Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer, was found guilty Monday of leaking classified information to a New York Times reporter, the Associated Press reports.
The top-secret information included details about a U.S. mission to compromise Iran’s nuclear program. A Virginia jury convicted Sterling, 47, “of all nine counts he faced in federal court,” AP explained.
The classified information that was given to New York Times reporter James Risen ended up in Risen’s 2006 book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified during the trial and said that the mission was “one of the government’s most closely held secrets”—alluding to the idea that someone must have tipped Risen off, according to AP.
Federal prosecutors had been trying to subpoena Risen for years to get him to reveal his source, but he refused—even when threatened with jail, AP says.
Sterling had filed a “racial discrimination complaint” against the CIA during his tenure at the agency, according to AP.
Sterling will be sentenced in April and at that time will have the opportunity to appeal his conviction.
Read more at the Associated Press.