FBI linguist gets jail for leaking to blogger

An FBI linguist will serve 20 months in prison for passing confidential information to a blogger, Politico reports.

From the story:

The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press.

And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has taken a hard line against leakers, and Obama himself has expressed anger about disclosures of national security deliberations in the press.

This follows last month's indictment of Thomas Drake for allegedly leaking information about mismanagement at the NSA to a Baltimore Sun reporter and a subpoena of New York Times reporter James Risen over a book he wrote exposing a CIA program against Iran.