Contrary to BooMan’s post, James Risen had written earlier articles for The Intercept.
THE BIGGEST SECRET
My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on TerrorThe Obama administration was demanding that I reveal the confidential sources I had relied on for a chapter about a botched CIA operation in my 2006 book, “State of War.” I had also written about the CIA operation for the New York Times, but the paper’s editors had suppressed the story at the government’s request. It wasn’t the only time they had done so.
My case was part of a broader crackdown on reporters and whistleblowers that had begun during the presidency of George W. Bush and continued far more aggressively under the Obama administration, which had already prosecuted more leak cases than all previous administrations combined. Obama officials seemed determined to use criminal leak investigations to limit reporting on national security. But the crackdown on leaks only applied to low-level dissenters; top officials caught up in leak investigations, like former CIA Director David Petraeus, were still treated with kid gloves.
More below the fold …
Initially, I had succeeded in the courts, surprising many legal experts. In the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Brinkema had sided with me when the government repeatedly subpoenaed me to testify before a grand jury. She had ruled in my favor again by quashing a trial subpoena in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer who the government accused of being a source for the story about the ill-fated CIA operation. In her rulings, Brinkema determined that there was a “reporter’s privilege” — at least a limited one — under the First Amendment that gave journalists the right to protect their sources, much as clients and patients can shield their private communications with lawyers and doctors.
But the Obama administration appealed her 2011 ruling quashing the trial subpoena, and in 2013, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a split decision, sided with the administration, ruling that there was no such thing as a reporter’s privilege. In 2014, the Supreme Court refused to hear my appeal, allowing the 4th Circuit ruling to stand. Now there was nothing legally stopping the Justice Department from forcing me to either reveal my sources or be jailed for contempt of court.
But even as I was losing in the courts, I was gaining ground in the court of public opinion.
Whistleblowers and how the Obama administration waged their war on journalists …
○ 2006: The Year of Scandal Front Page on Jan. 3, 2006
○ Scoops NSA Spying Program ¶ NYT Paper Itself Now Targeted by Oui @BooMan on Dec. 26, 2005
○ Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts | NY Times – Dec. 16, 2005 by James Risen and Eric Lichtenblau
Time For Answers From the NY Times | BooMan Tribune – Jan. 15, 2006 |
An article in the current edition of The New York Observer resurrects many questions, some perhaps unintentionally, about the decision-making processes at The New York Times in recent years regarding just what is news and what is not. A clear pattern has emerged suggesting that the Times under the direction of publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger, has often seemed more concerned with advancing the agenda of the Bush administration than in fulfilling its legendary motto: “All the news that’s fit to print.” The long delay that preceded the publication of James Risen’s December 16th blockbuster detailing Bush-authorized surveillance on Americans by the NSA is but the latest example, and placed in the context of previous curious behavior, cries out for some answers.
In the Observer article, entitled “Risen Gave Times A Non-Disclosure On Wiretap Book,” by Gabriel Sherman, new details are revealed, others confirmed or expanded upon, that raise questions about why the Times waited for over a year, not “a year” as the original Times article suggested, to finally publish this huge story that could well implicate the president in impeachable offenses. The Times fudging of the timeline is significant, and it was almost certainly intentional. If the Times had the story “a year” ago, that would have been December, 2004 — after the presidential election. The Observer confirms that the Times had the story before the election, a decision that, intentional or not, insulated the White House from disclosures that might well have cost it the election:
…In October 2004, Mr. Risen first presented editors with a story about the secret N.S.A. wiretapping program, the sources said.
○ Obama and the NSA Winning the War Against Journalists? by Oui @BooMan on Aug. 2, 2013
○ Obama’s new FBI chief approved Bush’s NSA warrantless wiretapping scheme | The Guardian – May 13, 2013|
○ Did NYT’s Editors Alert the Government to Risen’s Source? by Emptywheel on Jan. 6, 2011
○ NSA Spied on Journalists Risen, Hersh & Others by suskind @BooMan on Jan. 6, 2006
