# Ladder: secrets and espionage laws, in North America

Laws that make it a crime to obtain, keep or disclose information a government has classified as secret, such as the Espionage Act, a 1917 United States law against disclosing defence information, or the Official Secrets Acts of the United Kingdom. Governments use them to prosecute journalists or, more often, the officials who gave journalists information.

The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.

Narrow with ?stage= (restrict, pressure, punish, silence, eliminate), ?continent=, ?from= and ?to= (year or date).

## Pressure

Using state power short of prosecution to change coverage: regulatory threats, licence reviews, funding cuts, lawsuits by officials, official "fake news" or "foreign agent" labels, advertising pressure, tax audits.

| Date | Country | Head of government | What was done | Outcome | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 19 December 1941 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Franklin D. Roosevelt](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/franklin-d-roosevelt) | Twelve days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Censorship. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1941-us-office-of-censorship-wartime-press-code) | Sustained (28 September 1945) | 2 |
| August 1942 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Franklin D. Roosevelt](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/franklin-d-roosevelt) | The United States Department of Justice convened a federal grand jury to consider Espionage Act charges against the Chicago Tribune and correspondent Stanley Johnston after the newspaper published details suggesting the Navy had broken Japanese naval codes ahead of the Battle of Midway. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1942-us-chicago-tribune-midway-espionage-act) | Reversed (1 August 1942) | 2 |

## Punish

Legal or physical action against individual journalists or sources: subpoenas and record seizures, prosecutions, arrests, detention, expulsions, visa denials, assault where a government actor is involved.

| Date | Country | Head of government | What was done | Outcome | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 26 June 1918 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Woodrow Wilson](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/woodrow-wilson) | Jacob Frohwerk, an associate editor of the German language newspaper the Missouri Staats-Zeitung, was tried and convicted in June 1918 under the Espionage Act of 1917 for publishing articles opposing American participation in the First World War, and was sentenced to ten years in prison on each of… [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1918-us-espionage-act-conviction-of-editor-frohwerk) | Upheld by a court (10 March 1919) | 2 |
| 8 June 1925 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Alfred E. Smith](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/al-smith) | The United States Supreme Court voted seven to two on June 8, 1925 to uphold the conviction of socialist publisher Benjamin Gitlow, who had been tried and sentenced to prison under New York's 1902 Criminal Anarchy Law for distributing 16,000 copies of the Left Wing Manifesto. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1925-us-supreme-court-upholds-gitlow-anarchy-conviction) | Upheld by a court (8 June 1925) | 2 |
| 1985 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Ronald Reagan](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/ronald-reagan) | Naval intelligence analyst Samuel Loring Morison was convicted under the Espionage Act after he sent classified satellite photographs to a British defense publication in 1984. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1985-us-morison-espionage-act-conviction) | Upheld by a court (1 January 1988) | 2 |
| 6 July 2005 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [George W. Bush](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/george-w-bush) | A federal judge jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for contempt after she refused to tell a grand jury who told her the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, part of a special counsel's investigation into the leak. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2005-us-judith-miller-jailed-plame-source) | Upheld by a court (29 September 2005) | 2 |
| 5 July 2010 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Barack Obama](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/barack-obama) | The U.S. Army charged intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning under the Espionage Act, a 1917 law against disclosing defense information, after she gave WikiLeaks, a website that publishes leaked documents, a large archive of military and diplomatic files that news organizations later published. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2010-us-chelsea-manning-espionage-act-wikileaks) | Reversed (17 January 2017) | 1 |
| 25 January 2013 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Barack Obama](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/barack-obama) | Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who in 2007 was the first CIA officer to publicly describe the agency's waterboarding of a detainee, pleaded guilty to identifying a covert colleague to a journalist and was sentenced under the Espionage Act to 30 months in prison. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2012-us-john-kiriakou-espionage-act-cia-torture-source) | Upheld by a court (3 February 2015) | 1 |
| 20 May 2013 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Barack Obama](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/barack-obama) | A 2010 FBI search-warrant affidavit, unsealed in 2013, described Fox News reporter James Rosen as a possible co-conspirator in violating the Espionage Act because he sought classified information from a State Department analyst, and used that theory to obtain his private emails. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2013-us-doj-names-fox-reporter-co-conspirator) | Sustained (12 July 2013) | 2 |
| 10 October 2013 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Barack Obama](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/barack-obama) | A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-profit organization in New York that documents cases of journalists imprisoned or killed worldwide, published on October 10, 2013, found that since 2009 the United States Department of Justice had brought felony charges against six gover… [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2013-obama-doj-charges-eight-under-espionage-act) | Unknown | 4 |
| 17 October 2014 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Barack Obama](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/barack-obama) | For years, federal prosecutors sought New York Times reporter James Risen's testimony identifying a confidential source in a CIA leak case; the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, but Attorney General Eric Holder ultimately chose not to force him to testify or name the source. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2014-us-james-risen-subpoena-jeffrey-sterling) | Reversed (17 October 2014) | 2 |
| 23 May 2019 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Donald Trump](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/donald-trump) | The United States indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 counts under the Espionage Act over the 2010 publication of leaked military and diplomatic files, charges press-freedom groups said could expose ordinary national-security journalism to prosecution. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2019-us-assange-espionage-act-indictment) | Reversed (25 June 2024) | 2 |

## Silence

Removing outlets or channels from the public sphere: closures, licence withdrawals, forced sales, blocking and shutdowns, prior restraint, nationalisation.

| Date | Country | Head of government | What was done | Outcome | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1917 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Woodrow Wilson](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/woodrow-wilson) | Postmaster General Albert Burleson used the wartime Espionage Act to strip the Milwaukee Leader, a socialist daily, of its low-cost second-class mailing rate, cutting off its main channel to readers. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1917-us-burleson-mail-ban-milwaukee-leader) | Upheld by a court (7 March 1921) | 2 |
| July 1917 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Woodrow Wilson](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/woodrow-wilson) | Weeks after the United States entered the First World War, the New York postmaster used the new Espionage Act, a law against interfering with military recruitment, to bar the socialist magazine The Masses from the mail. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1917-us-espionage-act-bars-the-masses-from-the-mail) | Upheld by a court (1 November 1917) | 2 |
| 15 June 1971 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Richard Nixon](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/richard-nixon) | After The New York Times began publishing a leaked secret history of the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration obtained a court order stopping further publication, the first such order against a major American newspaper. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1971-us-pentagon-papers-injunction) | Reversed (30 June 1971) | 2 |
| 21 March 1990 | Focal case: [United States](https://thewaronnews.com/countries/us) ([RSF 2026 rank: 64th of 180](https://rsf.org/en/index)) | [Bob Martinez](https://thewaronnews.com/leaders/bob-martinez) | In 1990, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a Florida law that threatened newspaper reporter Michael Smith with criminal prosecution for discussing his own testimony before a state grand jury investigating local officials. [Full entry](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1990-us-butterworth-v-smith-grand-jury-secrecy) | Reversed (21 March 1990) | 2 |

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