Oct 18, 2025
John Bolton is no favorite of mine. But Donald Trump’s decision to dump espionage charges on his former national-security adviser for publishing a memoir critical of Trump feels like irony repackaged as retribution. An even deeper irony lies in the possibility that a Supreme Court ruling against me forty-five years ago may now come to Bolton’s rescue.
As the Wall Street Journal noted in an October 16 editorial, prosecutors will have to prove that the diary notes Bolton used to construct his memoir were meant to expose national-security information and weren’t merely “recollections that would be subject to [government] review before becoming public.” That’s a high bar, one the Justice Department may struggle to clear.
The Indictment
According to The New York Times, the indictment accuses Bolton of “using personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1,000 pages of ‘diary’ notes about his day-to-day activities as Mr. Trump’s national-security adviser in 2018 and 2019.” Those notes, sent to his wife and daughter, allegedly included top-secret national-defense information. Worse, the indictment says, “Bolton’s emails, over AOL, were later hacked by someone associated with the government of Iran.”
The case has already provoked cries of political vengeance. Some critics see it as part of Trump’s second-term campaign to punish his enemies through the machinery of law enforcement. The record shows the original investigation began under the Biden Justice Department and only later ripened into a Trump-era prosecution.
Whatever the origins, the charges hinge on intent: Did Bolton willfully violate the Espionage Act? Or did he simply mishandle information while trying to follow rules that, under the precedent of Snepp v. United States, he was legally bound to obey?
My Case, His Shield
A little back-story helps.
After the fall of Saigon, I published a scathing memoir based on five and a half years as a CIA officer in Vietnam. The Carter Justice Department admitted the book revealed no secrets. Still, it argued that my failure to clear it with CIA censors had “irreparably” damaged the nation by undermining faith in the Agency’s security procedures. In Snepp v. United States (444 U.S. 507), the Supreme Court ruled against me in 1980. That decision allowed the government to impose sweeping pre-publication censorship on anyone who had worked with classified material. It created the template for the modern “pre-clearance” regime, which now governs not only ex-spies but thousands of federal employees and even journalists covering national-security agencies.
Bolton encountered that machinery firsthand while preparing The Room Where It Happened. White House censors approved, then disapproved, his manuscript.
He eventually published it without final sign-off but with contested passages removed. A federal judge later absolved him of wrongdoing, noting he had made a good-faith effort to comply with review procedures.
That record could now prove decisive.
Good Faith vs. Espionage
To convict under the Espionage Act’s core provisions, the ones invoked against Bolton, prosecutors must show that he willfully retained or transmitted national-defense information: that he knew the material was protected and knew his actions were unlawful, yet did them anyway. Other subsections of the statute do criminalize grossly negligent mishandling of secrets, but those lesser offenses are rarely charged and are not alleged here.
Bolton can credibly argue he tried to follow the rules. By submitting his draft for pre-publication review, engaging with censors, and deleting disputed sections, he demonstrated an intent to comply, not to betray. Sharing working notes with his wife and daughter may have been sloppy, but it hardly rises to espionage.
That compliance history weakens the government’s narrative. Evidence that Bolton sought clearance and believed his material had been vetted undercuts the “willful” intent prosecutors must prove. It also strengthens a “good-faith reliance” defense, the claim that he believed publication was lawful or at least not criminal.
The Politics of Punishment
Of course, in Trump’s Washington, no legal case stands apart from politics. The president publicly demanded Bolton’s prosecution after the book first appeared, and the new indictment seems to fulfill that wish. As the Journal observed, “Opposing Donald Trump is a perilous business, but working for him can be equally as dangerous.”
The irony is rich. Trump himself was charged under similar statutes for mishandling classified documents — a case dismissed by a judge he had appointed. Now, newly re-elected, he presides over a Justice Department wielding those same laws against a former aide who crossed him.
Bolton, for his part, remains defiant. “My book was reviewed and approved by the appropriate, experienced career clearance officials,” he said in a statement. “Then came Trump 2, who embodies what Joseph Stalin’s head of secret police once said: ‘You show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.’”
A Broader Warning
I’ve seen how far this logic can stretch. A friend recently sought CIA permission to publish information already leaked by an authorized source. The Agency told him that even his request for permission was classified, meaning that any further discussion of it, even by email, could trigger espionage charges. That’s the real danger. A ruling meant to preserve secrets has evolved into a tool of suppression. When the government defines intent as whatever the president says it is, anyone who writes, leaks, or merely talks about national security risks becoming the next John Bolton, or the next Frank Snepp.
The Trump case against Bolton is not just about one man’s diaries. It’s a cautionary tale about how far executive power, armed with secrecy law and personal vengeance, can reach into the lives of those who once served it faithfully.