Liberal advocacy groups have hailed Mr. Sterling as a whistle-blower for taking his concerns about the program to the Senate Intelligence Committee in early 2003, a time when dissenting voices in the C.I.A. were hushed as the country prepared for war in Iraq. The Justice Department and C.I.A., however, deny that characterization. They said that the Iran operation had not been mismanaged and that Mr. Sterling had gone to Congress and then the news media as a way to settle personal grievances.

The Justice Department had no direct proof that Mr. Sterling, who managed the Iranian operation, provided the information to Mr. Risen, but prosecutors stitched together a strong circumstantial case. They described Mr. Sterling, who is black, as bitter and frustrated about what he believed was workplace discrimination. Telephone records and emails showed that Mr. Sterling and Mr. Risen had talked frequently, and prosecutors argued that only Mr. Sterling had the information, the motive and the opportunity to leak it.

“The defendant put his own selfishness and his own vindictiveness ahead of the American people,” Eric G. Olshan, a federal prosecutor, said during closing arguments Thursday. “For what? He hated the C.I.A., and he wanted to settle the score.”

The trial was part Washington spectacle, part cloak and dagger. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified, as did C.I.A. operatives who gave only their first names and last initials, with their faces shielded behind seven-foot-high partitions. A scientist was referred to only by his code name, Merlin. His wife was Mrs. Merlin.

Officials revealed their preferred strategies for persuading reporters not to run sensitive stories. Jurors learned that, at the C.I.A.’s office in New York, employees could easily walk out with classified documents and never be searched.

Mr. Sterling’s lawyers said the government’s case was based entirely on suspicion. “The government has great lawyers,” said Barry J. Pollack, a defense lawyer. “It has a great theory. It just made a great argument. What the government lacks is evidence.”

Mr. Sterling’s lawyers argued that it was just as likely that Mr. Risen had learned about the operation from Capitol Hill staff members, then pieced together details from other sources at the C.I.A. and from the Russian scientist himself. Mr. Pollack acknowledged that Mr. Sterling had a relationship with Mr. Risen, but said they had talked only about Mr. Sterling’s discrimination lawsuit against the C.I.A. Mr. Risen probably asked about Merlin and the Iranian operation, Mr. Pollack said, but Mr. Sterling did not provide any information.