In an act of clemency in his final days in office, President Barack Obama has pardoned retired General James “Hoss” Cartwright for lying to investigators over his role in leaking details of the United States’ efforts to cripple Iran’s nuclear program using the Stuxnet internet worm.

Cartwright (pictured), who previously held the role of vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of making false statements to government officials during an investigation into how the New York Times gained knowledge of Operation Olympic Games, the operation that saw the creation and deployment of Stuxnet.

First detected in the wild in 2011, Stuxnet was part of the program that started under the Bush Administration then continued under President Obama that originally was meant to target Iran only but as SiliconANGLE’s Kyt Dotson described at the time, “like so many cyberweapons that have a ‘mind of their own,’ Stuxnet was not content to stay put and began to infect other machines.”

While perhaps never becoming well-known outside technology and security circles, Stuxnet was remarkable in that it is believed to be the first time the U.S. or any nation-state on Earth has attempted to use a virus to disable or sabotage another nation-state’s capabilities or infrastructure. In addition, it is believed that Stuxnet was the first time an Internet-worm had been designed “with such singular disruptive purpose.”

Cartwright, who left government service in 2011, was central to the development of Stuxnet as the head of the operation that designed it.

What caused the general to have a change of heart and leak the details to the New York Times has never been understood, as to this day Cartwright denies having been the source of the leak. But he has since admitted to confirming details of the program with the reporters who wrote the story.

The pardoning of Cartwright comes at the same time as President Obama also commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former army intelligence analyst who was jailed for leaking classified files to WikiLeaks. Manning, who was serving a term of a term of 35 years but will now be released in May after serving only seven.

Image credit: Department of Defense/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain CC0