

The Reporter Resists His Government - danso
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/feb/19/james-risen-reporter-resists-his-government/

======
tptacek
Jeffrey Sterling was an attorney working for the CIA as the handler for a
Russian covert agent whose mission was to subvert the Iranian nuclear weapon
program by feeding them faulty designs for the electrical firing mechanism of
a nuclear explosive device. James Risen is one of the most celebrated
investigative journalists of the last 20 years.

Sterling informed Risen of the program he oversaw for the CIA. Risen dedicated
a chapter in his book to it.

The Bush administration opened an investigation into the incident. Obama's
Holder-led DOJ oversaw a criminal prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling.

At no point that I can find was Risen ever criminally charged for anything.
For a period of several years, Risen fought a subpoena compelling him to
testify, naming his source (Sterling had already been indicted). That subpoena
was appealed all the way to SCOTUS and ultimately held up. Holder, who already
had enough evidence to convict Sterling, ultimately backed off. Risen was
never compelled to name his source.

To me, this is sort of an acid-test case. It is hard to imagine a more
consequential singular leak than one that reveals a carefully-planned human-
intelligence _counter-proliferation_ mission against a hostile state. Sterling
had a position that appears to have involved the utmost level of trust --- he
wasn't a sysadmin disquieted by the documents he was uncovering, but an
operations officer intimately familiar with and actively participating in the
operation he revealed. There is a colorable argument that there should in a
truly free government no state secrets. My sense is, if you think this leak
was praiseworthy and the government's investigation "overreaching", as the
Dean of the Columbia Journalism School writes here, you kind of have to sign
on to that argument, don't you?

Two more thoughts:

First, Risen is a startlingly effective journalist, one of the best of his
generation, up there on the leaderboard with Seymour Hersh. The lede of this
piece sets up a narrative about a reporter persecuted by his own government.
But (a) Risen wasn't prosecuted at all, and (b) his serious legal
entanglements seem to involve a single case on his long resume, which resume
is recounted at some length in this piece. The narrative effect is to suggest
that the government fought as hard against his NSA and torture stories as they
did against this one. But that's an argument that doesn't seem to be supported
by evidence.

Second, more of a question: I've tried to read the indictments of all the
leakers on the roster of the Obama administration leak prosecutions, often
said to be the most zealous of any President. At one point in this piece, Coll
states outright that the Holder DOJ had imprisoned "a half dozen" sources for
journalists. That doesn't square numerically with the prosecutions that have
been reported on, nor are most of those prosecutions about people who were
sources for journalists (apart from Chelsea Manning).

~~~
thissideup
> Second

Pretty easy to find. What's your question?

[http://www.propublica.org/special/sealing-loose-lips-
chartin...](http://www.propublica.org/special/sealing-loose-lips-charting-
obamas-crackdown-on-national-security-leaks)

~~~
tptacek
This timeline shows 3 indictments for journalistic sources during the Obama
administration (I'm not counting Kiriakou, who was his own source, and leaked
CIA secrets during the promotion of a book he wrote, but even if I did, that's
4 indictments, not a half-dozen, and even fewer imprisonments).

So, back to my question:

Who are the half-dozen imprisoned journalistic sources Coll is referring to?
I'm sure he's not just making it up!

FWIW: I _have_ done some research here; I asked a similar question the last
time the sound bite about Obama/Holder's leak prosecution zealousness came up:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5701813)

~~~
thissideup
Ah, got it. I'll have to look into it a little more. It does seem there's some
uncertainty about the total.

[http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/...](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/10/jake-
tapper/cnns-tapper-obama-has-used-espionage-act-more-all-/)

~~~
thissideup
That said, the number of Espionage Act prosecutions by this admin. is
concerning and pernicious in itself.

~~~
tptacek
Can you support that argument with evidence?

~~~
thissideup
Yes, the evidence would be every Espionage Act prosecution under the Obama
administration. Which are more numerous than the total of every previous
administration since 1917.

If you could justify how that's not worrisome that would be great.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917)

~~~
tptacek
If you read the link I posted upthread, I won't have to repeat my response to
the claim that Obama is more zealous about the Espionage Act than his
predecessors.

------
john_b
It's chilling how far those in power will go to silence even the _possibility
of dissent_ that honest journalism provides. In this case, the Obama justice
department inherited a case from the Bush era and fought it all the way to the
supreme court to get a journalist to incriminate his alleged source.

The information disclosed by Risen was already out there and the damage was
done. That it embarrased a previous administration did not seem to matter. The
DOJ seems to have wanted at least one head to roll in order to send a message
to government insiders: "talk to the press at your own peril."

~~~
tptacek
First, Eric Holder did not ultimately compel Risen to name his source.

Second, this wasn't a corruption or torture report, and the stakes weren't
"embarrassment". The CIA turned a Russian nuclear engineer who fed to Iran
flawed plans for the electrical firing mechanism for a nuclear explosive
device. Risen learned about that from that Russian engineer's CIA handler, and
after the NYT spiked a story he wrote about it, wrote a chapter a book about
it.

~~~
justcommenting
It wasn't necessary to ultimately compel Risen to have a chilling effect on
journalism, much like it wasn't necessary to ultimately imprison Thomas Drake
for the rest of his life to have a chilling effect on IC employees who seek to
expose waste, fraud, and abuse.

I agree with your perspective on the wisdom of Risen's reporting, but still
think we should celebrate the heroic act of journalists protecting their
sources even when they're on the hot-seat.

One doesn't necessarily have to be indicted or prosecuted for people to feel
as though their rights are threatened. Needlessly forceful/aggressive FBI
raids (Binney), wiretapping press organizations (AP), endless secret grand
juries (WL), and border searches (Poitras) are all examples of the many ways
USG has intimidated actual and potential whistleblowers and reporters.

------
mturmon
Wow. The _NYR_ reporting about the supine posture of the national press has
been fantastic, and this is another example, one of the most revealing I've
read.

