Appeals Panel Backs Espionage View of Classified Leak to Press

A federal appeals court panel on Monday affirmed the theft and espionage convictions of a former intelligence analyst Samuel Loring Morison, who was found guilty of leaking classified satellite photographs to the news media.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument of Morison, and of more than a dozen news organizations that filed a supporting brief, that Congress never intended that the espionage or theft-of-government-property laws be applied to leaks to the press.

“The mere fact that one has stolen a document in order that he may deliver it to the press, whether for money or for other personal gain, will not immunize him from responsibility for his criminal act,” Judge Donald S. Russell wrote. “To use the First Amendment into a warrant for thievery.”

Morison, the 43-year-old grandson of the late naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, was convicted in federal court in Baltimore in 1985 of sending Jane’s Defence Weekly three secret U.S. satellite photos of the Soviet Navy’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier under construction at a Black Sea shipyard.

He was also found guilty on separate espionage and theft charges for taking portions of two other Navy documents, both classified secret, and keeping them in an envelope at his Crofton, Md., apartment.

Sentenced to two years in prison, Morison is free on $100,000 appeal bond. One of his attorneys, Mark H. Lynch, said Monday’s ruling would be appealed either in a petition for a rehearing or to Supreme Court review.

‘Far-Reaching’ Ruling

“This opinion is going to have very far-reaching consequences on the relationships between the press and the government if it stands,” Lynch said. He said it leaves reporters wide-open to federal grand jury subpoenas.

The Morison case sparked particular controversy because, according to the government’s theory of the case, anyone who leaked material and any unauthorized recipient of classified information could be convicted of a crime, “no matter how laudable” their motives.