An Exculpatory Footnote to the <i>Kiriakou</i> Indictment

I just wanted to add one point to Bobby's thorough post on the Kiriakou indictment from earlier today. As Bobby quoted from the DOJ press release:

According to the complaint affidavit, the investigation determined that no laws were broken by the defense team as no law prohibited defense counsel from filing a classified document under seal outlining for a court classified information they had learned during the course of their investigation. Regarding the 32 pages of photographs that were taken or obtained by the defense team and provided to the detainees, the investigation found no evidence the defense attorneys transmitting the photographs were aware of, much less disclosed, the identities of the persons depicted in particular photographs and no evidence that the defense team disclosed other classified matters associated with certain of those individuals to the detainees. The defense team did not take photographs of persons known or believed to be current covert officers. Rather, defense counsel, using a technique known as a double-blind photo lineup, provided photograph spreads of unidentified individuals to their clients to determine whether they recognized anyone who may have participated in questioning them. No law or military commission order expressly prohibited defense counsel from providing their clients with these photo spreads.

A lot more will surely be said about this case going forward. But given the very public brouhaha when the story initially broke (and demands for immediate investigation re: whether defense lawyers at Guantánamo Bay compromised the identities of covert CIA officers), it seems equally important to recognize, as the DOJ did today, that the detainee lawyers had nothing at all to do with the disclosures...