. >> i wanted to introduce, actually little partner in crime, baruch weiss for the past five years. and i have been any number of matters together, and a number of sense of national security mattersss together.ed and i told you i would be a busy that i will be short. e am baruch weiss came into the private sector as a white-collar trial lawyer and defenseense attorney after 20 years in thern uthernment, 18 years in the southern years in the southern district of new york holding position possible, after the eastern district ofirginia, virginia, the united states, it stane heck of an office and baruch was there for 18 years, i think he outlived about six or seven different u.s. attorneys during his tenure and handled sf i t of the highest profile cases in that office. worked he worked at the department of have ry here in washington. he has a wife is a terrific reporter for the "washington post" compan." -- so he knows firsthand, and that in addition to the department of treasury, after the organization he went to the department of the homeland security and oversaw himself and close to

i'm happy to introduce my fellow partner, baruch weiss. [applause] >> thank you all. i think we're going to have a panel as interesting this afternoon as we had this morning. if you recall, we are going to be discussing the issues that arise in prosecuting or defending the cases that contain a leak of classified information. i'm going to introduce, of course, is our panel. what i'm going to do first out of order is to give you a sense of what we're going to discuss. i think you'll appreciate who we have here to discuss it all the more. what we are doing to discuss really feeds off what you started to hear this morning. that is we're going to assume that there was a disclosure of classified information by a government official to a journalist or a lobbyist or an academic. it's not only journalist. these things happen, think tanks, they happen at academic panels and so on. we're obviously going to put aside cases where somebody says here's the recipe for the plutonium bomb, would it give to osama bin laden? we're going to talk about interesting cases, disclosure, policy

and if standard that judge ellis set as quoted by baruch is the standard -- >> yeah, but he's not charged with espionage, and that's probably exactly why. he's being charged with bei mishandling the information, isn't that right? >> that's not the only charge. >> let me address that. first, from a technical perspective, judge ellis' decision is not binding. he was the first one to articulate this because he got this very hard case. until this aipac espionage casea most cases where the government used was against a government official who when you get a classified document, you've already signed up for the classification process.e al you've undertaken nondisclosurer you've waived many of your first amendment rights, and the supreme court has really sot ri held. in other words, for the privilege of serving the public and for getting classified information, you have a heightened responsibility. for and so when you prosecute somebody who is a governmentnsib official who has promised not ts disclose classified information, the standards are not always the same that would apply to the the nongo