Little Is Clear in Laws on Leaks

"It's been very difficult for the government to use the Espionage Act to obtain a conviction for simply leaking information," said Banks, who also runs the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse. "It was written to cover conventional espionage and spying, not conventional leaking within the government."

But the government was successful in using the statute in the case of Samuel L. Morison, a former Navy intelligence analyst convicted of espionage and theft during the Reagan administration for leaking secret U.S. spy satellite photographs to Jane's Defense Weekly. A judge in the case ruled against defense assertions that the Espionage Act was unconstitutionally vague.

Currently, two lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are accused of receiving classified information during conversations with government officials, including former Pentagon employee Lawrence A. Franklin, who has been sentenced to 12 years in prison. In bringing the case, the government for the first time indicted two nongovernmental employees under the espionage law.

Prosecutors have also alarmed journalism groups and free-speech advocates by asserting that reporters could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for receiving and publishing classified information. The laws governing classified material do not make it illegal to publish such material except in specific circumstances; for example, one statute outlaws reproducing or publishing photographs or drawings of designated military installations without government permission.

But in a brief filed in the AIPAC case, Justice Department lawyers argued there "plainly is no exemption in the statutes for the press," saying the Espionage Act and some Supreme Court opinions indicate that journalists can be prosecuted for revealing classified information.

At the same time, the lawyers said that prosecuting a reporter "would raise legitimate and serious issues and would not be undertaken lightly," adding that "the fact that there has never been such a prosecution speaks for itself."

Such disputes have renewed calls to revise the laws on classified information and espionage.

"The system is ossified, complicated and a relic of the Cold War period," said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former CIA and NSA general counsel who is dean of the University of the Pacific's law school and was recently named to a government board formed to oversee classification issues. "I think it needs to be looked at seriously again."

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.