simple as the reasons stated by Rex (his second issue):

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The second pertains to the very good security reasons why you don't pass on compartmentalized information to other folks, even if you think it would be useful/they ought to have it/you like them/they are buddies. Leaving aside the perennial problem of false flag recruitment of sources, it is not always the case that a consumer is fully aware of why something bears the restrictions it has, or what collection means or assets could be compromised by its broader dissemination.

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But, this case has a decent probability to be expanded becuause of his first issue:

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It seems to me there are two issues here. The first pertains to the political, civil liberties, and intelligence law issues regarding intelligence sharing between foreign intelligence community and domestic law enforcement agencies.

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Not saying that it will develop into a mini-Church Committee; but some of the same issues are potentially present (and combining them with renditions, enhanced interrogations, etc.).