Opinion ID: 181375
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Abu-Jihaad's Admitted Disclosure of Navy Intelligence

Text: In addition to evidence establishing Abu-Jihaad's opportunity and motive to disclose classified information, the jury heard recorded statements in which Abu-Jihaad effectively admitted to having actually done so. In a series of conversations intercepted in 2006, which we detail in our discussion of the facts, see supra at 115-16, Abu-Jihaad repeatedly discussed providing Shareef, a suspected terrorist sympathizer, with meals. A confidential informant who participated in some of the conversations testified at trial that meals was a code for military intelligence. Thus, while generally promising Shareef support, Abu-Jihaad explained that he had been out of the Navy too long to have any current intelligence to convey: I haven't been on that job, so I don'tyou know what I'm saying, I haven't been there . . . to see . . . what the fresh meal is. Gov't Ex. 141h at 1. Abu-Jihaad nevertheless encouraged Shareef to speak with the Mexican, identified at trial as Miguel Colon, who had been discharged from the Navy only two months earlier: [H]e can give you a fresh meal `cuz . . . he just finished his job, there, less than a month ago. . . . Id. at 1-2. Then, in a conversation that same day with Colon about Shareef's desire for intelligence, Abu-Jihaad made the statement that the government argued acknowledged his past transmittal of intelligence information: I don't know how to get him no hot meal. . . . I ain't been working uh, in, in, in the field of making meals and or, you know . . . in a long time. I've been out of that for uh, over uh, quatro years you know. Gov't Ex. 141k at 7. Although Abu-Jihaad suggests that the statement only indicated that he was not in a position to secure current intelligence because he had been out of the Navy for four years, a reasonable jury could have construed the statement as an admission of past intelligence disclosures. Abu-Jihaad did not, after all, state simply that he had never worked in the field of making meals, i.e., providing military intelligence. Rather, he stated that he ain't been working uh, in, in, in the field of making meals and or, you know . . . in a long time.  Implicit in a statement that one has not done something in a long time is an admission to having done that thing at some time in the past, in Abu-Jihaad's case, working . . . in the field of making meals, i.e., providing military intelligence, some four years ago when he was in the Navy and held a security clearance to access certain classified information. While Abu-Jihaad's implicit admission is general, making no specific reference to the Battlegroup Document, on a sufficiency challenge, we review pieces of evidence not in isolation, but in conjunction. See United States v. Rigas, 490 F.3d 208, 230 (2d Cir.2007); United States v. Miller, 116 F.3d 641, 676 (2d Cir.1997). Here the totality of the evidence permitted the jury to find, inter alia, that: classified information about Navy operations was transmitted to Azzam, an organization sympathetic to violent jihad; the source of the disclosed classified information was a Navy insider; Abu-Jihaad was a Navy insider with access to the classified information at issue; defendant was in regular communication with Azzam at and about the time relevant to the charged disclosure; although some of Abu-Jihaad's communications had been deleted, those that were retrieved revealed his strong support for jihad, even when directed against his own country; no other member of the United States military had such a record of communication with Azzam; and Abu-Jihaad essentially admitted in recorded conversations to disclosing classified information during his service in the Navy. These findings, in turn, were sufficient to support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Abu-Jihaad was the person who communicated national defense information pertaining to the 2001 transit plan for the Constellation battlegroup to persons at Azzam in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(d). Accordingly, we conclude that Abu-Jihaad's challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction is without merit.