6/24/11: Stephen J. Kim ’99PhD
Stephen J. Kim ’99PhD, an arms expert who worked for the US departments of defense and state, faces up to 15 years in prison under the Espionage Act. His alleged crimes: leaking news to a Fox News reporter and lying about it. Kim, born in South Korea and raised in the Bronx, studied military and diplomatic history at Yale before going to work for the government. An expert on North Korea’s weapons, he briefed officials as high-ranking as Vice President Dick Cheney ’63. In March 2009, the State Department asked Kim “to speak about North Korea to a Fox News reporter, James Rosen,” the New York Times reports. Two months later, Rosen reported on a CIA analysis related to North Korea. Last August, Kim was charged with leaking “Top Secret-Sensitive Compartmented Information” and then lying about his contacts with Rosen. Reporting on the case this week, the Times calls it part of “the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on leaks,” as opposed to spying. Writes a friend and fellow Yalie, UCLA law professor Kirk Stark ’94JD, on Kim’s legal defense website: “Even the government does not allege that Stephen revealed military secrets, operations or anything like Wikileaks.”
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