Courtroom sketch by Debra Van Poolen (http://www.debvanpoolen.com/)

The government engaged in a great deal of security theater during the Jeffrey Sterling trial, most notably by having some CIA witnesses — including ones whose identities weren’t, technically, secret — testify behind a big office divider so the general public couldn’t see the witness.

But along the way, the government revealed a great number of secrets, including a number of secrets about how its counterproliferation programs work.

Perhaps most ironically, in a trial aiming to convict Jeffrey Sterling for revealing that the Russian scientist referred to as Merlin during the trial was a CIA asset, the government revealed that Merlin’s wife was also an asset.

That possibility was first suggested in the testimony of the first witness, Stephen B, who described originally recruiting Mrs. Merlin (presumably also for information on Russia’s nuclear program), not Merlin himself. Merlin’s wife suggested CIA recruit Merlin.

But the exhibits make it even more clear that CIA continued to have a relationship with Mrs. Merlin as well. For example, the first of two cables describing CIA informing the Merlins the engineer appeared in James Risen’s book describes them as the “Merlin assets,” plural.

That January 6, 2006 cable goes on to reveal that Mrs. Merlin had been facilitating the targeting of a Russian official who was due to travel to the US.

In addition, a stipulation regarding how much the CIA paid out over the years described it as how much “CIA paid Merlin and his wife.” [my emphasis] Indeed, the payments continued after CIA purportedly had to discontinue using Merlin on operations when Risen threatened to publish a New York Times story in 2003, and continued even after Merlin appeared in Risen’s book in 2006, even increasing in 2007.

Altogether, the CIA paid the Merlins roughly $413,223.67 over the 7 years after James Risen supposedly ruined Merlin’s usefulness as an asset.

It’s possible that some of these amounts were just meant to keep the Merlins silent. Yet it’s also clear that in 2006, Mrs. Merlin was actively providing information on Russian targets to the CIA.

None of these details — including a listing of how much nuclear engineers might expect to be paid by the CIA for a thorough debriefing then participation in a deception operation — were made public by Risen’s book.

But in the government’s zeal to punish Jeffrey Sterling because it believes he revealed Merlin to the world, the government has, in turn, revealed Mrs. Merlin.

Courtroom sketch by Debra Van Poolen (http://www.debvanpoolen.com/)

After a week of ominous language about the dangers of leaking classified documents, the 14 jurors in the Jeffrey Sterling trial Tuesday got their first look at purportedly classified documents.

Martha Lutz, the CIA’s Chief of Litigation Support and the bane of anyone who has FOIAed the CIA in the last decade, was on the stand, a tiny woman with a beehive hairdo and a remarkably robust voice. After having Lutz lay out the Executive Orders that have governed classified information in the last two decades and what various designations mean, the government introduced four documents into evidence — three under the silent witness rule — and showed them to Lutz.

“When originally classified were these documents properly classified as secret,” the prosecution asked of the three documents.

“They weren’t,” Lutz responded.

“But they are now properly classified secret?”

“Yes,” Lutz answered.

A court officer handed out a packet of these same documents with bright red SECRET markings on the front to each juror (the government had tried to include such a warning on the binders of other exhibits, but the defense pointed out that nothing in them was actually classified at all). Judge Leonie Brinkema, apparently responding to the confused look on jurors’ faces, explained these were still-classified documents intended for their eyes only. “You’ll get the context,” Judge Brinkema added. “The content is not really anything you have to worry about.” The government then explained these documents were seized from Jeffrey Sterling’s house in Missouri in 2006. Then the court officer collected the documents back up again, having introduced the jurors to the exclusive world of CIA’s secrets for just a few moments.

On cross, however, the defense explained a bit about what these documents were. Edward MacMahon made it clear the date on the documents was February 1987 — a point which Lutz apparently missed. MacMahon then revealed that the documents explained how to use rotary phones when a CIA officer is out of the office. I believe the prosecution objected — so jurors can’t use MacMahon’s description in their consideration of how badly these documents implicate Sterling — but perhaps the improper description will help cue the jurors’ own understanding about what the documents they had glimpsed were really about, making it clear to them they’re being asked to convict a man because he possessed documents about using a rotary phone that the CIA retroactively decided were SECRET.

Along with these awesome secrets about rotary phone usage, the prosecution noted that Sterling also had a 1993 performance evaluation at his home in Missouri. Under cross, MacMahon got Lutz to correct her testimony that this PAR was not from when Sterling was a Case Officer — as she had originally explained — but from when he was a trainee. But Lutz insisted that the document would still have been secret if not redacted anyway because it would reveal the kind of trainees the CIA looks for.

You might be wondering how the government plans to use retroactively classified documents about rotary phones to convict Jeffrey Sterling for leaking details about an operation dealing nuclear blueprints to James Risen. Luckily, the government explained all that back in September 2011.

Remarkably, they argue that these documents seized from Sterling’s house in Missouri in 2006 are proof that he possessed classified documents in his house in Herndon, VA in 2003.

Although the uncharged classified documents were seized from the defendant’s residence in Missouri on October 5, 2006, the defendant had to have moved those documents from his residence in Herndon, Virginia to his residence in Missouri in August 2003. The defendant had no access to classified information while residing in Missouri, and no longer had access to any classified documents when the CIA terminated him on January 31, 2002.

Along with the FBI’s Agent’s hairdresser’s testimony, the government is offering these documents as “proof” that they’ve properly charged Sterling in Virginia and not, say, Missouri, where a judge is less likely to permit the government to wave around documents on rotary phones as if they’re an important secret.

The government also introduced these documents about rotary phone usage because — they readily admitted in that September 2011 motion –  that they were forced to do such things because they only have a circumstantial case showing that Sterling had a letter that got leaked to James Risen absent the journalist’s testimony (they submitted that motion at a time when Brinkema had limited Risen’s testimony).

The evidence of the defendant’s possession of the seized classified documents is necessary because the letter charged in Counts Three and Five no longer exists. Absent Risen’s testimony, the evidence of the defendant’s possession of the letter charged in Counts Three and Five is solely circumstantial, based largely on inferences drawn from the defendant’s involvement in Classified Program No. 1, his access to certain CIA cables containing drafts of the letter, and the small number of individuals who would have had access to a paper copy of the letter.

In other words, they’ve submitted these documents Sterling obviously got in the very early days of his CIA career to “prove” that he also had snuck a letter on the Merlin program out of the CIA in 2000 (after which point he lost access to the information) and sat on it until 2003, when he allegedly shared it with Risen.

That the government is doing so makes it all the more ridiculous that a number of CIA’s witnesses — including up to four who were themselves cleared into the Merlin program — were able to testify without answering questions about the classified documents they improperly brought home. Given that the CIA actually learned of those documents in real time, it’s likely they were a lot more interesting than instructions on how to dial a rotary phone. And following the government’s habit of making fevered inferences, their improper treatment of classified information should make them more likely candidates to be James Risen’s source than Jeffrey Sterling.

But instead, the government is arguing, in all seriousness, that Jeffrey Sterling should go to prison because of three documents on dialing a rotary phone dating to 1987.

Here’s my latest on the Jeffrey Sterling trial from ExposeFacts.org:

Coming back into the courtroom after a break in the Jeffrey Sterling trial this afternoon, I heard an odd conversation. Apparently the government had unsuccessfully tried to get the defense to stipulate that the hairdresser for the FBI officer who had investigated this case had read James Risen’s book, State of War, in the Eastern judicial district of Virginia, where the court is located.

“There is no hairdresser privilege,” the judge presiding over the case, Leonie Brinkema, ruled.

So after a surprisingly weak presentation of computer forensic evidence, the government then called the investigating FBI officer’s hairdresser, who I will refer to as Julia P (because why shouldn’t she get the same privacy protections all the CIA’s witnesses got?). She seemed unprepared for court testimony, dressed casually. But she was a welcome breath of fresh air from all the stern witnesses preaching national security we’ve seen in the trial so far.

“Hi!” she said in a high voice as she took the stand. She explained she’d been a hairdresser for 35 years (she looked far too young for that to be the case). Julia P then confirmed that she had read State of War.

“Yessir, every chapter.”

She went on to confirm that she had read the book in Alexandria, VA shortly after it came out and that she does not have a security clearance.

The government, you see, is trying to establish they have charged Jeffrey Sterling in the proper venue. If anything has so far been presented that ties the alleged crimes to the Eastern District of Virginia, it’s not apparently clear what that is. It may be that the government had intended to use Risen’s testimony to establish venue in CIA’s home judicial district, but even there, he lives in Maryland and his office in is District of Columbia, as the government had just stipulated.

So they called the investigative Special Agent’s hairdresser.

And citing no precedent for this means to establish venue for an espionage case, the prosecution got Julia P to testify she had read a nationally released book that disclosed classified information in the same city where the trial is taking place.

Judge Brinkema then interjected, “how did you obtain the book?” It might have been either Borders or Barnes & Noble, Julia P explained. When pressed, she said it was probably in Alexandria or Arlington.

But it might have been in Bowie, Maryland, because her boyfriend lives there.

As Julia P pointed out, there are Barnes & Nobles all over.

On cross-examination, the defense asked her to clarify this, whether she knew where she bought the book. “It was probably Virginia, but it might have been Bowie,” she repeated. “You don’t remember whether you bought the book in Virginia or Maryland?” the defense asked again to be sure.

When she was dismissed, Julia P responded with the same refreshing voice, “Thank you!”

Note, of a fairly large jury pool, not a single potential juror had read Risen’s book. But to Julia P’s great credit, she has.

I’m anticipating that the venue jury instructions are going to be mighty interesting.