A former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has pled guilty to making false statements during an investigation into a leak of classified information about a covert cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The charging documents also said Cartwright misled prosecutors about classified information shared with another journalist, Daniel Klaidman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland announced the case on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutors said Cartwright was charged via criminal information, a document that is filed with a defendant’s consent and that signals that a plea agreement has been reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gregory Craig, an attorney for Cartwright, had no immediate comment, but his office said he would issue a statement later on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cartwright, 67, was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 until 2011, and was considered a key adviser to Obama. A former fighter pilot, the Marine general was known for his expertise in the more highly technical areas of cyberwarfare and America’s nuclear enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
The New York Times reported in 2012 that Cartwright was a crucial player in the cyber operation called Olympic Games, started under President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Times had said that Obama ordered the cyberattacks sped up, and in 2010 an attack using a computer virus called Stuxnet temporarily disabled 1,000 centrifuges that the Iranians were using to enrich uranium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congressional leaders had called for a criminal investigation into who leaked the information, and some Republicans said senior administration officials had disclosed the details of the cyber operation to bolster the president’s national security credentials during the 2012 campaign. Obama, for his part, said he had zero tolerance for such leaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Justice Department’s investigation into the disclosure of classified information was one of several national security leak probes conducted during the Obama administration, including ones involving AP and Fox News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright was charged with making false statements during a federal investigation into a leak of classified information, the Justice Department announced Oct. 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":53512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1805],"class_list":["post-17228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management","category-federal-oversight"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"GFUD4TSUI5AKLJVIEI7UTZ4YNI","arc_canonical_url":"\/2016\/10\/17\/former-general-pleads-guilty-in-stuxnet-leak-case\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n