Climate of Fear: Jim Risen v. the Obama administration
The Obama DOJs effort to force New York Times investigative journalist Jim Risen to testify in a whistleblower prosecution and reveal his source is really remarkable and revealing in several ways; it should be receiving much more attention than it is. On its own, the whistleblower prosecution and accompanying targeting of Risen are pernicious, but more importantly, it underscores the menacing attempt by the Obama administration as Risen yesterday pointed out to threaten and intimidate whistleblowers, journalists and activists who meaningfully challenge what the government does in secret.
The subpoena to Risen was originally issued but then abandoned by the Bush administration, and then revitalized by Obama lawyers. It is part of the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent whom the DOJ accuses of leaking to Risen the story of a severely botched agency plot from 11 years ago to infiltrate Irans nuclear program, a story Risen wrote about six years after the fact in his 2006 best-selling book, State of War. The DOJ wants to force Risen to testify under oath about whether Sterling was his source.
Like any good reporter would, Risen is categorically refusing to testify and, if it comes to that (meaning if the court orders him to testify), he appears prepared to go to prison in defense of press freedoms and to protect his source (just as some young WikiLeaks supporters are courageously prepared to do rather than cooperate with the Obama DOJs repellent persecution of the whistleblowing site). Yesterday, Risen filed a Motion asking the Court to quash the governments subpoena on the ground that it violates the First Amendments free press guarantee, and as part of the Motion, filed a lengthy Affidavit that is amazing in several respects.
During the Bush years, Risen was one of the few investigative journalists exposing the excesses and lawbreaking that was the War on Terror causing him to be literally hated by officials of the National Security State. Along with Eric Lichtblau, Risen most famously revealed, in 2005, that the NSA was secretly spying on Americans without warrants which as he put it in his Affidavit in all likelihood, violated the law and the United States Constitution. In 2006, he revealed that the Bush administration had been obtaining huge amounts of financial and banking information about American citizens from the SWIFT system, all without oversight or Congressional authorization.
http://www.salon.com/2011/06/23/risen_3/